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Private money is one of the keys to a successful real estate business. In this post financial crises market it is very hard for real estate investors to get traditional loans and private lender money is the only game in town. Having access to some private money lenders is a very valuable resource. Here are some tips and tricks to finding private money lenders and getting them to work with you.

* Work with a real estate agent. Agents are almost as valuable as private lenders. They can put you in contact with lenders and will also help with the whole process of acquiring the property including the frequently complicated paperwork inspections, setting up an escrow account to keep track of the payment you make on the money you borrow and much more. They will be your eyes and ears for what is going on in the market, when new projects are out there and will help greatly when you go to research a property you are considering buying.
* Be professional. Nobody wants to risk their hard earned cash with a dirty cussing Neanderthal. So clean yourself up when meeting with the people. Make sure your pants are pressed and you are wearing a button up shirt. Make up business cards to add to your persona as a professional real estate investor. Be honest if you have no experience in managing property and they ask tell them exactly what they ask for. You want them to be on your side private money is all about person to person communication and trust. Where a bank relies on your credit and job history to decide if you are a good investment, private money lenders look you in the eye and listen closely to your plan of attack. They decide on a hand shake if you are the right person for the job.
* Join a local investment group. Finding your local real estate investment group will give you access to lots of helpful tips and tricks for managing your real estate investments. It may even help you find some private money lenders. Lots of people who own rentals have money to invest in other projects and come with the added benefit of lots of experience in real estate investing. Also when you are speaking with private money investors outside of the investment group you can mention that you belong to this group and raise the quality of your business in the investor’s eyes immensely. People like to work with people who will take the time and energy to go out and learn as much as they can about their business and belonging to an investment group will help you do that.

In general finding private money is easy if you know where to look!

I invite you to learn more about Private Lending and get FREE instant access to a 60 minute audio and 20-page eBook titled “Discover the Secrets of How to Fund Your Real Estate Deals with Private Lenders!” by going to http://realestatewealthtoday.com/FREE-eBook.html.

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE Real Estate Wealth Newsletter go to Private Money Kit.

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One of my coaching students recent asked me how to raise money for real estate deals since she was having NO luck raising money through hard money lenders. In fact, she had just paid some “guru” $25,000 to take a course and the whole course was about how to raise hard money.

Once she and many of the other students in the Guru’s class start talking they discover that no one was having any luck raising money with money hard lenders. They quickly learn that most hard lender money are out of business. The few that remain have such high lending requirements that the deals made no sense when you have to put up 50% of the proceeds, sign personally, put up cash reserves and pay interests north of 25%.

She was very confused and upset to pay this kind of money to get information that was grossly outdated and useless in today’s world.

I quickly explained that the answer of how to raise money for real estate deals today is to use “private money” not hard money. The difference is with private lending you are dealing directly one-on-one with a private person who may want to invest in your business. You are not dealing with banks or hard money lenders who have no money in today’s post financial crises.

Private lending is a consistent source of money to purchase discount real estate deals that you can go back to again and again and again. The more you use private money lenders, the more money that will become available as you as you develop that relationship.

It is important that real estate investors understand that for the next several years you will need to use and develop a private lending program as other sources of money will dry up and be very difficult to get.

I invite you to learn more about Private Lending and get FREE instant access to a 60 minute audio and 20-page eBook titled “Discover the Secrets of How to Fund Your Real Estate Deals with Private Lenders!” by going to http://realestatewealthtoday.com/FREE-eBook.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE Real Estate Wealth Newsletter go to Private Lender Money Kit.

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Let’s talk about voice mail systems. If you’re brand new to real estate investing it’s probably something to start with and if you’re a seasoned experienced real estate investor and you’re not using voice mail systems, I think it’s going to be a real weakness in your system.

How to Set Up Voice Mail Systems

If you’re getting a lot of phone calls from buyers or sellers or renters and you’re saying the same thing over and over and over again, it could become pretty aggravating after awhile.

I run a property management company and a real estate investing business. I own over 20 properties myself and I manage about 150 properties for other investors, so we’re constantly advertising for renters. At any one given time we probably have 20-23 properties being advertised for renters, and in a typical week we’re getting somewhere between 150-200 phone calls.

What to Say in the Voice Mail

Now if I had to answer every single one of those calls it would be very aggravating. What we do is we set up systems and we use voice mail systems. We have the people call the voice mail system, they can listen to a 1 or 2 minute message, and that message will describe the property.

It will describe the rooms, how many square feet, any features like air conditioning, a garage or a pool or anything of that nature. It describes all those features. It also tells the price and tells the down payment they have to put down if they want to rent the property.

At that point, once they’ve listened to that 1 or 2 minute voice mail, they can either leave their name and number, which means they’re pretty interested, or they can hang up.

At that point that’s wonderful, because I don’t want to talk to them if there was something in that information that doesn’t fit their need. If it’s too many bedrooms, if the price is too high, they don’t want air conditioning, or they have to have a garage and this property doesn’t, and they don’t like the quality or they don’t like that, wonderful. I want them to hang up the phone so I don’t have to address that.

Filter Out Prospects Who Are Not Serious

That is the primary factor of why you guys should be using voice mail systems. It’s no different with renters. It’s the same with buyers and it’s the same with sellers. You get to the point where you have systems in place, where you allow the system to do the majority of the work, so once the person has listened to a pre-recorded message from you and they still leave their phone number and name, they’re obviously a high-quality prospect.

Probably 50% of the calls that you get are going to be a complete waste of time. The people are going to be just sniffing around. They want you to spend some time with them on the phone. They want you to come out to their property and give them an offer, but they’re wasting your time. You want to eliminate that 50%. You want to focus on the other 50%. That’s where the money is.

I invite you to learn more about Real Estate Investing and join our FREE weekly tele-seminar class where we teach tips and strategy on how to grow your real estate investing business and how to raise Private Money by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur, coach and mentor in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE eBook go to Real Estate Investing Blog.

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Encourage Honesty

This is also a very critical step where you want to develop within that person some common ground and agreement of what is going to happen between the two of you. Now all the commitment at this point is going to be, “Mr. Jones, if I make an offer you like, you’ll tell me you like it. Mr. Jones, if I make an offer you don’t like, you’ll tell me you don’t like it.” That’s all you’re asking that person to commit to. That moves the process down the line.

What it does – and what you’re trying to avoid – is the seller that says, “I don’t know. Let me think about it. I’ve got to talk to my financial advisor,” or something like that. You want to try to avoid that middle of the road process.

If the individual doesn’t like your offer and he tells you, that’s fine. There are no guarantees here. We’re certainly not going to get 100% accepted offers. At least that way you know what the status is.

“I don’t like your offer. Thanks for coming by. Good luck.” You shake hands and you leave. Or he says, “I do like your offer. Maybe we should talk more and try to work it out.”

Avoiding the Middle of the Road

The worst thing in the world is that middle of the road where they say, “Well, let me think about it. I’m not sure.” You leave and you call them back and this whole process goes on and you never really get an honest answer.

What you’re trying to do in the upfront agreement is to try and eliminate some of that. Typically you would want to try to find a place to sit down – kitchen or living room – and basically ask the person in an upfront way if you make an offer they don’t like, “Would you be willing to tell me you don’t like the offer?”

Once that’s been established, you would do the positive. That is, “If I make an offer you do like and it’s something you want to talk about further and explore, I would ask that you tell me that, that it’s something that’s worthwhile considering and I would give that some serious consideration.”

You’re trying to eliminate that middle ground that’s useless for him and useless for you. No deals get done in the middle. I’d rather be rejected quickly and be done or be told, “The truth is, yeah, there’s something here. Let’s see if we can hash a deal out.”

You’re simply trying to develop some communications with that seller. You’re trying to make it clear as to which direction you’re going – North or South. That’s called the upfront agreement.

Conversation vs. Negotiation

The key wording point here is to always refer to your conversation with the seller as a visit or a conversation, not a negotiation, certainly not at this point. At this point you’re both exploring the possibility of doing a transaction in terms of buying their home. At this point it’s just a conversation. Try to keep those things in mind.

Always do it in the order of the negative first and then the positive second. So make sure, “If I make an offer you’re not interested in, you’ll say no,” and vice versa, “If I make an offer you do like, you’ll say yes.” Do it with the negative first and the positive second.

I invite you to learn more about Real Estate Investing and join our FREE weekly tele-seminar class where we teach tips and strategy on how to grow your real estate investing business and how to raise Private Money by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur, coach and mentor in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE eBook go to
Real Estate Investing Blog.

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In this stage of the conversation with the seller you take a little bit longer. In this stage what you want to try to develop what is the seller motivation?

Understand the Motivation for Selling

One of the things you would do to get into stage three – the motivation stage – is simply to ask them. “What are you hoping we can do here today?” Basically you’re asking that person, “What are you trying to accomplish here?” That will start the conversation.

Maybe they’ll tell you what they’ve done so far to sell the house. Maybe they’ve had it on the market for a while and it did not sell. Maybe they tried to rent it and they couldn’t rent it. Maybe they can’t afford the payments and they fell behind and the foreclosure documents have arrived.

Let that person explain that process as to what is going on and why they’re motivated to be talking with you. You want to tease that out a little bit. You want to find out if they’ve fallen behind on payments.

Ask a few simple questions. “What’s going on that you can’t afford the mortgage?” They’re going to tell you, “I lost my job, my illness,” or whatever. “My daughter’s in trouble and I had to cover some expenses.”

Whatever the process is, at that point you want to try to understand their motivation for selling. In your mind you’re starting – just starting – to put together an offer, or a possible offer even. At this point you may do what’s called floating some ideas out there.

Trial Balloon

Let’s say it’s a pre-foreclosure situation. You’re comfortable enough and you know enough of the facts to at least tentatively make some thought process in terms of an offer. You might do what’s called a reluctant buyer and make what’s called a trial balloon.

Many of you are aware this happens in politics a lot. In fact, it happened this weekend if you follow politics. President Obama made some announcements before he was elected that he would not raise taxes on anybody making below $250,000. Lo and behold, this weekend two of his top guys come out and made some announcements about the possibility of raising taxes. “We’re keeping all things on the table.”

That is a classic floating a trial balloon. What they were doing was in a very soft way throwing the idea out there. It’s the same way with making offers.

If you want to float a trial balloon, the way you would do it would be let’s say you have a partner. You’d say, “Hey, I’m just thinking out loud here and I’m not sure my partner would approve of this, but maybe we could try doing it this way. Maybe we could buy your house this way.”

It’s not really an offer. It’s not really anything. You’re throwing it out there almost as a trial balloon. You can do that once you’ve developed some motivation.

It takes some practice. If you need to work on it little bit, work on some ways to do that. Have somebody that you would refer to – a partner, financial backer or something of that nature.

You could say, “You know what? I’m thinking about this. I have no clue whether my financial backer would approve this, but why don’t we think about maybe doing this. Is this something you might consider?”

Do you see that very soft language? It doesn’t put you in a corner if you’re making the offer and it doesn’t box them in. It’s a discussion point that’s floating out there. It’s very subtle the way you do it and it’s very important that you do it right.

If you do it wrong, what will happen is you’ll move into a negotiation too early. You don’t want to do that. At this point you’re “floating a trial balloon” to see what their reaction might be. You don’t want to make any commitment, so the language has to be just right. “I’m thinking about this…. Maybe my partner would consider something of this nature.”

Again, if you get a negative response from the other person, you can pull back and then the conversation continues on for a while. Then you would obviously go a different direction the next time.

I invite you to learn more about Real Estate Investing and join our FREE weekly tele-seminar class where we teach tips and strategy on how to grow your real estate investing business and how to raise Private Money by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Mike Lautensack is a full-time real estate entrepreneur, coach and mentor in Philadelphia, PA and creator of the Private Lending Presentation Kit. This powerful done-for-you kit is loaded with tools and techniques to attract and develop a consistent stream of private investors into your real estate business. To learn more about this kit and receive your FREE eBook go to
Real Estate Investing Blog.

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The process of buying a real estate and quickly reselling it for profit is house flipping. Though it might look easy on your TV screens, the real deal is not as easy as it seems. To be successful in your venture in flipping houses, you must be equipped with the proper knowledge about the process. Here are some tips you have to keep in mind:

• Determine where you will buy the property. This step will determine who will your potential buyers will be.

Whether you’re up for a house in a luxurious neighborhood or a house in an up-and-coming town, you must determine if it is a desirable and bankable location.

• Identify what kind of property you want to buy. Should you decide to buy a fixer upper, then you’re going to have some finance for the repairs. Undervalued homes from foreclosures or banks costs much cheaper and are advisable if you don’t have money for repairs.

• Calculate your budget. It is very important to know how much you can invest. If you’re aiming to do some repairs, make sure the expenses are within your reach and will not make you lose your money all the while.

Just like in any other business venture, flipping houses have some risks, and one is losing your money. In order to not end up bankrupt you have to know the things you should not do:

• Giving in to unrealistic offers. These offers are the ones that are too good to be true. If a property is priced way too low, then there’s probably some catch to it. Always research the history of the property and inspect it carefully.

• Rushing. If you don’t have enough patience, then you’re not in for the game. Take your time in looking for the right property. BE patient in waiting. There’s bound to be something for you. Those who rush and hire several people to help him sell are the ones who lose their money in the process.

• Cheap workmanship. If you’re going to do some repairs on your property, make sure that they are of good quality and reliable. If you can afford to give quality repairs, don’t resort to cheap and low-quality changes. They will just make you spend more and when that backfires you’ll be losing a lot than what you’ve paid for it.

In every business, there are advantages and there are risks. Those are already given. Flipping houses is not rocket science, neither is it a walk in the park. You just have to know the right information and resources you need. If you want to master the art of flipping houses, visit Rehablist.com today.

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What interesting financial times we find ourselves in these United States! Everyone for the most part is having to cut back on their monthly expenses. Unfortunately, the real estate we own; as in our house and payments every month is our biggest expense monthly. Now is the perfect opportunity for the smart investor to help his/her fellow man/woman and do himself/herself a favor in the process. I mean what are the options for home owners who are behind on their payments and have lost their cash flow? They either do nothing and ruin their credit or they take matters into their own hands and start searching for ways to sell their property to interested buyers and or investors. They can minimize their loses and protect their credit scores to hopefully be in a position to once again own a home some time in the near future.

Now is the time to help these individuals and relieve them from their burden, and in the process make a decent profit. It takes a little creativity to get in contact with these individuals, but with a simple letter or post card they may be reached. Another source for bargain properties at substantial discounts is to deal with reputable “Wholesalers”, they are individuals or companies that specialize in helping family get out of their financial nightmare! You as the buyer investor have the luxury of only choosing which property to buy! The wholesaler has done all the hard work for you and all you have to do is pick which property you want!

One case example that I came across was with a sales representative that I met placing an ad for our company on the Valley Yellow Pages. As soon as I told her what we did as a business she said “will you please help my son buy his first property he has been trying for the last four months and he is very frustrated.” I agreed and the timing was perfect for him; I had just located the perfect property that fit his needs in the area he wanted. So don’t be shy about sharing with others that you help individuals buy or sell bargain properties you will be surprised at who raises their hand!

Go to http://www.abelsbargainproperties.com for a free report that tells exactly what to do!

Abel has been an investor for the past four years. His company is a general partnership with his mother and brother they presently manage 20 rental units nation wide. They live in Sacramento California and are wholesalers in active markets nation wide. Visit them at http://www.abelsbargainproperties.com you’ll be glad you did!

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Buying rental property in a down market is actually the best time to purchase real estate. What do you do when the mortgage industry stops lending money? Is this really a good time to start your real estate business? In a down financial market, real estate investing is much different. It’s not as easy as just finding a property and buying it. With so many questions looming over your head you’re probably thinking this is not the time to start my business. These questions are enough to scare the average person away. Let me put your mind at ease and let you know there’s no better time for buying rental property than when financial markets are low.

In a market where banks aren’t lending much to anyone, preparation is your best course of action. Know that the banking industry cannot and will not be like this forever. Banks make money when they lend money to you. At some point they’ll resume their typical lending practices. Your job right now is to learn as much as you can about the real estate business while properties are sitting idle. Remember, if they aren’t lending, for the most part, no one is buying. New investors will always be able to buy properties. The banks are still giving money to individuals who own fewer than five properties. For the larger investor it’s much harder to get financing. They are most likely the ones who will want the property you are interested in. Having some of that competition out of the running creates a great opportunity for the new investor.

Most new investors need to do their research now and study the market and the business. Learn how to be an investor. Study the banks and lending institutions to determine which is best for your situation. Find a realtor that you can trust. Go look at some properties. Take your time and really get a feel for what you should be paying attention too. Do a mock estimate to see how much a property is going to cost to complete all the repairs. Call other people who are renting their properties to see what they are looking for in a tenant. This will give you good ideas on what you should be looking for in rental properties. Now is the time to do this research. If the market was really moving, you wouldn’t have this time. Every day would mean another property off the market and money lost.

So now is the time take advantage of this unique opportunity. While others think this is a bad time to get into this business, now you know better. There is no better time for the new investor. So, what’s the best thing to do right now? Prepare yourself now so you’ll be ready when your time is right. Now you should feel confident about buying rental property in down markets and enjoy success.

For more information on buying rental property as a beginner, visit our website at http://www.realestateguide2success.com There you’ll find podcasts, articles and other great resources to help you become a real estate investing success.

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