Most of the mainstream business magazines – Fortune, Forbes, Business Week – do not cater to us; entrepreneurs who are most of the time flying solo. They tend to focus on big corporations; big corporate issues.

Even the small business magazines like Entrepreneur and Inc. tend to focus on either franchises or business owners who are working like crazy on borrowed money to go either public or start franchising.

Once again good lessons but not really strategies that you and me can use in our Michigan real estate investing business.

For once I have found a magazine that I believe every Michigan real estate investor or those who want to become one should be reading – it is called the Millionaire Blueprints Magazine and I picked up a copy recently on Borders.

This is basically a magazine built on in depth interviews with small business owners and entrepreneurs who have gone from zero to millionaires. Why should you care? Because these strategies work in all industries – real estate and otherwise but it is extremely inspiring to read the behind the scenes stories.

For a while I was trying to find its old issues and finally they have started offering its back issues from its website – either print or via PDF downloads. I just bought every single back issue they have to offer and cannot wait to get them next week.

It is only $3.95 – so check it out at your local Borders or Barnes and Nobles but this is on my Must Read Every Month list right now.

Their website is at Millionaire Blueprints.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:44 PM | Permalink

1. What does your partner “know” that you don’t know? Do they something about getting private money, fixing houses, selling houses, Internet, mortgages – that you don’t know?

If they know exactly what you know – then two people who know the same exact things do not make a stronger team.

2. What is your partner schedule? Do they work the same hours as you do? If so then how would you get double the things done in the same amount of time?

3. What do you like to do? What does your partner likes to do? If you both like doing the same things then this is just doubling up the effort without getting double the results.

4. Do you like to read books? Go to seminars? Gather and absorb information? What about your partner? When was the last time they read a book or got some “new information” between their ears?

5. Why do you need a partner? Are you getting one so they can help your business or are you getting one because you have nobody to talk real estate with?

6. Are you doing a detailed, written agreement outlining who is doing to do what to get the money in the end? If you are not thinking, “contract” then you should not be thinking “partnership” either.

7. Who thought the idea of partnership? You or them? Understand that if you bought it up they may be the ONLY reason they said YES was because they did not knew how to say NO.

8. Do you like real estate investing? Do you have a passion for it? Does you partner or they just in for the money? If they are in just because you threw up some numbers up in the air – then think and think again.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:34 PM | Permalink

1. Ask for referrals – at least three of them – and call all three.

2. Get at least three contractors to give you bids on the same project. Then decide.

3. Have a “written” agreement between you and the contractor specifying the date they will start, date they will finish the project. Ijlal Inner Circle members Dave Schmidt and Paul Mueller both came out with their versions. Both of them excellent.

4. Have the cost of the rehabbing in writing, on paper from all of your contractors.

5. Have a bonus for them if they finish on time – a per day penalty to be deducted from their final payout if they don’t.

6. Don’t give them the money to buy materials. Go to Home Depot or Lowes with them.

7. Have a timeline for the project – for the week – you should know what will get done Monday to Friday this week and the week after. You will catch delays immediately instead of waiting a month and finding out. My members use a spreadsheet that was developed in-house to manage that.

8. Tell them over and over again that this is just the beginning of a beautiful relationship – if they don’t screw it up. You intend to do more houses and give them more business if they show up and do what they are supposed to do.

9. For your first three deals in Michigan you should stay within $20,000 in rehab if you are doing or planning to do fixer uppers. Preferably under $15,000 or even less if you could. If you cannot find houses in that range they you probably are not looking in the right place.

10. You should know what needs to be fixed in the house. Asking a contractor what needs to be done in this house is like going to a restaurant and asking the waiter if the fish sandwich is any good? They have a selfish interest to make money; as much as they can and off course they will tell you more than what needs to be fixed.

One final note; if you are having trouble finding good people to work for you then try running a Help Wanted Ad in your metro area newspaper in Michigan. Last time I did that we got over 250 phone calls – references, licenses, resumes – you name it they bought it in.

There is no shortage of good contractors in Michigan. They pretty much all suck at marketing themselves so they are most of the time broke. I know licensed builders working for $10 per hour and actually happy that they are getting a steady paycheck.

Also when you do find somebody good – really take care of them. Ijlal Inner Circle member Rita Dalian found a great basement guy. I have been sending all my members to him.

I found a great property inspector guy – all of my members now use him. Good people once found should be cherished and relationships with them nurtured.

Give and give more; you will get more and more back.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 08:13 PM | Permalink

I got on an average a dozen or so real estate deals faxed / emailed to me every week from Michigan real estate investors who want me to either evaluate their deals or partner up with me.

These deals are all kinds of mix bag – single-family houses, apartment complexes, and vacant land, even developments – from Southeastern Michigan to all the way Up North.

Unfortunately I cannot do either.

My Inner Circle members keep me busy by faxing in their deals almost every day. It is a slow day at Mark Ijlal Inner Circle when I get 2-3 Deals faxed in. I also have two businesses to run which take most of my time. I also don’t think it is fair on my part to give anybody my opinion on a real estate deal where I only have 10% of the information.

Even when my Inner Circle members fax in their Michigan foreclosure deals to be evaluated – there is an extremely detailed conversation that follows to make sure that we are getting all the FACTS before giving them my opinion on the deal and a strategy to follow.

I just don’t have time to do that indepth of evaluation with everybody who faxes in his or her deal NOR can I take the liability of giving you my opinion without spending significant time evaluating the deal.

It is not fair to you or me.

As far as partnerships is concerned – I already have a “capacity problem”; meaning that there are way too many foreclosures available in Michigan as it is for investors like myself who know where to go and how to find them with ease.

So please don’t fax or email any Michigan real estate deals. Get trained; learn the business; and do them yourself and keep the checks in your bank account.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 12:38 PM | Permalink

Credit is one strange animal.

If you are blessed with a good FICO score (700 and up) you can go and tons of money just on that. Sign and drive.

If you don’t know anything about it then you will learn a lot about when you start selling your houses when prospects start flooding you voice mail wanting to buy your home. But all of them will not have good enough credit to buy your home.

If you are doing Lease Options in Michigan to flip your houses – you still need to know about credit to make sure that 12 months from today they will be able to buy it.

So one way or another – credit or more importantly what makes FICO sing its song is important to know.

One of the best quickie resource on the Internet is at Fair Isaac and Co’s website – these are the folks who invented the whole mess of FICO in the first place.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 08:36 PM | Permalink

and maybe Money.

It is said that you should not talk about sex, religion and politics in polite company.

I say that if you are in good company then these are the ONLY three topics you should talk about. :- )

I am a big fan of Pastor Rick Warren, who wrote the 30 million best selling The Purpose Driven Life

He is an extraordinary entrepreneur, one of a dozen who I study religiously (pun intended).

Here is Rick Warren on video, LIVE, talking about stuff which I believe is important, should be important to all of us. Nothing to do with money or Michigan real estate and you don’t have to be religious to really get it what he is talking about.

Pastor Rick Warren Video (make sure your speaker volume is UP)

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 01:27 PM | Permalink

If you don’t know who Tony Robbins is then you are going to knocked over by this video. If you know who Tony is then get ready for a very rare public performance done in front of a $4500 per person audience. Al Gore is sitting in the audience.

There are motivational speakers and then there is Tony Robbins – a speaker likes which comes along once a generation. As an speaker / trainer myself I was just spellbound by his sheer will and energy that seems to flow from the screen.

Do yourself a favor – turn the darn cell phone off and watch him. You can download the audio too if you are running on short time and want to listen to him in the car. I did both and this recording is on my Top 10 Repeat Listening.

You can watch the video here:

(make sure to turn your speakers up)

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 01:19 AM | Permalink

1. Buy 3 great website names from Godaddy. They are $9 each. One for private money; one for selling homes; one for Short Sale leads.

2. Invest in an incredibly good mini-website. It should be about selling your future homes. It is your name in front of the world. Be proud of it. Make sure it is a not a crappy looking site.

3. Buy and read 2 good books from Amazon.com

4. Take your significant other to an incredible dinner date. Don’t be cheap. Don’t go to restuarants you regularly go. If you live in metro Detroit area – here is a list of some classy joints:

a. Whitney’s in Downtown Detroit
b. Rattlesnake Club in Downtown Detroit
c. Andiamo Italiana in St.Clair Shores / Novi / Bloomfield Hills.
d. Café Cortina’s in Farmington Hills
e. The Common Grill in Chelsea
f. Forte in Birmingham
g. Zingermans Roadhous in Ann Arbor
h. Bacco in Southfield.

5. Order a bottle of really good red wine. Beer gives you a buzz. Vodka and Cognac gives you a hangover. Wine gives you happiness. For true bliss try Chateau St. Jean 2003 Cabernet Sauvignon. It is one of Napa Valley’s finest.

6. Take your loan officer, appraiser, title company rep, realtor, property inspector, general contractor if you used one, private investor – whoever was involved in this deal to get you the check – to a very good dinner. Think of these people as your team that will deposit a million dollars in your bank account in the coming years.

7. Write a thank you note to everybody who made that check possible. People forget everybody except the ones who thank them. Email me also. It will make my day for weeks and makes writing this blog ever more fun.

Tags: michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 12:34 PM | Permalink

“Should I buy the a Michigan Foreclosure List subscription from the Internet?” .

I don’t like the free ones on the Internet. Way too outdated. And the subscription ones are in the same category too.

My question is always – “if this house is so good how come nobody has seen it / snatched it so far?”. There is always a reson why the house is not selling. Some of the reasons are:

1.Crazy Design
2. Mold all over
3. Bad neighborhood
4. Way too much rehab
5. Bad city (I can name 4 on the top of my head right now in Michigan where you should NOT even be renting let alone buying).

Your money is better spent driving to county’s courthouse and spending $10 to buy this weeks list while it is still sizzling.

Tags: michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 07:46 PM | Permalink

What makes me really wonder is hearing people giving money to anybody without a contract – it is unbelievable to me that smart educated professionals amongst many who should know better routinely write checks to everybody under the sun without having a piece of paper saying what is this money for and why are they giving this money out.

The smart, professional, educated people then find time – one the ho-ha has hit the fan to complain and moan about how dishonest people have become.

I have got news for everybody in Michigan real estate investment world – it is not their fault – you ruined them and now you will pay the price. Ijlal Inner Circle members get drilled over and over again to use contracts in everything they do so they don’t have to go through this blame game later.

Most of them are smart enough to realize the value of my advice and they do follow it. Some of them are naïve enough to think that the fundamentals of running a business somehow don’t apply to them. They usually end up regretting NOT following up this particular advice later.

Be smart. Always without excpetions use contracts in everything you do in your real estate business. And if you think that your "buddy" and you are above all that - well try buying your next bank foreclosure without a Purchase Agreement. Insist to the Realtor or bank or the homeowners that we should trust each other and should NOT be worried about signing a Purchase Agreement. Try the same thing with your lender also.

If it wont work for the bank, well then you should also not try to work without having a piece of paper. This blog post alone is capable of saving you thousands of dollars. Print it and tape it on a wall so you can read it frequently.

Technorati Tags:
michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender, mark ijlal

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 04:38 PM | Permalink

Here are the Top 7 Michigan Real Estate Investment Resources that most Michigan real estate investors should be using right now to find good deals no matter where they live in Michigan.

1. REO Realtors in your Michigan City – in every Michigan City there are 2 or 3 Realtors who do nothing but buy and sell bank foreclosures. Really! Nothing but that. Most Michigan real estate investors waste valuable time trying to get deals from Realtors who have nothing to give.

Pete Swartz, one of my Inner Circle members in Bay City, Midland, and Saginaw area found and got 2 on his team in his Michigan City. He gets 10-15 NEW DEALS every week via fax and email. His problem is now not finding deals but finding time to do all of them. I am good at creating these kinds of “good problems” for my guys.

2. Other Michigan real estate investors – if you are too cheap / broke / nervous to run your own ads and still want to get deals then spend a buck and buy your Sunday’s metro area newspaper and check out the real estate investment section. There are bunch of ads in them. Call all of them and talk to them. Real estate investors like to talk. : -) Present Company included.

Tell them which Michigan cities you are looking to these deals in; what kind of houses you want (very important that you know EXACTLY what kind of houses are moving in your city – there is a simple technique to find out); and YES! You have no problem paying them a wholesaling fee if you like the house and end up buying. Here is the beauty of this – you get the leads and houses without spending a dime in cost.

You only pay them if you bought the house. And if you know HOW TO BUY A HOUSE – remember Donald Trump says that the money in this business is made at purchase – then paying another fellow Michigan real estate investor $2,000 to $3,000 should not be a problem for you. But now you get a bunch of people looking for deals for you. Why should they bother giving you deals?

Because if you know what you are doing then pretty soon you have the problem that we have – too many deals and not enough time. Plus this guy or gal might be doing deals in Dearborn but he is getting calls from everywhere and you are interested in Sterling Heights, which he or she has no interest in. So now his dead deals or ignored leads become checks. You get free leads. Win-Win for both.

3. Expired MLS Listings: Get a friendly Realtor to print out a list of expired listings in your target Michigan City. Do a postcard / letter to them asking them if they are behind on their payments right now and have no equity? If so you just got a perfect Short Sale candidate. Don’t waste time trying to do this on a county level unless you are in a small county. Do the city or cities first then expand.

4. Local Michigan Hard and Soft money Lenders – don’t waste time going to traditional mortgage companies and trying to get approved for properties that are or look distressed. Get approved, get the money and buy the foreclosure. I continuously stump people when I ask them who the hard / soft moneylenders in their Michigan county are? These are good resources to know and you should have a list of these companies in your Michigan City.

5. Your LOCAL Michigan mortgage company – need I say more? I have written on this 350 times already and still most Michigan real estate investors never bother tapping this FREE resource for everything that can blow this business income up in a short time. Mostly likely they just dont know how to do this right.
Bernard Reed who I was talking to this Saturday ONLY got a couple and his pipeline is already full of deals from this small number.

6. Free Websites: Good and FREE Internet sites like Zillow.com, Owners.com, ForSaleByOwner.com, Realtor.com, Prosper.com, and RentReporters.com to do proper research on their deals.

7. Me!
Seriously if you want to buy and sell Michigan foreclosures where else could you and find the shortcuts to do this FAST? I have dozens of Inner Circle members who have gotten checks with their names on them who would still be struggling on the sidelines struggling to find deals. Working hard to get rich is a great line to tell your employees.

Reality is that is not the way the world works. People with the “right:” kind of knowledge get ahead. I get paid on what I know NOT how hard I worked yesterday. This is mentality, which probably worked when people used in factories for $5 per day, or may be in China right now. Killing yourself and your bank account while trying to discover the blueprint for doing it right and fast is stupid NOT smart.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 03:15 PM | Permalink

David Schmidt, Mark Ijlal Inner Circle member and Reatlor out of Kellar Williams sent me this story. Some of my members buy and sell bank foreclosures in Detroit - all of them do pertty well. This is nothing but sweet music to there ears. City of Detroit has been losing hoemowners steadily to suburbs in Western Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties. Combine the craziness of high taxes and even higher property and auto insurance that homeowners in Detroit have been paying for years - this news is nothing but good news for everybody in these 25 neighborhoods. I hope that they would not just stop there and extend the reach of this program in the entire city.

Detroit News story here:

In the last week, dozens of residents in 25 Detroit neighborhoods, from Rosedale Park to East English Village, have bombarded the Detroit City Council with letters, e-mails and phone calls, urging members to approve a plan to cut their property taxes by up to 35%.

On Friday, their efforts paid off.

The council voted unanimously to approve Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's tax plan, which he said he hopes will provide homeowners some relief from the city's high property-tax rate. The cuts range from 18% to 35%, depending on the property's value.

Themilie Bush, who lives in the Arden Park neighborhood, is one of dozens who wrote council members and urged her neighbors to do the same.

She and her husband bought their home in 2002. They pay $7,500 in property taxes, $5,000 in car insurance and $3,800 in homeowners insurance, she said.

She was ecstatic that her family would receive relief that would help them, and others like them, remain in the city.

"We appreciate that council took this first step," Bush said.

About 20,000 homes are eligible for the tax cut. Homeowners are eligible if they bought their homes after 1997 and the homes sit on parcels mapped before 1968.

The cuts will take effect beginning July 1, 2007; the city will notify eligible homeowners by letter in the coming weeks. The city plans to expand the program to 47 neighborhoods over the next three years.

Detroit News reported

These are the 25 Detroit neighborhoods that will receive a tax break of up to 35% on property taxes, beginning July 1, 2007. Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's administration said it expects to expand the program to a total of 47 neighborhoods over the next three years.

Arden Park, Aviation, Bagley, Berry, Boston-Edison, All of East English Village, Golf Club Addition (aka the University District), Detroit Golf Club, Grandmont. Grandmont Subdivision, Green Acres, Greenlawn, Indian Village, LaSalle Gardens, Livernois Parkside, Longfellow, Oakman East and West, East Outer Drive, Palmer Woods, Rosedale Park North and South, Russell Woods, Sherwood Forest, West Outer Drive/Vassar
Source: City of Detroit

Tags:
michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender, mark ijlal

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 04:52 PM | Permalink

25 of my Mark Ijlal Inner Circle members joined me today (in my HOUSE FULL conference room in Bloomfield Hills) for an all day, Ijlal Inner Circle members only seminar. We went from 8:30am to 8:00pm. My voice is gone. Unbelivable audience and extremely advanced level strategies. It was a seminar for real estate investors in Michigan which was NOT about real estate investing but rather a crucial skill that very few Michigan real estate investors or small business owners takes time to master.

I am still flying high. Incredible rush hanging out with my top guns. Benard Reed, Inner Circle Member made my day today when he told me that he just two checks - $32,000 and $44,000 repsectively on 2 flips. Way to go Bernard! He is also launching a service for Michigan real estate investors right now which will change the way Short Sales are done in Michigan. I am going to interview him next week on the Michigan Real Estate Investing Radio Podcast - watch this blog next week for that episode.

Tags:
michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender, mark ijlal

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:12 PM | Permalink

1. Don’t waste time trying to find bank foreclosures on MLS. There are good Realtors in Michigan who work exclusively for and with real estate investors. Find one and use them as your Buying Agent. You buy the REO – they get paid by the bank. It is a win-win for both of you. Let them sit on MLS and fax / email you the REO list in your target Michigan city.

2. Don’t waste time trying to do comps or CMA yourself on MLS for a foreclosure property that you are thinking about buying. I have timed it. A CMA will waste alteast 30 minutes of your life. Either use the above list of Realtors for a small fee to pull your CMA’s for you or better still hook up with a local appraiser who will do it for you for even a smaller fee. Appraisers are hurting right now because of end of refiancne booms and they will welcome the extra income.

3. Don’t waste time running ads when you have no clue about marketing or what needs to be said in a classifed ad to make the phone ring. It aint magic but it is not exactly as easy as everybody and their mother thinks. Here is the smarter route – look in your local Michigan newspaper and call everybody else who is running ads and ask them if they are buying foreclosures in your Michigan city. If they are not barter the foreclosure leads from them.

4. Don’t waste time driving and looking at houses. If you are dealing with the homeowner ask them if they had a appraisal done. If they did let them email or mail a copy to you. Better still ask them if they have a digital camera. Ask them to take pictures of the property – front, back, street, inside, basmeent – atleast 20 pictures and let them email them to you. If you are too chicken to ask them to do that – do yourself a favor and get out of this industry.

5. Don’t waste time trying to convince your broke relatives / friends / co-workers or parents to invest with you. It does not matter how passionate you sound, they just don’t have it to give it to you.

6. Don’t waste time looking for private money before doing at least 3 deals. It a’int going to happen and if for some reason it did – you will get slaughtered in the interest rates.

7. Don’t waste time trying to buy 8-10 properties in the next 60 days when the seller is promising you $70,00 cash back at closing. It is a scam. Read my guide on Michigan Real Estate Investing.

8. Don’t waste time putting offers on REOs when you don’t even have a dime to your name. Get the money first (conventional, hard, soft, unsecured, whatever) before waste time looking at houses.

9. Don’t waste time doing Short Sales if you are impatient or worse talking to Michigan homeowners whose foreclosure eviction is happening in less than 60 days. I don’t care how sexy the deal is – chances are that Loss Mitigation Officers have already lost all interest in it. Does miracles happens once in a while? Yes they do but Nora has expensive tastes and I cannot run my business and checking account on “hope for miracles”.

10. Don’t waste time doing this business without the right kind of training. Despite your good intentions you cannot get up one morning and start calling yourself a doctor. Same thing here.

You are passionate, hard working and honest – I am happy for ya! But if you do this without the right blueprint, the right plan and the right secrets grinded in your big head – Bubba I got news for ya! You are going to lose your shirt. Invest time and get trained. Right! It is a one time investment then you get the knowledge for life.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 08:17 PM | Permalink

August 2, 2006 Episode. Rita is an Ijlal Inner Circle member and a part time real estate investor in Michigan with a very busy life ; kids, family, and full time job; and yet she displays a sense of businesses that I find lacking in most full time real estate investors.

There are two important parts of this interview that stuck me as very unusual:

1. She is very flexible in her business strategy toward buying and selling bank foreclosures. Started looking into rentals, ended up in flips and now added lease options to her arsenal. The last deal she did is around $40,000 payday. It is her only fourth or fifth deal so that is pretty awesome. But the idea is do whatever it takes to close and get a check.

2. What she is doing right now in Lease Options and if you pay close attention you will see a very smart strategic business plan of actually guaranteeing that the tenant-buyer will close on the deal 12 months from today. I wonder why most never thought or implemented this as methodically as she is doing.

Here is the link that you can cut and paste in your Podcasting software like iTunes or iPodder to get all future episodes automatically:
http://markijlal.hipcast.com/rss/mark-ijlal-michigan-real-estate-foreclosures-investment.xml

If you want to download this Podcast to your local hard drive for future listening pleasure, right-click on the link below and select SAVE AS to save the MP3 file:
MarkIjlal-August2-2006-Michigan-Real-Estate-Podcast5

Tags:
michigan, michigan real estate, michigan foreclosures, michigan foreclosure, short sale, short sale michigan, michigan hard money lender, mark ijlal

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 05:49 PM | Permalink