Acres of Diamonds
Las Vegas was hot.
Arizona was hot.
Florida was hot.
Now they are not.
I hear whispers on the Internet about New Orleans / Biloxi being the next boomtowns for real estate investors.
I see websites dedicated to selling “paper” – purchase agreements NOT keys to condos that were supposed to build one day in some of the above cities and make their investors rich and now nobody wants them anymore.
I have recordings of my AM talk show, The Real Estate Warrior Show, somewhere in my basement where I have callers telling me that you “cannot go wrong” with Florida. 5 billion baby boomers were supposed to move to Florida and that would have made Florida the richest real estate market in the history.
Russell Conwell wrote a great story called the Acres of Diamonds long time ago about a farmer who sells his farm and goes out in the woods looking for diamonds. He never finds them and dies broken hearted and broke. The family who buys the farm from him discovers a huge mine of diamonds underneath.
Moral of the story – 100% of the time when we are looking for an opportunity and we think that it is somewhere else; it is typically right in front of our noses.
It is not the “place” that needs to be changed but “us”.
People are flying in from California, every two weeks, buying, fixing and selling bank foreclosures in Michigan. My voice mail gets messages on a regular basis from out of State investors inquiring about the HOT HOT HOT Michigan foreclosure market, half of the leads hitting our member sites / ads are coming from out of State.
Genuine interest and dollars buying Michigan foreclosures. Some from here. Some from places elsewhere and YET I have idiots emailing me crying about losing $800 per month negative cash flow because they bought a condo in Florida which has been vacant for 18 months now and the market is declining further even more.
Money, real money, is made every day in Michigan in real estate. I know real estate agents who are moving 200 houses every year to first time home buyers. I know a new guy, a buddy of mine, who is moving 6 of them, in the $250,000 to $300,000 range every single month. I joking asked him how is Michigan economy doing? He replied his wife is not happy with him unless he brings in at least $30,000 per month back to her every month. That by the way is his "bad month". You don't even want to know what his good months look like.
Yet there are another 100 agents sitting in his office crying the blues saying nobody is buying houses.
R-I-G-H-T!
Don’t want to fix houses? How about flipping them to other investors who do? Got one of my guys closed on his first deal on Tuesday; found a short sale; negotiated it; flipped it without touching. The other guy is happy because he got a killer deal without looking. My member is happy because he got a check and killer confidence.
By the way the banks accepted his deal #2 and deal #3. Nora told me that she did not like his deal #2 so she asked him to nix it. Deal #3 on the other hand – oh mamma, bring the smelling salts on. That is a hot one.
On the day of the closing, as he was driving to the title insurance company, I talked to him. He was nervous, first deal is like first date, asked me who to calm his nerves. I suggested heavy swigs of a good red wine.
But jokes aside – the theme in all this – the confidence, the contacts, the killer black book, all come from doing a deal; getting a check with your name on it; taking a picture of yourself with that check; depositing that check and giving yourself a big pat on the back.
Then doing deal #2.
The weather is improving. Pretty soon there will be footsteps on the ground, a whole lot more than they are today looking for houses to buy. Get moving if you intend to buy your first foreclosure this spring. Don’t wait till October to make an offer.
Get moving.
The Quick Start 2007 Bootcamp, 3 days with me, is happing April 27-29. There is a $600 Early Bird Discount expiring April 15, midnight. REO’s, Short Sales, Flipping to both homeowners and investors, and doing it all without using your own money – painstakingly detailed system that you can cut and paste in your Michigan city the Monday after the bootcamp. Details are found here.