Real Estate Investing Facts

While working full time, I signed the contract on my first house. It sold before it even hit the MLS! I was asking $265,000 and we sold it for $260,000. I have made approximately $75,000 on my first deal!!!

Our repairs ended up coming way under and I sold the house for much more than I expected and in a lot less time. While other houses sit on the market unsold, I followed your steps and I bought it well below market, signed a buyer and closed it in less than 90 days without a hitch!

I have been focusing on REO’s and owners with equity (yes they are still around!) Thank you for all your training and expertise. I’m loving this!

Update: Dawn is no longer practicing law, she is a full time mom with a 3rd baby. She has just completed her 11th deal working my system part time.

Dawn Connelly, FL

Lab & Coaching Graduate, Florida Investor

__________________________________________________________

Things have been going great! We have had some really good deals that have been fun and exciting to work on! I am now working foreclosures full time with my mom.

Our goal initially this year was to do 12 but we just hit 11 and 15 really looks like what we will hit this year!

We have now done 4 flips we are getting really good at pricing. Here is the quick rundown.

Norma: Purchase: $150,000; Fix Up: $5,000; Sold in 4 days: $196,000; $30,000+ net profit.

Ward: Purchase: $119,000; Fix Up: $10,000; Sales Price: $160,000; $25,000 est. profit.

McKay (first deal): Purchase $125,000; Fix Up $35,000; Sold in 14 days: $189,000; $28,000+ profit.

Shipping: Purchase: $88,000; Fix Up: $10,000; Sales Price: $135,000; This house is a sweet deal. The lot is large enough to build another house on the back of it and the zoning allows us to do this. We have over $20,000 profit in it and can easily get $900 a month to start my rental empire!!

I cannot thank you enough for your awesome Lab and for Coach Tim! Your Lab was a life changing event for us. And Tim has been the best mentor we could have asked for. We enjoy our conversations with him immensely. He has truly become a great ally in our business. His ideas and the ways that he presents them are truly outstanding. We get so much accomplished and he is really planting some seeds in my head for where I want my business to transition to.

I thank you both from the bottom of my heart! I hope that you and graduates are doing great!

Dan Paluska, OR

Lab & Coaching Graduate

__________________________________________________________

Do it just like Alexis teaches it in Lab! In the beginning you will be tempted to do things different or leave things out, but that will slow you down and lead to more frustration. If you just follow her system exactly and stick with it – IT DOES WORK!

CURRENT UPDATE: 12 deals since Lab, 8 this year alone!

3 REO’s at 50%, 5 subject-to at 60% of resale (higher resale values).
1st REO sold in 1 week for full price, profit 20+ %.
Other 2 REOs ready to sell in 2 weeks. Sub-to closing this week, seller getting a little over $100,000. We will get our 15-20% profit as usual. Plan for remainder of year is to buy and hold rentals.

Since this business is constantly evolving, he just got the chance to “tune up” his business by retaking the Lab. So much has changed in the last 2 years of Lab. We focused on REO’s which got my last few deals!!!

Andrew Cushman, CA

Lab & Coaching Graduate

__________________________________________________________

I am a full time stay-at-home Dad and work part time foreclosure investor. I have a background in engineering and a SVP Operations Manager for 30 years. Claudia works full time has only been in the US for 5 years, from Brazil.

I saw an article in the USA Today about Alexis’ approach to foreclosures investing and I liked what I read. We came to a Free Webinar, ordered her home study and 3-Day Lab as we needed more hands on help to get this going, as well as Claudia needed to understand the whole approach.

We really wanted to get our first foreclosure deal so we can have both time with the family and financial independence in the future. We had four rental properties which we had purchased before meeting Alexis that did not have the financial upside we wanted.

We left the Lab with the tools, the confidence, the understanding in what we needed. We have since done two bank foreclosures which we are rehabbing presently. One we purchased for $76k and should sell for $145k. The second deal we purchased for $116k and will sell for $200k.

Words of Wisdom: Get around positive people who will influence you to succeed, like Alexis and her team of Coaches. The 3 days we spent in Lab forces you to use the methods Alexis teach. It will get you to the point of “doing” that I am sure we would not have reached on our own from home. Get to Lab ASAP there are a ton of deals out there, just one done right will pay you back many times over.

Michael & Claudia Gilles, CA

Lab & Coaching Graduate, PT Investor, FT Dad

Foreclosure List

Mastering Foreclosures

Hans Anderson

Subscribe in a reader

This article will answer the question from the legal side of who pays when renter skips out to help give you a better understanding of renter laws.

by Janet Portman, attorney

Question: I’m the owner of an apartment complex near a large hospital. The hospital regularly brings in traveling nurses, who stay for three months. The nurses work for an agency, and the agency provides housing for each nurse by renting an apartment from me. One of these nurses stayed for two weeks, then quit her job and left the state. I think I can look to the agency to make good on the rest of the rent, but they say that the tenant was the nurse, and that I’m limited to going after her. Who’s right? –Sandy H.

When a tenant breaks a lease without a legal justification, in most states she’s on the hook for the rent until the landlord, using reasonable efforts, re-rents the unit. If the market for units like this is reasonably hot, you should be able to fill this vacancy within a month or so, which would mean that you’d be entitled to compensation for that empty time. But if the market is soft, and you’re unable to secure a replacement, you could be entitled to the entire balance of the rent.

OK, so much for the general rule. The question in your case is: Who is the tenant: the agency or the nurse? If the agency is the tenant, and the nurse the subtenant, you can look to the agency to fulfill the terms of the tenancy, including honoring the three-month commitment. If the agency believes that the nurse improperly broke the lease, they can go after her after dealing with you. But if the nurse is your tenant, she’s the one who is responsible for the rent.

If you can’t fill the vacancy, and are inclined to go to small claims court to sue for the balance on the lease, you can name both of them as defendants and let the court sort it out. But in practical terms you’ll have a hard time hauling the nurse back to your state to appear in a small claims court matter. That leaves the agency, which will of course argue that it merely facilitated the rental.

The first thing a judge would ask is: Who signed the lease? If the agency acted merely as a finder and the tenant signed the lease, that’s solid evidence that the nurse is the tenant. Conversely, if the agency signed the lease, you’ve got a pretty good argument that they became the tenant, and the nurse was a subtenant.

Seven-Steps to Mastering Foreclosures

This article is available for free distribution under the following terms:
a) You may not edit, delete or add any content to this article.
b) You must maintain all links to Foreclosures.com.
c) This article must be distributed free of charge.
d) This Resource Box must stay intact.

Foreclosure Investing

Double your income doing what you love Double your income.

Copyright © 2010 Foreclosures.com.
This article is available for free distribution under the following terms:
a) You may not edit, delete or add any content to this article.
b) You must maintain all links to Foreclosures.com.
c) This article must be distributed free of charge.
d) This Resource Box must stay intact.

Subscribe in a reader

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Not a day goes by that I don’t get a question about short sales. My short reply is to tell folks to pass on them and read my columns “Short Sales: Don’t Waste Your Time” and “Why Short Sales Don’t Work”. The market has changed a lot since I wrote that column and yes, there are tons of short sales happening every day. The question is, are they profitable deals for investors, or just a more complicated way to get a house for a slight discount to market value?

At first glance, a short sale might seem like a win-win for everyone involved. The defaulted owner sells the home for less than the amount owed and the lender forgives the difference. The sale releases borrowers from their obligations and for the lenders; it can be less costly than foreclosure. For buyers, it seems to be an opportunity to buy a home at an attractive price. The key word here is “seems”.

But short sales are not easy deals. Here is why:
continue reading>>>.

Copyright © 2009 Foreclosures.com.
This article is available for free distribution under the following terms:
a) You may not edit, delete or add any content to this article.
b) You must maintain all links to Foreclosures.com.
c) This article must be distributed free of charge.
d) This Resource Box must stay intact.

Subscribe in a reader

Republished by Blog Post Promoter

If you’re reading this while on vacation, great for you. If you’re reading this at work, having just finished your short summer vacation, I hope your time off was as relaxing. But if you work in Corporate America, you most likely won’t get another day off work until December’s holiday season. Corporate America and vacations just don’t mix.

This may surprise those who have just spent hours stranded at airports or idling in a hot line for a ride at an amusement park. But a quarter of American workers gets no paid vacation or paid holidays. And on average, those private-sector workers who do get paid time off are granted only nine vacation days and six paid holidays each year, according to government statistics analyzed by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

This think tank analyzed paid vacation and holiday leave policies among the U.S. and nations with comparably developed economies—the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. The predictable portrait is one of the United States as a nation of workaholics.

In the rest of the industrialized world, a month or more of paid vacation is typical, and often required. Many Americans know that. And there are can-you-top-this supplements to this surfeit of paid time off. Such as: In Austria, workers who labor at “heavy night work” get two or three extra days off. Also in Austria—as well as in Sweden and New Zealand—workers are actually paid at a higher rate when they’re on vacation than when they’re at work.

Stingy Corporate leave policies in the United States go hand and hand with weekly work hours that exceed those in many industrialized countries. And they parallel skimpy sick leave and family leave policies that give millions of Americans no effective safety net when illness or emergencies strike. Nearly half of private-sector workers—57 million people—have no paid sick days. The problem is particularly acute for low-wage workers, more than three-fourths of whom get no paid leave when they are ill.

In theory, all this hard work is supposed to spark a more robust economy that is, in turn, an engine of greater upward mobility than what is found in the supposedly coddled precincts of, say, the European Union. But lately, it hasn’t.

In 2007, researchers for the Economic Mobility Project studied the relationship of adult children’s incomes to those of their parents and found that the United States now lags behind France, Germany, Sweden, Canada, Finland, Norway and Denmark in this measure of upward mobility. “There is little available evidence that the United States has more relative mobility than other advanced nations,” they reported. “If anything, the data seem to suggest the opposite.”

Comparing the incomes of American men who were in their 30s in 2004 with males who were in their 30s in 1974, the researchers found that today’s men actually earn about 12 percent less, after inflation, than their fathers’ generation did. “There has been no progress at all for the youngest generation,” the group reported. The American family stays afloat because its total income has been swelled by women’s paychecks.

So you may be asking yourself:

“What’s the point of this Alexis? You are obviously against government intervention to change market set conditions. You are not going to change my companies vacation/sick leave policy. Are you telling me to move to Europe?”

No I am not. I love being an American and all the freedoms we are so lucky to have. My solution is quite simple. Do not participate in the corporate game! Just follow my path…

I made the decision to leave Corporate America 20 years ago, when returning from a one week trip from Hawaii. I wanted to stay for another week, but that was not an option for my boss. That was the straw that broke the camels back. Within 6 months, both my husband and I quit our “high paying jobs” and started on our full time Foreclosure Investing path.

Was it painful to make that jump? YES!

Did we have financial hardships for some time while we paid our dues and learned on the street of hard knocks, what to do and what NOT to do, in growing our foreclosure business? YES!

Did we have any time off for vacations our first few years? NO! Did we love our life and the freedom to do WHAT we wanted WHEN we wanted to? YES!

Did we ever regret our decision? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

So here I sit, enjoying a vacation with our children, who have no idea how lucky they are. They get a mom who can drop them off and pick them up daily at school, and both parents to join them for an early dinner and family time nightly. They get to hike our countries beautiful mountains and visit National Parks this summer and exhilarating ski resorts in the winter months.

So, I invite you to take the leap. Take advantage of all that ForeclosureS.com has to offer in the foreclosure investment business. Listen to our webinars, sigh up for our home study courses. You’ll be glad you did…and so will your family.

Foreclosure Investor Seminar

Foreclosure List

Double your income doing what you love Double your income.

Copyright © 2009 Foreclosures.com.
This article is available for free distribution under the following terms:
a) You may not edit, delete or add any content to this article.
b) You must maintain all links to Foreclosures.com.
c) This article must be distributed free of charge.
d) This Resource Box must stay intact.

Subscribe in a reader

What’s in a Title Search?

Reprinted with permission from Chicago Title Insurance Company

You’ve decided to purchase a home and hope to take possession as soon as possible. The terms have been agreed upon and all the financial arrangements have been made. But there’s one important detail remaining. Before the transaction can close, a title search must be made.

The most accurate description of title is a bundle of rights in real property. A title search is the process of determining from the public record just what these rights are and who owns them.

A title search is a means of determining that the person who is selling the property really has the right to sell it, and that the buyer is getting all the rights to the property (title) that he or she is paying for.

The search process can be undertaken by the title company in those jurisdictions where the company maintains offices. In some areas, however, searches are made only by practicing attorneys. However the search is performed, in most real estate transactions today a title insurance policy is purchased to assure the buyer that he or she has purchased a valid title.

In those transactions where title insurance is involved, the title company must determine insurability of the title as part of the search process. This leads to the issuance of a title policy, which insures the existence or non-existence of rights to the property.

The title insurance company will, at its own expense, defend the title and will pay losses within the coverage of the policy if they occur.

But what exactly, is involved in a title search?

The Chicago Title and Trust Family of Companies provides the following step-by-step review:

Chain of Title

This is simply a history of the ownership of a particular piece of property, telling who bought it and sold it, and when. The information may be derived from public records – usually a County Clerk’s or Recorder’s Office – or obtained from title plants privately owned and maintained by title companies. There are great varieties of such plants – index cards, punch cards, tract books, even sophisticated computerized plants. However, they all contain essentially the same information from which the history of the title may be secured.

Tax Search

This is a search to determine the present status of general real estate taxes against the property. The tax search will reveal if taxes are current or whether any taxes are past due and unpaid from previous years. In addition, the tax search will indicate the existence of any special assessments against the land and, if so, whether or not these assessments are current or past due.

A due and unpaid tax or special assessment is a prior lien or claim on the property above all others. If a buyer purchases property with unpaid and past due taxes or assessments against it, he or she is likely to find a government body – the village, county or state – placing the property up for sale to pay those taxes or assessments. A tax search reveals the status of the taxes. Title insurance protects the buyer against loss from unpaid and past due taxes and assessments.

Report on Possession

In many places where it operates, the CTIC Family sends inspectors to look at the property to verify the lot size, check the location of improvements, look for evidence of easements that are not shown of record and check on who is living there.

The purpose of this is to supplement the information learned from the title search. In the eyes of the law, any buyer of real estate is assumed to have notice of all matters properly shown in the public records as to that real estate as well as any information that an actual inspection may reveal.

If the inspector detects an unrecorded easement or other evidence of outstanding rights that could affect the owner’s title and possibly the value and intended use, the company tells the buyer of these things before he or she closes the purchase. Those matters must then either be disposed of or shown as exceptions in the title insurance policy. Sometimes when an acceptable survey and appropriate affidavits are received, an inspection will not be made.

Judgment and Name Search

One of the most important parts of the title search is to determine if there are any unsatisfied judgments against the seller or previous owners which were in existence while they owned the title. A judgment is a general lien against the debtor’s real estate and constitutes security for any money owed under the judgment. The real estate can be sold to satisfy the judgment.

It is extremely important to be sure that a title is not subject to judgments against the seller or previous owners. Title insurance provides this protection. A judgment against a person named Smith may affect the title of a seller named Smith, depending on whether or not they are the same person. So all possible variations of the name must be examined.

For example, the name Smith might be spelled Schmidt, Schmid, Schmidtt, Schmidz, Schmied, Schmiedt, Smid, Smythe, and so on. The name Nichols can be spelled 73 different ways, from Nachols to Nychals. The task is to determine which of these applies to the owner in question. First names have to be checked, too. There are 25 foreign forms of John, including Johann, Jehan, Hans, Shaun, Gudi, and Efom.

Rights established by judgment decrees, unpaid federal income taxes, and mechanic’s liens all may be prior claims on the property, ahead of the buyer’s or lender’s rights. If a judgment is discovered that constitutes a defect in the title, it is pointed out, and the seller must then eliminate it before the title of the new buyer can be insured free and clear of that judgment.

Commitment

When these searches have been completed, the title company issues a commitment to insure, stating the conditions under which it will insure the title. The buyer and seller and the mortgage lender can proceed with the closing of the transaction after clearing up any defects in the title which may have been uncovered by the search and examination.

The mortgage lender is as concerned as the buyer about the quality of the title because the property is to be security for the new mortgage loan. The mortgage lender requires assurance that it has a valid first (or another acceptable priority) mortgage lien on the property. This is not only common sense, but generally is a legal requirement of regulated mortgage lenders.

The lender’s title insurance, however, doesn’t protect the new buyer of the property. Although the land is the same, the interest of the buyer and the interest of the lender are very different. The provisions of a lender’s title insurance policy are very different from those of a buyer’s policy, so the buyer should obtain his own policy, often issued simultaneously with the lender’s policy.

CTIC – Corporate Headquarters
171 North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois 60601
(800) 621-1919

United States Real Estate Investing Information

Copyright © 2009 Foreclosures.com
This article is available for free distribution under the following terms:
a) You may not edit, delete or add any content to this article.
b) You must maintain all links to Foreclosures.com.
c) This article must be distributed free of charge.
d) This Resource Box must stay intact.

Subscribe in a reader