Walk into any good business and you will see checklists. Checklists make life easy. They make sure that you do the right thing, over and over again. Buying Michigan foreclosures requires a checklist.

You got to have a checklist to stop yourself from wasting time on even looking at bad deals and concentrate on making offers on the good deals. This is even more important now because the number of foreclosures coming to Michigan has gone up so dramatically in 2006 and the next 12 months are not going to be any different.

I get emails all the time on how somebody found a great deal on a foreclosed 2-bedroom condo in Highland Park…. Well it is a good deal for a reason because no sane person in Michigan wants to buy it in 2007.

Majority of investors who complain about not being able to find good deals waste time, waste too much time looking at bad deals instead of putting offers on couple of really good deals.

One of the great rules of winning in a business is knowing what battles to pick to fight to begin with. Rodney Townsend, my Inner Circle member made a very smart remark last Thursday about doing Short Sales in Michigan – he said, “ I don’t want to even look at deals where I know I cannot get a $50,000 discount’.

Well there is two ways to look at Rodney’s comment – one to think that he is out of his mind; second to admire his game plan that he knows what he wants in a deal.

Way too many real estate gurus preach this crazy notion that it is all about doing a whole lot of deals – it is not. The game is about getting checks, preferably big ones with your name on it.

I rather do 4 great deals in six months with big checks then to waste time looking at 300 foreclosures and doing 12 crappy deals. The way you control this is by having a checklist – so here are 5 important points from my own 20 points checklist:

1. I have to know the city – it does no matter how good the deal is in Grosse Pointe – I have no idea about the city or what works there; I rather do something in West Side of Detroit or Birmingham. I am not even driving to Grosse Pointe to look at a foreclosure.

2. I know the kind of foreclosure I want to buy – 2 bedrooms, condos, no basements, and septic tank sewage – fall off the list immediately for me. It does no matter how good the equity spread is I know from experience that I would have a hard time flipping a condo in Michigan even in the Ann Arbor, Birmingham’s of the world.

3. I don’t want to do strange looking houses – meaning if fixing the house involves literally redesigning it then I am taking a walk. It is crazy right now with the number of foreclosures coming in the market to waste months rehabbing houses extensively.

For your first five deals you need to paint, carpet, clean up, may be new kitchen cabinets and upgrade the bathrooms. That is it. After five deals, five checks – if you want to go crazy, well go for it.

4. The foreclosure you want to look at and make an offer on – ideally it should be close to your house where you live or close to your work.

Why that is so important because when you start buying foreclosures in Michigan – you have limited time, especially in winter to do what you got to do to get the house bought and fixed – you really don’t want to spend one hour each day just driving to and back from the house.

If you live in Sterling Heights and just bought a foreclosure in Ypsilanti – well my condolences in advance. You will be suicidal in couple of weeks.

5. Being calm is probably a good thing in your personal life. In buying foreclosures especially if it is a killer deal – you need to move fast, make offer, win or lose and move on.

This is what I mean – it does not matters how good you are, sometime your offers will be rejected. Whatever the reason may be. But if the rejection is only 2 rejected out of five thrown out – then hey we are having a pretty good day.

Pretty much all motivational speakers talk about failing yourself to success – it is true in buying Michigan foreclosures also. I make an offer. I make couple of more offers. Some get rejected. Some get accepted at a price that I am not willing to pay yet. One gets accepted exactly the way I want. I am feeling great. I also did the entire thing in one week instead of waiting for six months and getting there.

Money and good deals tend to move to you fast if you move fast to them. Don’t wait – pick couple of deals out of a foreclosure list in your Michigan City; make offers and see what happens. Offers don’t cost anything. Wondering lost in the world of Michigan foreclosures will cost you couple of good deals that your competition will pick up.

Next: Online Classfieds and why running expensive print ads is not making any sense anymore to me…