Earnest Money Deposit on REO Properties

Earnest Money Deposit on REO Properties
When you submit an offer on any piece of Real Estate you will have to provide an Earnest Money Deposit on the property.  This demonstrates that you are willing to take action on purchasing the property and you actually have the funds.Your deposit is a commitment to purchase the property...
Read More

Working with Random Appraisals

Working with Random Appraisals
If you have been following the blog, you probably know that right now our biggest problem is not finding a willing buyer, but getting a bank that is willing to fund the loan.  The rules have changed and appraisers now are our biggest challenge. Most of our properties sell to FHA...
Read More

Pulling the Best Comparables (Realist Tax)

Pulling the Best Comparables (Realist Tax)
A long time ago I spoke about how I used a very small part of Zillow to help with my price analysis.  They changed their site, to no longer allow quick sorting on their “Search Nearby Sales” which basically makes the tool a lot less useful for me.  But even before that...
Read More

Looked at 10 houses on Monday

The market sure seems to be hot with a lot more buyers than inventory.  We are search to buy at least two properties in April, so we identified 10 properties that looked like they would meet our criteria. After spending three hours looking at them, I got home and ran some numbers. ...
Read More

California Hard Money Loans

If your an experienced investor you have probably heard people talk about hard money.  I am going to provide a brief explanation of what it is, and who it is best suited for. Hard Money in terms of Real Estate is basically a private loan against real estate.  Typically it is a single...
Read More

So you think it’s a deal and escrow is opening…

You’ve worked your butt off and now your agent calls you and said the bank/seller has agreed to the price and is ready to open escrow. What do you do now? Step 1 – Go look at the Property Again Once an agent tells us we are close on an offer we always go look at it again. ...
Read More

Zillow.com one of my favorite sites…

I am sure most SFH investors in the US have heard of Zillow.com.  It basically uses an algorythem to determine the value of all homes based on other sales, sq footage, bed and bathrooms.  Most of the time the Zillow estimated value is not even close.  Does the mean the tool is...
Read More

Why you should pick a housing farm

When we first got started, we shopped for deals anywhere and everywhere.  Three of four days a week we would spend the morning or late at night looking at about ten houses.  After a day of searching, we’d get back and write 4-5 offers. Every distressed property we saw, we’d...
Read More

Next Entries »