Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association, Inc.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I did a class on Land Trusts. This is one of those subjects that everyone wants to learn about, but most people never get around to using. There are all kinds of excuses as to why they haven’t done a Land Trust yet, but I think the biggest reason is that most people just think that it is too much trouble and that nothing will happen to them. That is until something actually does happen to them.

For example, just the other day, one of those students called and need some help. He needed to put his multi-family rental property into a land trust. He was a little frantic and had a sense of urgency about it. When we asked him what was going on, he proceeded to tell us a story that I have heard many times before.

Just a couple of days after the Land Trust Class, a tenant fell on the sidewalk. Now she wasn’t hurt at the time, but over the last week, she has been calling the landlord and complaining about her neck, she thinks she has whiplash. Having that feeling in the bottom of his gut, he decided to call his insurance agent and report the incident, just in case the tenant got worse and decided to make a claim. That is when the insurance agent kindly informed the landlord that he did not have an active insurance policy on the property. The policy lapsed over the holidays and the landlord had not realized this at the time. Money was not the issue, the holidays where. He had the cancellation notice sitting in a stack of mail t
Read More...

Since real estate values have plummeted, Subject-To deals have been harder to do because most of the time, the mortgage balance from the seller is higher than the property values creating a situation that if we took over the sellers property and started making payments on their existing mortgages, then we would end up with a property that we could not make cash flow or even resell without having to pay down the mortgages ourselves.

While some lenders were accepting short sales, most lenders were waiting for their bail out from the government. Since that never happened, some lenders have been more susceptible to short sales. While short sales have been our only way to deal with over leveraged properties, we were forced to resell the properties to pay off the short sale. Which meant that Sub2 deals were not taking place which is why according to the National Association of Realtors®, about 50% of all transactions in the 4th Quarter of 2008 were either Foreclosures or Short Sale.

According to Bloomberg “ Citigroup Inc.’s agreement to back legislation that lets bankruptcy judges cut mortgage rates for at-risk borrowers drew criticism from ban
Read More...

This seems to be the toughest subject for investors to understand, especially new investors.

What is 'Subject To'? Here is a section from the Purchase Agreement I use that talks about encumbrances and marketable title:

When you buy a property and take over the existing mortgages and start making the payments directly to the bank, you have bought the house 'Subject To' the existing mortgage.

Read More...

With the melt down of the economy and the stock market crashing, buyers are sitting on the fence waiting to see what will happen next before they pull the trigger and buy a house. This is causing problems for anyone who needs to sell and it is creating huge potential for buyers. We are in one of the greatest buyers markets on the last 30 years and maybe even since the Great Depression.

According to the National Association of Realtors ® , housing sales have dropped 8.6% in November nationally, -12.0% in the Northeast, -7.4% in the Midwest, -10.9% in the South and -4.3%in the West. The national median home sales price for November was $181,300. That’s a decline of 13.2% from the previous year.

Actions by the government to stimulate the economy will be a big factor in stabilizing housing prices. Mortgage Interest rates are still very low and credit is starting to free up again. Yes there has been a large scale price adjustment across the country and that is reflected in the housing prices. With these low prices and low interest rates, investors will be able to start buying again and once investors start buying, the general home buyers will follow. That is the way it has always worked in a recession, even during the great depression. The great depression created some of the wealthiest people in America today and most of them came from real estate. While our current financial crisis is no were near the level of the great depression, there will be millionaires made through real estate over the next decade.

It’s that time of year again, when we sit down and reflect on the previous year and look forward to the year ahead of us. This past year has been filled with extreme swings in the economy and our emotions. For some people 2008 was a great year and for others it was a nightmare. I have been caught right in the middle of both, so I guess for me, everything evened out and it was a year that makes me look back and ask, what the heck happened. I had some winners and some losers. The losers of course came in the last quarter of the year and I did pretty well during the first 3 quarters of the year. Some might look back with discouragement and frustration. I however am looking ahead with a clear determination to make 2009 the best year ever.

With the shake up in the credit markets and the stock markets, I see huge potential for 2009 in real estate. I believe we have hit the bottom, for the most part. A new president and administration will take office on January 20, 2009 and they have made it clear that they are focused on stimulating the economy. Again, for some this will be good and for others it will be bad. For real estate investors, this will be very good. Just like when the real estate market was hot, the economy seemed unstoppable and real estate prices climbed to artificially high prices, the collapse of the credit and financial markets has artificially lowered real estate prices below the point of where they normally would have settled at.
Read More...

Every real estate professional knows that the first impression a buy gets of a property is when they first drive up to the house. It is called “Curb Appeal” and if you don’t have it, you risk losing the buyers interest in the property before they even get out of their car. Most real estate professionals know the importance of curb appeal. Real estate investors will spend a lot of time and money creating a good curb appeal for the property before they ever put the for sale sign in the yard.

Buy what do you do in the winter to create the kind of curb appeal that will not turn buyers away before they even get out of their cars? This is a big challenge in the middle of the winter, but there are a few things to concentrate on and we will cover a few of them. I did however find one thing that a few people have done, even though they might not have their house up for sale, it gave me ideas on how to create that curb appeal that buyers like. Watch the following video and you can find many more examples just like this one from Youtube.com.

As a real estate investor and a student of technology I have been preaching for a long time that every serious real estate investor should look into taking advantage of the incredible reach technology provides us. While looking through some archives I found an old radio interview where I had been the special guest and shared my ideas on thinking outside the box, using technology to boost business, and essentiality of having a website. The original interview can be heard in its entirety here at Realty Talk Radio:
http://www.realtytalkradio.com/index.php/component/content/58?task=view

Looking back at this interview we have come a long way since the interview (aired 2/21/2006) and I still hold the same views on the subject. The internet is one of the most incredible tools ever to come our way, a complete transformation in how information is sought and exchanged is something that cannot be ignored. Every business card you hand out, every bandit sign you stake in the ground, each promotional item you print up, and all other advertisement that does not have a website address with a website behind it can be considered a waste of money.

For years I have been working on creating websites for the real estate investor who doesn’t want to put in the time and money to develop the site and then have to add another significant monthly expense keeping someone around to do updates, fix bugs and monitor the web hosts stability so the site is always working. There is a lot that goes into creating a website where even a quick simple independent site will require numerous costs that can be confusing and you still don’t know if it’s going to work. Your hands on ability to update your site and control its content depends on your computer savvy, but typically most real estate investors aren’t knowledgeable in such things.

After years of work we have finally released our brand new real estate websites that fit perfectly into the real estate investors business. As a real estate investor myself, I’ve run into many of the same problems that anyone else would have and have taken all of those lesson and integrated them into our websites. Let me go over a few of these issues and how I have designed the websites to make the best of them.

Problem #1 – We aren’t accessible 24/7, some sellers maybe hesitant to call on the phone but would be more open to something a little more impersonal.
Read More...

As prices drop, foreclosures go up and interest rates fall, there has never been a better time to buy. Whether you are an investor or a first time home buyer, now is the time to buy. So why are most people just sitting on the fence? According to the Minneapolis Association of Realtors the median sales price fell to $175,000, that’s down 19.2 percent from the same time last year and the lowest November showing since 2001.

With all the bail outs and market uncertainty, buyers are waiting to see how low prices will drop. Meanwhile those buyers still need housing which is making for a strong rental market.

Buyers are willing to Lease with the Option to Buy, but they are not willing to put down a lot of money for fear of property values dropping even further and losing their non refundable option consideration because they have opted to not exercise their option to buy.

These market conditions are creating an artificially low price. I believe that once the credit market settles down, real estate values will stabilize and maybe even increase slightly right away. The only question is, when will this happen? I can't answer that, but I do know that now is a great time to buy and hold. Properties at these prices are cash flowing very well today, so why wait to see where prices will stop falling and pass up one all that cash flow and depreciation to someone is going to get, so it might as well be you.

We know that the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 otherwise known as the $700 Billion dollar bailout bill was never intended to buy up the defaulted loans that the banks are holding onto, right?  And we also know that the bailout bill has increased to several trillion dollars, that’s Trillion with a “T”.  But what about the bad loans on the banks books, wasn’t that the purpose of the bailout bill in the first place?  Well yes, originally it was.  Do you remember the original 3 page bailout bill that President George Bush proposed, but was voted down?  The finally bailout bill that was passed one week later was 450 pages long and they must have excluded the 3 original pages which was supposed to direct the bailout to buy up all those bad notes that the banks were holding.

It boggles the mind to see what is happening with all that money that we the tax payer is going to have to pay for, for many generations to come.  There is a few extremely large banks getting the money, but they aren’t even using it to cover the bad debt that they have on the books, they are using it to buy other banks with very little bad debt.  Basically what we are doing with the money right now is giving it to the biggest financial institutions and telling them to use that money to buy smaller companies that weren’t reckl
Read More...

This is my first ever blog post, but what better time to start one then right now.  We have had a very interesting year featuring a myriad of different twists and turns.  When we started out the year, we basically knew where we were headed and by the end of the year, no one knew which way to turn next.   Every day something new happens and I have had so many thoughts and concerns that I decided it was time to start writing and share them with you on a regular basis.  I want your comments and feed back as we take on the golden era of real estate investing.

I am actually very excited about the real estate market that we find ourselves in right now.  Many of us have been saying that this is one of the best times in our lifetimes to be an investor, and the closer we get to the end of the year, the more real that statement becomes.  The government keeps stepping in to bail out everyone except the ones who actually need the bail out.  While that may seem cynical, it has presented us with even more opportunities and the longer the government tries to figure out what to do, more confusion lingers in the market.  This only prolongs our window of oppo
Read More...