I would like to talk about what I call the “WOWWW” formula. It is a simple formula that you’ve got to understand and incorporate into your business if you are serious about real estate investment.

There is simply no way that you can structure a truly no money down and creative offer if you don’t understand this formula. There are just five pieces to it. Four of which are “W’s” and one of which is an “O”. The five important elements to working with a seller before you can structure an offer you must know these five pieces of information.

“W” When

You must know when. That is basically when do they want to sell? You want to understand their sense of urgency, their motivational level. If they want to sell months from now, they’re not very urgent. You’re not going to get a very good deal, and it’s really not something you should be spending much time on.

I’m not saying you don’t capture that person’s name, email and phone number, and put it in a database somewhere and follow up with them on a regular basis through postcards and what not. But they’re not going to be a deal this week or next month. They’re simply not.

If they’re not properly motivated, and the when is motivation, if they are going to be doing a deal in the next 30 days because of a foreclosure, they’re moving out of state, or they’re out of state or about to miss a mortgage payment because they’ve been trying to sell it for a year and they can’t sell it and they’ve run out of money, then their ‘when’ has really shortened up.

“W” What

What is their situation? That’s kind of related but you need to understand what’s going on with them. Why do they need to sell? Is it a foreclosure or pre-foreclosure? Is it a divorce? Is it a sale where they can’t get it sold? Is it that they bought it to flip?

We’re seeing a lot of this. People have bought things to flip them, went in and rehabbed it – spent a lot of money – and they were hoping to sell it but the market turned on them and they got stuck. So you need to understand what their situation is. That’s an important element of this.

“W” What Is the House Worth

Worth is always difficult to nail down, but you should do your homework and figure this out. You should look at comps or appraisals or whatever other sources of information you want to try to figure out what the properties worth fixed up.

It may be worth $150,000, $200,000, $300,000 or who knows. You should have some sense of what the property‘s worth to make an offer.

“O” Owe

You should know what the person’s owes on the mortgage or mortgages. This is a critical element and something a lot of people don’t understand. You cannot make an offer through the MLS system if you don’t know what the other person owes. It’s very hard to make a creative offer if you don’t know what they owe.

If the property is free and clear and there’s no mortgage, then that will dictate a completely different type of offer. If they’re completely under water and the house is worth $130,000 and the mortgage is $150,000 that will drive a completely different type of offer. If they owe $90,000 that will drive the ultimate offer.

You cannot make quality offers to sellers if you don’t understand what they owe. It’s absolutely critical. All five of these are critical.

“W” What They Want

Probably the least important is what they want. That will change over time. If they’re not motivated and don’t need a quick sale – one and two aren’t really in place – most likely they’re going to want a high price. They are not truly ready to do a deal. They are not where you need them to be to do a deal.

What they want first all changes over time. It’s also probably the least important of the five items. However, you do need to know what that is. If they want some outlandish number, you don’t want to spend a lot of your time and effort on it.

That is the WOWWW formula. Use it on every deal and make much better offers.

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.

Popularity: 35% [?]

Choose a Voice Mail System

Before setting up voice mail systems you have to choose one that will suit the needs of your business. I use a company called Freedom Voice Systems. I think there are probably 8 or 10 different programs out there that are somewhat similar. A typical voice mail system will have a couple different price points depending on your needs.

A basic system may only have 10-20 different voice mail boxes. A more advanced system, the one that we use, has I think has 1,000 boxes or maybe 900. I think it starts at 100 and goes to 999, so I guess thats 900 total boxes that we have available within the voice mail system.

A typical price for a voice mail system of any real quality is going to be somewhere around $20-40/month, a very minimal investment in terms of the amount of money that you put into that.

Using Voice Mail to Improve Response Rate

What a voice mail system allows you to do, once youve got it in place lets say you want to start marketing to sellers. You want to go out and you want to create some marketing pieces. Youre going to have lets say a newspaper ad, youre going to have a postcard, maybe youre going to have your business card, and youre going to have one or two other pieces of marketing, whatever they might be.

With each one of those various pieces of marketing, youre going to put a different box number. Youre going to put Box 100, Box 101, Box 102, Box 103. The reason for that is that every time somebody calls you off of one of your pieces of marketing, the system will record where that came from.

Lets say at the end of your first month youve got 10 calls on Box 103. Lets say Box 103 was postcards, so you know that if you sent out lets say 1,000 postcards and you got 10 calls back, thats a 1% response. Thats not a bad response. Now maybe theres some things you can do to make it better, but you know at least on your first mailing you got a 1% response. Thats not bad. It allows you to know precisely what your results were. You can know it mathematically.

So now what you can do the next month is maybe you send out another 1,000 postcards. Maybe you change the headline, maybe you make the offer a little bit nicer, maybe you change some of the information. You change the postcard, you do it again, and this time you get 15 calls the next month. Obviously what you did that second month is better than what you did the first month. Now youve improved your system and its gotten even better.

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.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Here is free gift for everyone A Special Report titled How to Use Voice Mail Systems to Screen Seller and Buyer Calls and Avoid Answering 100s of Calls

Click here===> http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TNTTJuly21Download.html

Thanks

Mike

Popularity: 40% [?]

Private Money

We are all aware that real estate prices are down anywhere from 15% to 40% across the country. In the past, you might have invested $15k to $30k to buy rental property that rented for $1,000 per month and netted the investor 10% to 15% on their investment.

Now you can buy that same property for dramatically less but the rent has remained the same, or even gone up slightly, over the last couple years. So the return to the investor has gone up substantially and 30% to 50% returns on your investment are ordinary today

The hard part right now is being able to get a bank loan. Banks want to see 20% to 40% down from real estate investors AND excellent credit, traditional employment, and personal guarantees. If you do not meet these criteria you are essentially lock out of the traditional mortgage market and will be unable to borrow money from banks. Many of the other non-traditional loans such as no-doc, ALT-A and no money down loans have all disappeared due the financial crisis.

So what is the solution for real estate investors that have been locked out of the traditional mortgage market?
Private Lending is the answer!

Private lending is a consistent source of funds with which to purchase real estate deals and to which you can often go back to again and again and again. In fact, the more you use, the more will become available as you develop relationships with more private lenders.

The reason why private lending is HOT today is so many people are lock out of the traditional mortgage market and private money is their only option to get money for real estate investments.

What is private lending and who are private lenders?

The definition of a private lender is an individual that you can negotiate directly with on a personal one-on-one basis from whom you wish to borrow money for real estate investments. The money can be used to purchase rental real estate investments or to supplement funds borrowed from a bank to cover down payments.

Private lenders come from all walks of life and may not know the first thing about the real estate business. But what they do have is extra cash or assets that they can invest in your real estate deals. These individuals are generally middle class people, who have some extra funds to lend. They can be retired business people, corporate executives, professionals such as doctors, lawyers, or business owners or even blue collar workers.

Private lenders are looking for returns substantially above the 3% to 5% they get at the bank with CDs or money markets. Most private lenders are looking for investment returns in the 9% to 15% range and secured by local rental real estate.

For more information please go to http://www.private-lending-secrets.com/.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Meredith Whitney was on CNBC yesterday and, aside from recommending shares of Goldman Sachs, she didn’t have much positive to say about the economy or financial markets.

Here’s the gloomiest part of the interview: “No bank underwrote a loan with 10 percent unemployment on the horizon. I think there is no doubt that home prices will go down dramatically from here, it’s just a question of when.”

Popularity: 12% [?]

One of the best ways to build up long-term wealth and passive income is by buying and holding rental properties.

While being a “landlord ” isnt a glamorous job if you run your rental property business correctly, it can be a very rewarding, easy, and profitable way to invest in real estate.

In just 72 hours we are starting a power packed 3 4 Night Live Tele-seminar where you’ll learn simple step-by-step process to develop your own Property Management Program for Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches.

Imagine the money you will save by simply avoiding one bad tenant (can you say $1,000′s). Now imagine having good tenants that pay on time and do not call you with minor problems and allow you the time and energy to focus on buying more real estate and growing your business.

Well this program will give the knowledge to achieve these goals.

To learn more about Property Management Secrets for Real Estate Investors and listen to a 30 minute audio please click here ===> http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PropertyManagementSecrets.html

Who is Property Managements Secrets For?

• Prospective property owners and landlords
• First time property investors
• Portfolio builders who need their properties to work for them
• Experienced multi-property landlords looking to get the most from their property

This course starts Thursday September 10, 2009 so sign up tonight at http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PropertyManagementSecrets.html

Thanks

Mike

http://www.learnrealestateinvestingblog.com/

Popularity: 12% [?]

If you have missed our weekly teleconference series called “Tuesday Night Teleconference Tips” then you are losing out on some great information and bonuses…. On the weekly calls I drill down deep into tips and strategyonhow to grow your real estate investing business and raise Private Money.

The tele-conference calls are FREE (yes that is right!) and start at 8:00 PM eastern and last 30 to 45 minutes. They are about 30 minutes of teaching on a very focused topic and then some time for Q & A.

To sign up http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Now that fall is here we are even going to improve the information more on how to get motivated sellers calling you.

Generating motivated seller leads in any real estate market is tough but given the state of the economy, it can be even more difficult or challenging. Real estate investors need to get creative with their marketing tactics when targeting motivated sellers.

To sign up http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Real Estate Investor Fall Series — Marketing for Motivated Sellers (A FREE weekly Boot Camp)

9/8/09 – Introduction to Marketing – Direct response marketing and one step versus two steps marketing and why this is essential to your success as a real estate entrepreneur

9/15/09 – FREE Reports and why you must have them as part of your marketing arsenal or it is like having a gun with no bullets

9/22/09 – Business Cards: Learn the Secrets Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Turn an Ordinary Business Card into a Marketing Machine!

9/29/09 – Post-it Notes: The SINGLE best marketing tool for real estate entrepreneurs targeted, cheap, effective and makes money!

10/6/09 – Bandit Signs – How to get tons of call AND stay out of trouble with your local townships and cities

10/13/09 - Post cards – Learn how to focus your marketing like a laser on your desired target group and get your phone ringing off the hook!

10/20/09 – Flyers and Newspaper ads – How to create ads that draw enough response to offset your cost and how to make your headlines POP

10/27/09 – Attorneys – How to tap into estate and pre-foreclosures deals with the sellers attorney recommending you!

11/3/09 - Voicemail systems – How to use Voice mail systems to screen sellers and buyers and avoid answering 100′s of calls” – FREE bonus you get my scripts.

11/10/09 – Press Releases

11/17/09 – websites

11/24/09 – Newsletters

12/1/09 – other marketing tools such as shirts, caps, premiums, bird dogs, TV, realtors, radio ads

To sign up http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/TuesdayTipsSignUp.html

Popularity: 14% [?]

I have compiled a list of the Top 10 Real Estate Investing blogs several of them I use on a regular basis and recommend you do the same. I try to take the good and interesting blog post and routine post them on my blog at http://www.learnrealestateinvestingblog.com/.

Please bookmark this site and I will update from time to time, so stay tuned.

Enjoy the list, and if you like or know other blogs too, e-mail me or include them in the comment field, and Ill take a look.

The Top 10 Real Estate Investment Blogs

http://www.realestateweblog.org/

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/

http://www.investorwealth.com/blog/

http://www.equityscout.com/blog

http://www.investing-secrets.com/

http://topsites.blogflux.com/real-estate/

http://www.investorloft.com/blog/

http://www.inman.com/blog

http://www.reiblog.org/

http://www.realestatewebprofits.com/rewp/blog/real-estate-blog.php

Thanks

Mike

http://www.LearnRealEstateInvestingBlog.com/

Popularity: 13% [?]