Here is a webinar I did recently with Susan Boggs on how to start a Private Lending Program for your real estate investing Business.

The Real Estate Rich and Famous Series

* Do you know how to cultivate a list of people eager to fund your RE deals?

* Do you know how to put a Credibility Kit, Business Plan and Promissory Note together?

Please click here ===>
http://realrichandfamouse.s3.amazonaws.com/replays/mark/index.html

Popularity: 88% [?]

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Importance of Headlines

Particularly with newspapers you dont have a lot of space and its expensive, so youre going to have maybe a headline, one or two bullet points, and then a phone number or website. You dont have a lot of space so youve got to make sure that you do it the right way. Your headline has to be appealing.

Lets use Louisville as an example. You dont need to put Louisville in your headline. Everybody knows its a Louisville newspaper. Youve wasted your space. We see that mistake a lot.

Putting irrelevant words in your headlines doesnt mean too much. Make sure your headlines have relevant words. If its a particular neighborhood or section of town, if its a well-known area, make sure you put that in there, but not the town.

Be Concise

Be very concise. If you can drive them to your voice mail system or your website, thats the best way to do it. They would go there and find out if they have some interest. They would see some photos or the video and would kind of screen themselves out and save you a lot of time.

Be Careful of Fair Housing

One thing youve got to be careful of is violation of Fair Housing when you advertise. Remember people are going to look at your ad and claim somehow that youre being in violation of Fair Housing rules. This is a whole subject by itself. We can spend a whole night talking about this. You have to be careful about the words you use.

You cant use words like church even if its right next to the biggest church in town, or directly across from the biggest church in town. You cant mention that church. That is a violation.

You cant mention any sort of family Its a family neighborhood. If you say the words family neighborhood in theory you might be implying that single people arent welcome so youve got to be careful. Or vice versa, if you use apartment designed for singles, it might be construed as excluding families. Be careful about the words you use. Think about them a little bit.

One of the things Im going to do on the checklist youre going to get from me is there are a lot of things in there in terms of words to use and then alternative words to use, particularly if you want to write an ad and you want to use the word fantastic three times.

It will give you fantastic and then give you two or three alternative words to use to try and mix up your words. My template ads are on that checklist. Youre going to get those as part of this program.

Be careful of Fair Housing. If you want HUD offers, in most areas a one day course doesnt cost much, say $25, where you can take a Fair Housing course. You can learn all about the rules and regulations of Fair Housing. If youre a serious property management I would do that. Go and spend a Saturday or whatever day they offer that course, take it and learn those rules and regulations and keep yourself out of hot water.

I invite you to learn more about Property Management and get a free 60 minute audio titled Learn the 10 Success Secrets of Property Management Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PMS.html.

Mike Lautensack is the owner of Del Val Property Management LLC, a FULL service residential property management company located in Philadelphia, PA.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Collecting rent is one of those situations where I have to use some rules of thumb, some feeling, some gut to try to figure out whether it’s time to go and do the eviction or do we try to work with the tenant and see if they can get caught up. Maybe it’s a temporary problem. We can do a weekly or monthly payment plan and maybe we can get them back on paying again.

In the same token, if I don’t feel it’s going to happen, we have to go to eviction quickly. There’s no point in waiting and spending two or three months waiting around for something that’s not going to happen. That takes some gut feel and experience.

Know the Rules for Eviction

We’ll talk about the eviction process. There again, just like the rules and regulations, you’ve got to be smarter than your tenants. You’ve got to know the rules better than they do, because if you don’t, I guarantee you they will take advantage of you. They will tell you things that are not accurate and if you buy into it you’re going to end up being their whipping post.

Now every state might be slightly different and I recommend you go to Google and search for your sate and landlord regulations and study them front to back. Knowing the rules and then enforcing them is the single most important thing in terms of collecting rent.

Should you use an attorney for evictions? You guys can do it better than an attorney can. They will do almost nothing for you except the fact that they’re attorneys and they’ll charge you $250-300 an hour.

I can probably out perform any attorney in this area and I can do it for $50 an hour for my clients, probably one sixth of what they’ll pay an attorney.

How to Retain Tenants

How to work with tenants and try to encourage them to stay tenants, making sure that you’re resolving issues with them in a friendly and professional way so they say, “Hey, yeah, I want to stay another year, two years, three years whatever.”

If you are late with doing maintenance, you drag your feet, you try to find excuses why not to do it every time they call you, you don’t return their calls, they got a little drip here and there, you don’t fix it, do you think they’re going to stay that second year after that lease runs out? I don’t think so.

Again, you want to keep at it. You want to work within trying to keep the tenants as long as possible. Also, we have little things in our lease that encourage tenants to sign a new one-year lease. They can go month-to-month but there are some penalties – I wouldn’t call it that – but just some things in that lease that make it more onerous on them as opposed to coming back to me and saying, “I’d rather have a new one-year lease than go month-to-month.”

We probably have 75 to 80% of our tenants come back to us for a new one-year lease as opposed to remaining month-to-month. It’s hard for you as landlords and owners to manage if you don’t know beyond 30 days whether your tenant’s staying or going. It’s much nicer to have a one-year lease and you know that for the next 12 months at least you’re going to get rent, so we’ll talk about that.

I invite you to learn more about Property Management and get a free audio titled “Learn the 10 Success Secrets of Property Management Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Manage Your Own Investments Properties for Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches” by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PMS.html

Mike Lautensack is the owner of Del Val Property Management LLC, a FULL service residential property management company located in Philadelphia, PA.

Popularity: 19% [?]

One of the things we’re going to focus on is what is professional management versus mom and pop management. Now many of you may have a couple properties. Maybe you’ve read a book on property management, I don’t know, but if you ultimately want to make a business and to grow wealth and to be a serious real estate investor, you need to become a professional property manager.

That is you’re better at it than most people. You’re better at it than nine out of 10 investors. You take it seriously because you’re investing a lot of your own money in these properties, a lot of your time and a lot of your energy, and you want to get the most you can out of it.

That’s where the money is, because if you don’t manage it properly, the value of that asset declines rapidly. I guarantee you, if you’ve bought a property, put a bad tenant in there and they destroyed your property, you’re looking at $5,000, $10,000, $15,000 of damage. Not that property management can totally eliminate that possibility, but certainly professional management versus mom and pop management makes a huge difference.

Advantages of Property Management

We’re going to go through that and understand that process. We’re going to go through the advantages of property management. Why is it worth you getting on this call for two hours for a series of four calls? What are the monetary advantages of doing it? Are there monetary advantages to it? Why not just read a $12 book?

Sure, you can do that, but everybody knows reading a book is a hard way to learn. It’s not interactive. You won’t have the ability to fire questions at me. Maybe you’re pretty good at property management and you have a couple areas you’re weak at. You won’t have the ability to fire questions at me.

Again, filling a rental. Let’s say we had a $900 a month rental. Filling it 30 days earlier than you would otherwise puts $900 in your pocket. So the monetary issues here are tremendous. Keeping a tenant a second year as opposed to losing them because you didn’t treat them right or you didn’t fix the property right or whatever, reselling a vacancy is tremendously expensive.

You could be looking at two months vacancy, $900 per month, and costs you have to pay to maybe carpet in between tenants, so maintaining a tenant is again a huge monetary issue. So there are clearly some monetary issues here that can be quite overwhelming in terms of cost savings.

We’re going to talk about the importance of education, these kinds of calls tonight, the importance of doing it on a continuous basis, meaning joining your real estate clubs, looking for other resources, maybe join my coaching program at some point down the road, but continue to educate yourself further and more completely as time goes by.

Again, a professional real estate investor continues the education process and never stops. A mom and pop learns a couple things and then stops. We’re going to talk about the difference between the two. How to do things like develop contacts and network, how to work with contractors.

I invite you to learn more about Property Management and get a free audio titled “Learn the 10 Success Secrets of Property Management Every Real Estate Investor Must Know to Manage Your Own Investments Properties for Maximum Profit and Avoiding Tenant Headaches” by going to http://www.realestatewealthtoday.com/PMS.html

Mike Lautensack is the owner of Del Val Property Management LLC, a FULL service residential property management company located in Philadelphia, PA.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Once you realize that real estate investing is not risky, you ll see all the ways that you can make money from owning properties and letting someone else pay for them. Many novice investors just think about rental income but true investors learn early that their rental properties go far and beyond monthly rent checks.

1. Cash Flow Again, most people only think about this because it is easy to see that owning rental properties will produce monthly income. Not every rental will produce income and some investors will go after properties that have a negative cash flow and bet on future appreciation. Real estate investing is considered low risk when you follow tried and true investing principles. Owning rental properties with a negative cash flow is not a good way to invest and is super risky. Do not invest based on speculation. Before you search for rental properties make sure you set your real estate investing criteria.
2. Equity Build Up Every time you make a payment to the bank for your property, you own a little bit more of that property. Of course the first few years, the amount of the mortgage payment that actually goes towards paying down the principle is very, very small. The majority of the payment goes towards interest. Remember, your rental property should be paid for by your tenants. They are making the mortgage payments if you have positive cash flow. You are building equity while they are paying for your house.
3. Appreciation Over the long term home prices go up. In the short term, they go up and down. Over a long period of time neighborhoods also change, but you should not buy rentals in areas that you THINK will improve. Remember that is speculation and speculation is risky. Find nice rentals in a good area that has a good proven track record for rents and home prices. The home will probably appreciate at 4-6% over the next 30 years (life of the mortgage).
4. Tax Shelter Very rarely do you find a novice investor talking about tax shelters on investment properties. the professional investors think about taxes all the time. As the saying goes, its not what you make its what you keep! When talking about tax shelters, youre really talking about the depreciation of the property. The government lets you depreciate many big ticket items that wear out over time and are used in your business. Real estate investors know how to use depreciation to eliminate taxes on monthly rental income. My advice get a good accountant! They will pay for themselves with the tax benefits they can find on your rental homes.

Popularity: 19% [?]

he Top 7 Fears of Real Estate Investors Today

1. Lack of Cash – Personal incomes are dropping. Unemployment is nearing record highs. Renters in most markets are defaulting. Credit card companies

are cutting the amount of cash available even for those who have amazing credit scores

and always pay back on time.

2. Lack of Confidence – Many investors are lacking confidence in their ability to get through the next three years of this huge downturn. For example, many investors are finding that it’s taking months to close a property deal. If you’re working real estate short sale strategies, because banks are so burdened with offloading inventory, you could wait six months just to receive a BPO (Broker’s Price Opinion).

3. Loan Challenges – A friend of mine couldn’t even refinance

his house for a lower mortgage payment than what he’s paying right now because the household income dropped since his wife’s death. If he can’t refinance his home for a lower payment, what do you think your chances of getting a loan are? What’s more, banks have raised down payment requirements on residential and commercial properties to as much as 40%.

4. Can’t Find Deals – The majority of housing and condo sales are foreclosures, as homeowners don’t want to sell now and lose all the value that they put into the house.

5. Not Enough Buyers – Yes, incentives like the tax credit are beginning to enter the market. Yes, we are starting to see a reduction in new inventories. The key word is “starting.” Yet in many markets, investors are finding a lack of buyers even at bargain prices!

6. Takes Too Much Time – Many old-hat real estate investors are spending their days and nights trying to close deals. Most of their time is spent late at night on their computers, or traveling around the country hopping from one airport to the next, in hopes of getting that six- or seven-figure real estate deal done, just to be disappointed again and again.

7. Lack of Knowledge – Old-hat real estate investing requires you to understand negotiation strategies, NLP mind tricks, what’s-working-now techniques, real estate contracts, and how to adapt to opportunities in more than one marketplace, using more than one investing strategy.

Popularity: 12% [?]

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.

Popularity: 12% [?]

What do you think your real estate investing business would be like if you had unlimited access to money for profitable deals? Imagine finding a great deal and be able to call up a private lender and outlining the deal and after some discussion the person yes how much money do you need and where can I send the check? Do you think you could get some price discounts from sellers when you knew you could close and close quickly? How would that affect your lifestyle?

This is possible for you if you committee the time and energy to develop a private lender program. It is not a get rich quick plan. You must be organized and have a well developed business plan and marketing plan to meet and develop private lenders and build relationships.

As part of private lending program you must have ways to attract private lenders to call or email you to start the process. Once a potential private lender has contact you must send them some information about your private lending program and then call them and set up a meeting to advance the discussion.

Here are 6 steps to a private lender program.

1) Business Plan: You must have a solid and believable business plan that fits your experience level and skill set. If you have only bought one or two properties you cannot tell a private investor you plan to buy 12 properties this year. This is not believable and the private lender will not lend you money. Your business plan must be well thought out and when you sit in front of a prospective investor it must be believable and achievable without being a stretch.

2) Credibility Kit: Building your personal Credibility Kit is going to be one of the most important tools in your real estate investing business. Nothing speaks louder or more clearly about you or your integrity than letters from your sellers, personal reference letters, letters from your lenders, copies of ads you have run, photos of properties you have bought and sold, testimonials and references, and certifications or professional licenses. The professionalism that a good Credibility Kit presents to private lenders is very powerful and shows you as a real estate investing expert.

3) Marketing Plan: You must have a good Marketing Plan including several different types of lead generating marketing to get potential private lenders to call you and request more information or come to your educational seminars. These methods can include post cards, flyers, networking within professional organizations, and group or one-on-one educational presentations. We do NOT recommend any big or public advertising such as newspapers or internet.

4) Follow-up and Presenting Deals: Once your marketing has generated some leads it is time to present deals. You may want to meet with the potential lenders in a one-on-one meeting and lay out why your real estate deal makes sense and how the investors money is well protected and what return they can expect to earn. You also may want to send out a short summary to a number of potential lenders and see if they are interested by having them call you for more information and details. If one of the lenders calls from your emails it is important to follow up and send both your Credibility Kit and deal summary for their review.

5) Legal Forms and Documents: One of the great advantages of private lending is how simple the forms are for a typical private lending transaction. In fact, most private lending transactions only involve four documents including a Mortgage or Deed of Trust, Promissory Note, Insurance and Disclosure Statement. The most important document is the Promissory Note and this is where you add certain clauses that allow you to control the deal and give you flexibility down the road.

6) Closing: Once you have a private lender ready to go and your forms prepared for the deal, it is time to close. I strongly recommend to my coaching students that they always close with a title clerk or attorney and let them prepare the closing documents and handle the money for you at closing. For the small fee they charge, it takes a lot of headaches away and adds a level of professionalism to your investing business. I also strongly recommend that the title clerk or attorney record the private lenders mortgage with the local county land records office.

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.

Popularity: 20% [?]