How to turn your real estate investments into profits
Find a Good Deal
The term “good” is such a broad term and is in the eye of the beholder. My definition of good and yours might be totally different. From the perspective of a guy who has bought and sold tens of millions of dollars of real estate let’s talk about what’s a good deal. This assumes you want to buy a fixer upper cheap and rehab the property for immediate resale. This also assumes you are going to cash out of the transaction by selling to a retail buyer who wants to live in the property.
You must buy your property at a big enough discount off its retail or repaired value to allow you to make repairs, pay holding costs, pay sales costs, and make a nice profit. The first thing needed is to know what the value of the home is after you put it in nice shape. One of my first mentors, Mr. Nick Koon, told me this “son, until you know value, you know nothing!”
We need to know what similar homes in the same area are selling for and are currently on the market for offered by other sellers. You are looking for as close to your style, size, lot size, school district, age, bedrooms and baths as possible. Does the subject property have a basement? Does it have a garage? These are the biggest factors in pulling the comparables (or comps as they are referred to in the trade).
There are many sites on the internet that will allow you to gather comparables but none will be as good as the local multiple listing service (MLS for short) that Realtors™ have at their disposal to conduct their business. Working with a real estate agent (or becoming licensed yourself) will be a huge asset to your business but make sure you don’t waste their time. I would use these other sites (Zillow, Real Estate abc, Trulia) to get a ball park and then ask my agent for their “comps”. By the way, real estate agents and brokers pay big money every month to have the best information in the marketplace so they should have the best and most up to date information.
If my prospective investment home is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 1,500 sq ft ranch than that is the kind of home I am looking to compare against my home. On the same street or in the same subdivision would be great but at least as close as you can get. You are looking for a range of value because no two homes, however similar, are rarely exactly the same. If I see similar homes in nice shape selling for $240,000 to $260,000 then my value will be about $250,000. You would like sold comparables to be within 60 days or sooner when possible for the most accurate snapshot of current market value.
A Simple Formula to Keep You Profitable
Determine the After Repaired Value and multiply that amount by 70% to 75% maximum. Then back out your estimated repairs. This figure will give you your maximum offer on a fixer upper. It would be nice to buy it for less than this figure but this figure is the maximum you can pay. Deviate from this formula at your own risk. This will allow you to make a nice profit on the deal. By paying more you put your profitability at risk. The “After Repaired Value” is what your property would sell for assuming it was fixed up nicely to compare with or even better than the other properties that have sold in the last 60 days.
We need to be buying this $250,000 home (depending on repairs) in the $170,000 to $190,000 range. We will first focus on bringing good prospects and leads to us so we can find a good deal as described above. We will focus on a few key ways to find good deals in this and subsequent articles but we can only scratch the surface. I would like to give you 100 best sources to consistently find good investment prospects. Please visit www.wealthwithoutstocks.com for a free download of the 100 ways to find great deals.
- The local Multiple Listing Service- This is usually only a good strategy when the overall market is very slow and there are large numbers of unsold inventory on the market. During those markets there is usually enough inventories in any good sized market to keep you busy. Most local MLS’s download to realtor.com where you can access millions of listings from all over the country. When your market is hot you can expect to find very few deals on the MLS and the rare times there is a great deal listed it will most likely have multiple offers.
- Getting the word out that you are a serious investor and are looking for good deals in any condition.
- Get business cards made stating that you buy houses, in any condition, any area, and close quickly. Buy 1,000 and leave them all over and pass them out as often as possible
- Over-sized flyers stating the above as well as domain name for a website. May consider passing these out (services do it for cheap) or mailing to a certain geographic location if you really want to own properties in that area
- Good old fashioned bandit signs still work. These are usually yellow signs with permanent marker hand written on them and placed all over town. Get a service to put them up for you but check with local zoning ordinances so you don’t get fined. Add a 21st century technique to the sign and put something like text to “webuyhouses123” for a quicker response. This will get you cell phone numbers from prospects instead of just bad email addresses.
- Pay an ant farm to bring you deals. After you download your 100 ways to find deals find all the people on there that are around houses all day, every day and make connections with as many as possible. Tell them if they bring you a lead that ends up as a successful investment you will play them $300.00 or some figure that makes sense to both of you. You also might just pay them $10.00 per each lead sheet they bring you back filled out with the information you need to make a decision. Think of having 20 or 50 “ants” in the field bringing you solid leads. This is leverage at its finest!
Source: aol.com
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