I wrote about Goldfish and haunted basements recently (you can read it here) and couple of readers sent their own experiences in. All the good spooky tales came from city of Detroit. Brysen Heath tops the list with this crazy tale:

Mark,
I went to view a few REO properties this week on McIntyre & Grand River and my realtor and I encountered the most bizarre items in one of the houses.

From the outside of the house, it looked nice, fresh paint, nice landscaping, etc. When we entered the house we noticed that the inside walls were painted either black or brown with no pattern to the design. The house was listed as a 3 bedroom 1.5 bath but when we went upstairs we found that it was a 2.5 bedroom (one room was 6ft. x 8ft.) and there were burnt candles and wax droppings all over the floors. We then began to go to the basement.

When we entered the basement we were surprised to find that it had been recently updated with drywall, built in entertainment system wetbar and recessed lighting. I was interested in the mechanical aspects of the home so I started opening doors in order to find the furnace, water heater, etc.

When I found the correct door we went inside and found that all of the windows were covered with black plastic. When I removed one of the plastic sheets, the incoming daylight lit up the room. That is when we noticed a table covered in what appeared to be chicken bones, and a bunch of red graffiti all over the walls, floor, and ceiling.

Before I could blink my realtor was running up the stairs and we were out of there. He said that he would notify the bank about the interior because it was a structurally sound home that had potential. However, I don't ever want to see the likes of that house again.

Next one is from one of my QuickStart grad: :

No joke.

I looked at a home that had the carpet removed in the living room (but nowhere else), a few of the tiles had been removed in the kitchen, and there was a dark stain on the hardwood floor. There were also some dark splatter
on wall near the stain on the floor. I couldn't tell what any of it was. The power was out and I was using a flashlight.

The carpet thing seemed kind of odd to me, but I had seen some pretty trashed places so I didn't think much of it. The house was a mess with clutter but was actually in great shape otherwise.

After I got home and was thinking about it, I decided to Google the address to see if I could get any more insight as to what the deal was. Turns out that the home was the scene of a MURDER. It seems that a grown son with mental problems had beaten his elderly mother to death with a claw hammer right where the spot was on the hardwood.

The carpet and tiles had been torn up by the police investigators as DNA evidence.

I got a GREAT deal on it! :-)))

Next one is from Court:

Mark,

Southfield and 7 mile area, bank owned with a grave in the back yard.... Here are the pictures

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:09 AM | Permalink

A good place to go and shake some hands is the foreclosure auction happening this weekend by Hudson and Marshall. It does not matter if you are ready to buy a foreclosure right now or not, it is a great idea to break the daily grind of home-work-home and go and actually hang out someplace where deals are being made, money is changing hands and you actually have a room full of other Michigan real estate investors.

Thinking about wholesaling some houses – just go and find some qualified real estate investors in Michigan this weekend there. Make sure to take some business cards with you. If you have a property that you already have and are thinking about flipping –well make a half decent flyer in MS-Word or Publisher and take it with you.

700 Metro Detroit foreclosures will be on the sold. It is starting today and run till Sunday. Here is the link

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:32 AM | Permalink

The number of Michigan homes taken by foreclosure was up 126.86 percent in August over the same month last year.

In total, 15,565 foreclosure filings were made in the state last month. The state's foreclosure rate of one for every 288 households ranks sixth in the nation, according to data being released today by RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif., firm that tracks such transactions across the country.

Michigan placed behind Nevada, California, Florida, Georgia and Ohio. The bulk of the state's filings were in Metro Detroit counties.

# In Wayne County, there were 9,615 foreclosure filings in August, one for every 87 households, ranking the county fourth among the nation's metro areas. This was up from 8,683 such filings in July, a 10.7 percent increase, and 3,068 filings in August 2006, a 213 percent increase.

# In Oakland County, there were 864 filings last month, one for every 601 households, down from 1,105 in July, a 21.8 percent drop, but up from 726 in August of last year, a 19 percent increase.

# In Macomb County, there were 1,506 filings, one for every 230 households, up from 1,348 in July, an 11.7 percent increase, and up from 584 in August of last year, a 157.9 percent increase.

# In Livingston County, there were 167 filings, one for every 422 households, up from only 8 in July, a massive 1,987.5 percent increase, and up from 61 in August of last year, a 173.8 percent increase.

Source: Detroit News, September 18, 2007

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 10:09 AM | Permalink

Step 2: Live in your own reality.

Amazed at the number of people who are bothered by the negative comments that get tossed their way if they bring up a topic of starting a new business in Michigan or investing in Michigan foreclosures.

Ever noticed that the people who are telling you passionately “do you really want to do it? Have you talked to your wife yet? Michigan is going down…” are the ones who have never ever done anything in their entire lives to improve themselves.

Ask them if they have ever read a book; a good book about making money, setting goals, staying positive; if they ever went to a seminar to learn about starting a business heck even a Wayne State University course in starting a small business would count for something.

The answer, which you know already, will always be NO and “why would I want to go through that headache?” look directed at you.

Do you know why they dog upon you?

Nah it is not jealousy – after all, you have not started anything yet, not made any serious money yet. The jealousy will come later. And yes it will come. Does not matter if they go to church three times a week.

A good entrepreneur friend of mine who used to live in Oak Park with his parents in a $105,000 house, to a condo in Farmington Hills and now lives in a $900,000 home in Bloomfield Hills taking home over $600,000 per year, year after year used to tell me laughing that he has lost five “friends” who won’t talk to him anymore, every time he has changed his zip code.

So no, it is not jealousy.

They reason your friends, family, relatives, co-workers all dog upon on you is because it is much easier to invalidate an idea, to tell you why it will not work in Michigan, or why there is no point in doing anything in Michigan real estate or any other thing for that matter.

After all any idiot can tell 99 reasons why it will not work.

It takes somebody like Mark Ijlal to tell you “How to make it work in Michigan.”

Telling people why this is a bad idea is the easiest thing to do.

Figuring out a system to make it work no matter where you live in Michigan requires a little more than shaking your head up and down.

And yet you and everybody else are bothered by it. Sometime even change direction in your life because of what somebody else said to you or in your mind what they would say to you if you screw up?

Who cares about other people opinion anyway?

You should carry a healthy amount of contempt – YES! Contempt – for people who are trying to take away the most precious thing you possess in your heart.

Your ambition. Your future life. Your financial freedom. Your dreams.

You should be careful on what you let between you ears.

Most people pay attention to what they put in their mouth. They count calories, read package labels, and smell the fruits to ensure freshness, stay away from trans fats.

Yet the majority (which is incidentally broke and plans to stay that way) has no problem stuffing whatever comes their way in their ears and actually believing it.

You should be very very careful on what you let in.

Between your ears that it….

Why listen to them anyway? They have done nothing. They are still swapping dollars for hours of their lives. They have no plan besides a dim hope that somehow a miracle would happen when they grow old and things will work out.

I say to you that these people are dreaming. That this is not the times where the previous generations grow up. The world has changed and continues to change, not only in Michigan but also all around us. And if you are not willing to change and learn the skills needed to prosper in this new age, well you will be left behind.

Got to learn about two things that form the basis of all the wealth in America – how to start and own your business and how to invest in real estate.

Master these two skills and you will something in your possession, which almost sounds like magic to outsiders.

You will have “Income At Will” – “ Money On Demand”.

Largest number of millionaires in the history of USA was created in the last three years.

I wonder what skills and mindset these people possess that the majority does not?

That is a question, a mystery worth solving. Is it not?

I grew up on a poor household where my parents have to borrow money, pretty much on a regular basis to put food on the table when I was young. I hated that. One of the reasons I got my first job at 14 and never stopped working after that.

Successful rich entrepreneurs in Michigan surround me now. People who complain sometime that they don’t know what to do with their money. I have a friend who just did a $100,000 remodeling of her house just out of pure boredom. No equity lines needed. She just paid cash for it.

I have a friend who just ordered a custom Dell yesterday in front of me for him to play his computer games; price tag $5,000, paid via his debit card.

Businesses are growing. Money is coming in. No debt. Children going to private schools. Vacations. Fun. Excitement. An interesting life. All happening right here in Michigan.

If you were to carry a yellow legal pad and a fat blue sharpie and follow them around for a week – you will notice four things that are common in all these lucky souls:

1. They are all first generation. Mom and dad all went to work and home. They made a different choice.

2. They are all self-employed entrepreneurs. Own their businesses 100%.

3. They are all involved in real estate investing in some shape or another – either directly "buy and sell" or "buy and hold". Some are into residential. Some are into land. Some are into commercial real estate like building and keeping shopping centers.

They have the skills that the majority of people never bother getting or developing in Michigan – starting and owing a business and investing in real estate.

They and I also have one more thing in common – one trait that I see over and over again in successful entrepreneurs – one thing that is distinctly makes them different not as much as what they do every day but how they think and if you were to hang out with bunch of them and asked them for advice especially advice on how to think like successful people they will all tell you, may be in different words, may be in different styles but in the end they will all tell you the same thing..

Live in your own reality.

You need to stop worrying about other people opinions. What they are going to say to you whether you fail or succeed. And more importantly never ever decide on your path based on the opinions of people you know.

Their agenda is different than yours and mine.

I am here to win and so are you.

They are to complain and hope that somebody will take care of them when the day comes.

You and I have plans to live an exciting life. Not to defer one.

They want to wait 35 years in a job they hate before start living.

I say to you that listening to them is a waste of time. Giving their worthless opinions any weight even a bigger sin.

Learn to live in own reality and pretend everybody else is a guest who going to leave pretty soon.

I know that I cannot fail. Period.

Setbacks? Sure.

Sometimes start on Road A and end up taking Road B? All the time.

Zig Zagging instead of a straight line toward my destination? Heck name one successful company in Silicon Valley who is still doing what they started with. Zig Zag is fine as long as I am having fun and still dashing toward my end zone.

But I live in a reality of my own making in Oakland County, in Michigan where deals are easy; money is plenty and lots and lots of people are always chasing me to do business with them.

I have the ability and means to have an office. I choose to work from home and force everybody to meet me at Starbucks at Orchard Lake Road. Real Estate Investors love their cell phones. I know investors with cell phone minute usage over 5000 minutes per month. I choose not to carry a cell phone preferring to do business with a fax and email.

All a matter of choice. All of matter of living in my own reality.

One of my new students who just bought a foreclosure in Oakland County with $47,000 in Equity after $6,000 in rehab. It is his first deal. The real estate agent has become such good friends with him that he is getting advance notices of deals that are coming a month from today. He got money from couple of sources I steered him to, but he also has private investors clamoring to go partners with him and do deals. Already has a project manager lined up who is gong to manage the whole paint / carpet / cleanup thing for him.

Did I mention this is his first deal?

How is it possible? To do all this with such ease? And what is he doing differently that most don’t? It is about tactics. Sure I taught him the game of flipping foreclosures but this is a little more than that.

Here is the secret – from Huna to Mark Ijlal to him to you - The world is what you think it is.

If you think that starting a business is risky; buying and selling foreclosures is risky; reading a good book is a waste of time; going to a seminar is a bloody scam; nobody is buying homes in Michigan; nobody is making any money in Michigan; a bank will not give away $50,000 in equity on an Oakland county foreclosure which requires just paint and carpet, you cannot be new to the game and get $389,000 in OPM in 90 days....

Well you are 100% right.

Your world will exactly play out like the above.

If you believe that banks actually are pretty happy about giving you a $50,000 discount on your next short sale. Heck they can’t wait for the deal to close and YOU are actually doing them a favor.

If you believe that a brand new investor can buy a REO in an Oakland county suburb with $47,000 in Equity, no rehab besides paint and carpet and the REO agents is pretty excited about the closing of the deal, even thought he is making less commission because you convinced the bank to accept your low ball offer and you are doing him a favor by choosing him over all the other REO agents to do business with.

If you believe that you can sit on the Internet and the phone and spend couple of hours contacting different sources and within 90 days have access to $389,000 to do whatever you want – no collateral – well what is the big deal about it?

If you think that it is perfectly O.K for other real estate investors to pay you $5,000 per deal for finding them foreclosures, that takes you literally less than four hours per deal.

Well that is exactly how it will happen because the world is what you think it is.

There is a hook though here. You cannot cheat here. It will not work if you harbor doubt in your heart about everything you do mostly because of others have put in your ears. It will fail. You cannot have doubt. What you say and what you believe have to be one.

Remember… The world is what you think it is.

Sounds difficult? Even impossible to do?

Not really…

Here is how you do it:

REFUSE to listen or believe anybody who is tossing you advice yet is totally clueless about what they are talking about.

Just refuse.

Broke brother in law who works as a janitor drunkenly telling you about his kooky ideas about real estate;

Well intentioned older co-worker wants to play daddy and tell you “how the world really works”;

Mom and dad who have been broke all their lives and in debt still telling you “do you really want to start a business?”;

Your good buddy who is 38 years old and still living in his parents basement but ready to tell you his two stupid cents how money works.

Just walk away. Pretend your dog just ate your keys. Pretend your microwave is on fire. Pretend that your ex just showed up on your doorstep with the new updated edition of Kama Sutra in her hands and a bottle of Grey Goose vodka and no glasses, begging you to take her back.

Run, duck, walk away and just refuse to listen or give weight to these well intentioned morons.

That is the first step toward living in your own reality.

This is how you build a fence around your good thoughts, the ones that are about starting a business in Michigan, about becoming an owner and not staying as an employee for the next 30 years, about getting ridiculous big checks out of this game of buying and flipping bank foreclosures, of enjoying life instead of deferring it.

People who are swayed by other peoples opinion mostly do it because of the weakness of their own convictions. In their heart they think they don’t deserve to be rich or successful in Michigan so when somebody throws them a rope made out of despair, they hang tight on to it.

I hope you are not one of them because money is not attracted to weakness. Money seeks courage and conviction and it goes where it knows it will be welcomed with arms wide open. And if you do seek other peoples worthless opinion about starting a business or investing in Michigan foreclosures…

Today is a very good day to STOP!

Part 3 of this politically incorrect guide coming soon.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 11:36 AM | Permalink

Step 1: Find One Selfish Reason

Most people never become rich because they don’t have enough reasons to be rich.

If you are content with everything you have in life right now – the $50,000 a year job, a four bedroom home in the suburbs, two cars, once a year vacation to Disney with the family, a 30 year hike toward retirement, a little nervousness toward your Yo-Yo 401K account but not enough for you to do anything and pretty much happy with the idea that after retirement you will get to watch a lot more television, maybe in Florida in a retirement community and play golf 4 days a week.

These are not enough reasons for you to be reading this or for that reason anything that has to do with making money in real estate investing in Michigan.

Why bother?

If you read success stories at MarkIjlal.com or meet someone who has done it in Michigan real estate, making $10,000 or $30,000 per month flipping foreclosures in Michigan and you are intrigued to may be looking around and see what is out there in the biz of buying and finding Michigan foreclosures.

That envy of other people’s money is not enough.

That curiosity of what they are doing is not enough.

Tim Ferris wrote about his brilliantly in his book The Four Hour Work Week(the best book you will read in 2007) about how our mind works. If I am planning a trip to Columbus, Ohio and something comes up to prevent me from going, well Columbus is really not that exciting of a place and my mind will not think of ways to overcome this obstacle. I will let go of my Ohio trip pretty easily.

On the other hand, Tim says, if he is planning a trip to the Greek Islands with four of his best friends that involve them, a sail boat, and lots and lots of red wine well you can imagine he will walk on read hot burning coals to get over any obstacle.

There are reasons that we tell polite company our ambitions:

I want to put my kids through college.
I want to travel with my spouse.
I want to start a family foundation.
I want to mentor less fortunate kids in my city.
I want to play more golf or go fishing seven days a week.
I want to pay my house off.
I want to have security when I retire, knowing my bills will be paid.
I want to leave an inheritance for my grandchildren.
I want to buy a boat and sail around the Caribbean’s with my spouse.
Yada! Yada! Yada!

I yawn when I hear this chatter at parties.

Decent reasons but not good enough reasons to become rich in Michigan.

I say you should have a huge selfish reason to become rich.

Worry about yourself and your happiness.

Better still be completely selfish about your happiness and what you want to have out of investing in Michigan real estate.

Better still, have one huge, big, gigando selfish reason – something you want to have, or become or be doing – just for yourself – that will require money that you presently don’t have.

That is the first step toward becoming rich, in this lifetime, out of Michigan real estate investing.

Here is my selfish goal for the next five years – buy a $5,000,000 vineyard and a historic villa in Tuscany, Italy and pay cash for it. I did my math already – most vineyards go out of business if a bad harvest occurs because they are so heavily leveraged. Most amateur wine makers like yours truly buy these beauties by putting almost nothing down (most cases 10% or 20% down payment can buy you whatever you want) but it also puts a large payment and less profit in your bank account.

And Yes! I do want to make money doing this although I have no intention of selling this wine retail. I have other radical ideas. But if your villa / vineyard has no mortgage – it is completely free and clear well the numbers change. The bad harvest does not matter and you can afford to actually do whatever the heck you want. If you want to see what my big selfish reason looks like - click here to feast your eyes on some dreamy real estate in Chianti.

I have other (smaller) selfish reasons too (hey once you start making a list…) but this one is the biggest reason, the reason I would walk on fire, do deals, learn continuously about the game, improve myself mentally so I can put more money in the bank account faster and with much ease so in five years I can write that big check without touching my family finances or other things that I am doing.

But it is what drives me. Drives me to find deal after deal. Is the force behind building relationships with other Michigan real estate investors and players in the game to make the game easier for me. It is worth everything when I am driving to my bank to deposit a check because every deal, every check; every seed planted in Michigan brings me closer to me having attained my totally selfish goal.

What do you want in life?

In your heart?

Not what your spouse wants you to say or your dad would be proud of you to say?

But really what do you really want to have? Or do? Or become?

You should have one selfish reason. You should research the cost of it. I can bet you that you will be surprised that it actually does not cost as much as you thought it would. But since it is selfish and just for you – you can not take the money meant for bills and put it toward it and most likely your day job is not pulling in enough cash to pay for it anyway otherwise you have bought it by now.

No, in order to get it – you have to learn about real estate investing in Michigan and do deals to put checks in the bank account. That is the only way you can get your selfish goal.

One big selfish reason.

One huge big selfish reason.

The rich have reasons. That is why they did what they did when they started a business, bought a piece of real estate, read a book (Jim Rohn famous quote – the rich have libraries, the poor have big screen televisions – is true.) or went to a seminar about how to run a business virtually with the help of the Internet.

Whatever the reasons may be… the rich have reasons.

The poor stay poor because they have no reasons. There is no shortage of resources in USA – you can go to a library, they all have free computer access, free books, and websites like mine, which are open to general public.

When I was working at my first job in USA – stacking videos and cleaning bathrooms – there was a time between 9pm and midnight when the store closed where we were dead apart from the occasional guy who would walk in looking to rent a porn tape.

I typically had one person who closed with me. I closed every night. Seven days a week. You got to work lots of hours in 2-3 jobs or one job to make a living at $5 per hour. But the store had computers (which I couldn’t afford to buy one for my apartment) and Internet access (AOL version 2.0) – so I surfed the web, every night, three hours every night, week after week, learning about well everything I could find about starting a business, investing in stocks, investing in real estate, self improvement, how to write goals, how to stay motivated in a depressing negative environment.

I was confused but excited knowing one day the time will come. I didn’t understand half of the things I was reading on the Internet (what the hell is a mortgage? What is a margin call? Why are people participating with mice and running a rat race?)

But I read anyway. Waiting for opportunity to come my way. And it did. I was ready.

The other person who was working with me all these hours, during the night shift were getting paid the same $5 as me; saw me doing this, every night, seven nights per week. For all practical reasons we were fellow travelers on the poverty highway but not even once they ever asked me what was I doing, night after night, hour after hour, on the computer although the PC was sitting right between us. They typically picked up the phone (this was before cell phones) and bitched and moaned about life, their spouse, lack of money, lack of gas in their car etc to their similarly broke friends.

So the poverty excuse is what it is – an excuse.

You got to find reasons. Preferably one big selfish reason on why you want to be rich and that should be the true North Star for your ambition.

Recently I threw a party for couple of my friends on Labor Day – for some weird reason everybody who was in town and showed up were successful Michigan entrepreneurs. For the record I do have friends who are wage slaves for the Big 3 (their words; not mine) but there were out of town. I bought the Selfish Reason principle up as I was making food for all of them (it turned out to be a very successful party – the food was splendid as it should be when I make it) and a big grin broke on all of their faces.

They all had ONE that they have never told anybody till that night.

That night after finishing the third bottle of wine, we did all open up and shared our reasons with each other. It was fun to hear. And yes they are all rooting for me to buy the vineyard in Chianti so they can come over and hang out with me.

The rich have reasons for becoming and staying rich.

What is your “reason for wanting to become rich”?

Find it. Got to have it. Don’t tell anybody about it. Ever. They are not going to get it. So don’t waste your breath. But do understand that this is Step 1 toward becoming rich.

Nothing is going to change in your life without it.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 12:11 AM | Permalink

Greta Guest has the following story at Free Press this morning. No surprises here. I had a very interesting conversation with a REO realtor in Pontiac yesterday regarding this.

I might do a teleseminar on this next week on what you as a real estate investor in Michigan need to be doing right now to get some really big discounts from banks as they are getting "more inventory". I have been saying this for two years now that this is going to be foreclosure boom to end all booms and now it is starting.

Yeah! this is not the middle nor the end - just the beginning. If you have friends in the mortgage industry - ask them how banks are treating bad / bruised credit applications right now? It is about to get very very crazy out right here and an opportunity to make some serious money from buying these foreclosures at very big discounts from banks.

Subprime mortgage woes push foreclosures to new high

National delinquency rates on mortgages rose in the second quarter as did the rate of loans going into foreclosure, according to a study released this morning by the Mortgage Brokers Association.

The delinquency rate on residential properties was 5.12% of all loans outstanding in the April to June time frame. That’s up 28 basis points from the first quarter and up 73 basis points from a year ago.
And the rate of loans entering foreclosure was .65%, 7 basis points above the first quarter and 22 basis points up from a year ago.

Doug Duncan, chief economist for the mortgage bankers, said that 1% of all mortgages in Michigan had foreclosure actions started on them during the second quarter, which is essentially the same rate as during the first quarter of the year.

“While Michigan’s problems continue to escalate, however, Ohio’s have shown signs of leveling off, albeit at a high level,” Duncan said in a statement.

Michigan led the nation in foreclosure starts with a rate of 1% of outstanding loans, with Ohio in second place with .98% and Indiana with .91%. Michigan ranked second in overall delinquency rates with a rate of 7.55%, behind Mississippi with a rate of 9.33%. Louisiana was third with a rate of 7.29%.

Other states with high mortgage delinquency rates are Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.

States responsible for most of the nationwide increase in foreclosure actions are California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, the study said. These four states have a disproportionately high share of investor loans and are more likely to default because they do not occupy the homes.

Posted by Mark Ijlal at 11:28 AM | Permalink