Finding Great Deals Through Real Estate Agents
November 20th, 2008In your search for great deals, you are probably utilizing all of the resources that you know of to find the next deal worthy of your investment time and money. This probably includes scouring craigslist ads, calling on FSBOs, and following up on your own marketing if you have any out. You may also be using a real estate agent as a source for deals. As the number of bank owned properties on the market increases, real estate agents are especially useful as sources to find and negotiate these types of deals.
However, you may need to train your real estate agent to cater to your particular needs as an investor. While there are some great investor friendly real estate agents out there, there are also many agents with little experience dealing with investing or dealing with investors. These agents can still hook you up to good deals, but
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Getting Your Houses Rented - Effective Marketing for Your Rentals
November 19th, 2008If it's time to fill a vacancy for one of your rentals, you will want to get the maximum marketing exposure possible. Chances are, that if you are reading this article online, you already understand the value of the internet. Three lines of description in your local print newspaper is no longer enough to get the phone ringing with enough interested renters in most markets.
With the widespread availability of the internet and the ease of accessing information on it, most of your potential tenants expect much more than a brief description of the raw data of their future dwelling – i.e. beds, baths, square footage and rent. Instead of spending all day on the weekend driving around looking at potential rental units, most of your tenant pool will prefer to browse through full color photographs of available rentals from the comfort of their favorite computer station. Many internet sites even offer virtual tours of available units, so to be competitive in our current marketplace, you need to make sure that you have the marketing out to reach all of these internet-surfing apartment hunters.
In addition to posting ads with full color photographs on popular sites like Craigslist,
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Tracking Your Rentals - The Importance of Monitoring Your Escrow Accounts
November 18th, 2008Unless you own all of your rental properties free and clear, chances are that you have some escrow accounts with your lenders. These escrow accounts are fed every month from your mortgage payments and this money is supposed to be used by the bank to pay your annual property taxes and insurance premiums. While it is tempting to let this system run on autopilot, you really shouldn't rely on your bank to get this right. Banks do make mistakes, some more frequently than others. While I personally may just have bad luck, I have had more than my fair share of challenges with different banks messing up my insurance payments over the years.
Of all the bizarre things that I have seen happen to my escrow accounts over the years, recently one of my lenders paid someone else's premium from my escrow account. Needless to say, after receiving telephone confirmation that this issue has been resolved, I am monitoring my escrow account very closely to make sure that the premium is returned to my account.
Most of the time though, when your bank messes up, it is just an annoyance that requires some extra time on the phone.
Here are some of the things that can go wrong when your bank doesn't pay your insurance premiums:
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Buying Down Interest Rates For Your Buyers Instead of Discounting The Price
November 17th, 2008At our monthly real estate investor meeting last week (here in Northern Colorado), I discussed with the group my preferred strategy for getting a huge marketing advantage to sell houses quickly for full price. This is the strategy I recommend BEFORE deciding to drop the price on your properties. It is especially effective with low interest rates.
Here's how it works. Let's say you are trying to sell a $200,000 home and you'd consider dropping the price $10,000 and selling it for $190,000 to get it sold quickly. Rather than dropping the price $10,000, you might instead consider
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Voluntown Housing: $49.34 Per Square Foot
November 17th, 2008We just had a researcher submit some very basic information about a house for sale in Voluntown to us and I wanted to share that with you. From time to time, I'd like to take a property submitted to us by our users that is for sale and show you how changes in one (or more factors) can affect various aspects of your investing. This particular property submitted for Eastern Connecticut, Connecticut Real Estate Resources is located at 89 Lillibridge Ave, Voluntown, CT 06384.
This 3/1.00 1,216 square foot property has an asking price of $60,000, but let's take a moment to do some calculations to see what our actual price per square foot would be based on various offer prices (both above asking price and below asking price).
| Price Paid (% of Asking Price) | Price/Square Foot |
| $72,000 (120%) | $59.21/square foot |
| $69,000 (115%) | $56.74/square foot |
| $66,000 (110%) | $54.28/square foot |
| $63,000 (105%) | $51.81/square foot |
| $60,000 Full Price | $49.34/square foot |
| $57,000 (95%) | $46.88/square foot |
| $54,000 (90%) | $44.41/square foot |
| $51,000 (85%) | $41.94/square foot |
| $48,000 (80%) | $39.47/square foot |
As you can see from the table above, if you know what a typical Voluntown property sells for on a price per square foot basis, you can quickly use the information provided above as a starting point for making your offer. Click on the Price Paid above to start your own analysis on this property using our Offer Generator investing tool.
Do you know how to use direct mail to find and/or market great deals in Eastern Connecticut? You might be interested in learning time-saving strategies for getting the most out of this powerful marketing medium with Jassen's audio CD: Buying Houses with USPS Post Cards. Learn the difference between one and two step marketing and more on this super informative CD.
Sincerely,
James
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