1. Most real estate investors have 2-3 good private investors sitting right next to them everyday, all the time. The dots just never connect for them that this guy, this woman might be THE perfect person to talk about partnering up in their next deal.
One student's wife works at a surgical center: never thought about talking to the doctors and surgeons who work with his wife every day. Yet another student's co-workers would make perfect partners for him to go and buy a really small apartment building by next month. Just never occurred to him to bring the topic up effectively not casually and do a deal with them.
This 'so much in the forest that can't see the trees' situation happens to everybody, including me. A good exercise would be to sit down with a piece of paper and think who do I know and my significant other know who might be in interested in partnering up with do some deals in the next few months? And then working that list.
2. The biggest reason that stops most real estate investors in Michigan for getting good private investors to work with them is they over think till they are blue in the face instead of actually talking to two dozens folks who might play. Instead of playing 12 Ways They Are Going To Laugh At Me game in your head, talk to me and 11 other people and see for yourself what the world thinks about your idea of flipping foreclosures.
Be prepared (I showed them a detailed outline to run a talk like this) by all means, this is not a casual conversation but don't over think it either. You don't need to learn every single way a self directed IRA could be used to buy a Westland foreclosure. You just need to learn the one way it could be done and then other strategies will fall into place when the deals requiring them come into your lap.
3. If you are so excited about sharing your misery ("Oh me tell you about this contractor and how he played with my emotions for two months") well then your should also be excited about sharing your triumphs ("I just closed on deal #3 and made $20,000"). Why look so embarrassed about getting a big check and keeping quite about it but cant shut up talking about all the screwups that you have done in the last 40 years? Your triumphs should get equal billing with your mistakes.
4. Thankfully at least my students are over open and excited about using online strategies to grow their businesses. It makes me very happy when folks are asking questions about how to use Facebook or Twitter to network and become visible to sell more houses or make the right kind of contacts. The ones who are already using it are amazed at the people they are meeting everyday.
5. A friend of mine who is a very successful mortgage broker out of Farmington Hills came out for 40 minutes and updated everybody about what is new in the world of flipping houses to first time home buyers etc. I am getting the video and by Tuesday I will have it up here. Must see to get an update on selling houses in Michigan.
The death of down payment assistance programs, chances in down payment and closing cost concessions guidelines, the higher LTV restrictions for buying investment properties using mortgages and very wired requirements for cashing out properties by refinancing that you bought recently are extremely important updates that you should know as a real estate investor in Michigan. Video of this talks up shortly here.
6. He also made an interesting point about how bulk of his first time home purchases is coming from handful of cities in the metro Detroit area. The CITY thing is more important than ever right now in Michigan. The right city can move a house faster than just buying a foreclosure anyplace. Blue-collar neighborhoods and good schools matter even more today than ever.
7. Recessions are not necessarily bad for everybody. His office is swamped with business. They are moving from a small 2100 sq.feet office to 8,000 sq feet office shortly. They mostly do purchases and his challenge was very good actually.
He said that if anybody thinks that nobody is buying homes right now in metro Detroit, first time home buyers that is, then they need to come to his office and spend a day there and they would know that is simply not true. Cant fake busy and they are very very busy.
More about it in this week's Getting of Money Letter.
