As a real estate consultant in today’s market, I hear this all of the time… “I went to see a bankruptcy attorney and she told me that short sales are trouble and I shouldn’t even bother” or… “My attorney said that if I do a short sale, the bank will come after me for the balance no matter what”. Big surprise! coming from the attorney that charges $3,000.00 up front to file their bankruptcy papers.
The best way to determine if you should do a short sale as opposed to filing for bankruptcy is to ask yourself this one simple question. Even though my credit is going to be damaged now, do I want to own a home again sometime in the future? If the answer is yes, then you should seriously consider the idea of doing a short sale instead of a bankruptcy filing. You can always use bankruptcy as a last resort.
The truth is that just because somebody goes to law school and passes the BAR exam, it doesn’t always mean that they have your best interest at heart. I know what you’re thinking… “But attorneys are known for being some of the nicest, caring and goodhearted people in the world”, but believe it or not some attorneys are just worried about get paid. How else are they going to pay off those student loans? [Fact: not even bankruptcy can eliminate student loans] Oh, and do you think that attorneys inform these people that they can wait to file for bankruptcy up to 24 hrs before the house goes to auction? They probably don’t even care that a bankruptcy will stay on their credit report for 7 years. Why not? …That’s easy…they don’t have any incentive to care, but most people are just blinded by all those shiny plaques on the wall. So they just go along with whatever the attorney says, after all…. They are attorneys!
I think that some better advice would be to tell these people how it really works Something like this; hey, here’s an idea…why don’t you try your best do a short sale so that you can try and salvage your credit, then if it doesn’t work out or if you don’t like the terms that the bank is offering you, we can always file for bankruptcy as a last resort, we can even file the paperwork the day before the auction. Many people have the misconception that filing for bankruptcy will solve their housing problem. It won’t…bankruptcy may buy you some time, but it won’t buy your mortgage. It’s kind of like trying to permanently fix a gas leak with a piece of gum.
The truth is that many of the people that file for bankruptcy would have been much better off doing a short sale on their property and moving on with their lives. Unfortunately, many of my clients are people that have gone through their bankruptcy and have been discharged by the court so now the Foreclosure process starts all over again and guess what I’m doing for them? You guessed it…a short sale. The only difference is that now they will have a bankruptcy on their credit for 7 years.
I sincerely hope that I didn’t offend any attorneys with this post …and if I did…then sue me.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
“Re-habbing Orlando 101”
Hi I’m John Conde, Owner of Stop Foreclosure Orlando, Inc. Orlando’s premier source for bargain properties
If you want buy a fixer upper I strongly recommend that you really do your home work. Now I’m a pretty experienced real estate investor and over the years have re-habbed close to three hundred houses so I’m going to share a few things with you that I’ve unfortunately learned the hard way. Things that can save you a lot of time, money and frustration.
When you go look at properties you want to make sure that the main components of the house are in overall good shape. Things like the roof, the kitchen, and bathrooms…now you may have to do a little upgrading to those rooms and that’s fine but, unless you’re a seasoned re-habber you should stay away from houses needing any major structural repairs. Now it’s absolutely critical that you know what the after repaired value of the property is. The best thing to do is find a good local realtor to do some comparables for you of recently sold properties in that area and out of all the comparables that the realtor gives you expect that yours will sell at the cheapest price. Don’t try to convince yourself that your house will sell for the highest price on the whole street. That’s just not realistic and you’ll regret thinking that way later. I can’t tell you how many newbie investors I’ve talked to that wanted to get into re-habbing business so badly that they tried to turn a “non-deal” into a “deal” and the end result is always the same…they lost money and came away with a horrible experience. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS YOU WILL REGRET IT!!!
So let’s say you’ve found a good a deal and you’re ready to submit a contract on it. Make sure that you give yourself at least a 7 day inspection period. This will give you plenty of time to get the house thoroughly inspected by a professional home inspector. The inspector will look at things like the electrical system, look for termite damage, the plumbing, etc. All these types of repairs can be really expensive especially if it’s an older house. Believe me…it’s much better to spend a few hundred dollars upfront and maybe lose it than to not be sure about what you’re getting into and be surprised later. Remember…any repair that you have to make that you weren’t expecting to make comes right out of your profit. When the inspector finishes his inspection he will provide you with an inspection report and it will list all the hidden things that he found wrong with the house. The good thing about that is you can use this report to try and negotiate the price down even more with the seller.
Now in the same time frame that your have your inspections done you should be getting estimates for the repairs you need to do. Now there are 2 ways you can do this. One way is to get a general contractor or a “GC” that will give you a quote on the entire job. That’s someone that doesn’t necessarily do the work himself, he usually has a crew to do all the work and his job is just to manage everyone. This is what I do because I work on my business not in my business. Now depending on how involved you want to be and how much time you want to spend at the property this may be your best option. The other good thing about using a good general contractor is that the job gets done much faster and at the end of the day the faster you can finish, the faster you can sell it and move on to the next one. But you will spend more money by using a GC. Oh and…always, always make sure that you check his license and get references this is very important. I found out the hard way that you should never hire someone just because they’re the cheapest. This will always, always end costing you more money and headaches in the long run. Quick tip: If you get the feeling that the guy may be a heavy partier, don’t hire him!! He will definitely have some no show days.
Now if you have extra time on your hands and this is your first project and you’re excited and really want to be involved, then you could try and save some money and play the role of the GC yourself. Make a list of the repairs
That needs to be done and start getting estimates. You should get 3 separate quotes on each repair Quick tip: Be sure that you call contractors that give free estimates, make that clear on the initial call because some guys don’t tell you that they charge for estimates up front, they just hand you a bill. Again, I can’t stress this enough… don’t just go with the cheapest guy out there. You have to ask a lot of questions, get references, and make sure you feel comfortable with them, and do that for each contractor that you’re going to need; the plumber, the carpenter, the painter and so on. Oh, and if you have any skills that you can bring to the table, then by all means role up your sleeves and get to work.
Once you have a really good idea of how much you’re going to spend on fixing up this house and how much you’ll be able to sell it for then you can figure out what your profit will be and is it worth the time that you will be putting into the project. It’s not hard to make money in real estate but you have to do your homework and you have to do all things I talked about in this article.
If you’re interested in finding bargain properties in Orlando visit our website at https://sellmyhouseinorlando.com/ or just call me at 407-902-7749. I hope this information
was helpful to you. Thanks for reading.
Hi I’m John Conde, Owner of Stop Foreclosure Orlando, Inc. Orlando’s premier source for bargain properties
If you want buy a fixer upper I strongly recommend that you really do your home work. Now I’m a pretty experienced real estate investor and over the years have re-habbed close to three hundred houses so I’m going to share a few things with you that I’ve unfortunately learned the hard way. Things that can save you a lot of time, money and frustration.
When you go look at properties you want to make sure that the main components of the house are in overall good shape. Things like the roof, the kitchen, and bathrooms…now you may have to do a little upgrading to those rooms and that’s fine but, unless you’re a seasoned re-habber you should stay away from houses needing any major structural repairs. Now it’s absolutely critical that you know what the after repaired value of the property is. The best thing to do is find a good local realtor to do some comparables for you of recently sold properties in that area and out of all the comparables that the realtor gives you expect that yours will sell at the cheapest price. Don’t try to convince yourself that your house will sell for the highest price on the whole street. That’s just not realistic and you’ll regret thinking that way later. I can’t tell you how many newbie investors I’ve talked to that wanted to get into re-habbing business so badly that they tried to turn a “non-deal” into a “deal” and the end result is always the same…they lost money and came away with a horrible experience. PLEASE DON’T DO THIS YOU WILL REGRET IT!!!
So let’s say you’ve found a good a deal and you’re ready to submit a contract on it. Make sure that you give yourself at least a 7 day inspection period. This will give you plenty of time to get the house thoroughly inspected by a professional home inspector. The inspector will look at things like the electrical system, look for termite damage, the plumbing, etc. All these types of repairs can be really expensive especially if it’s an older house. Believe me…it’s much better to spend a few hundred dollars upfront and maybe lose it than to not be sure about what you’re getting into and be surprised later. Remember…any repair that you have to make that you weren’t expecting to make comes right out of your profit. When the inspector finishes his inspection he will provide you with an inspection report and it will list all the hidden things that he found wrong with the house. The good thing about that is you can use this report to try and negotiate the price down even more with the seller.
Now in the same time frame that your have your inspections done you should be getting estimates for the repairs you need to do. Now there are 2 ways you can do this. One way is to get a general contractor or a “GC” that will give you a quote on the entire job. That’s someone that doesn’t necessarily do the work himself, he usually has a crew to do all the work and his job is just to manage everyone. This is what I do because I work on my business not in my business. Now depending on how involved you want to be and how much time you want to spend at the property this may be your best option. The other good thing about using a good general contractor is that the job gets done much faster and at the end of the day the faster you can finish, the faster you can sell it and move on to the next one. But you will spend more money by using a GC. Oh and…always, always make sure that you check his license and get references this is very important. I found out the hard way that you should never hire someone just because they’re the cheapest. This will always, always end costing you more money and headaches in the long run. Quick tip: If you get the feeling that the guy may be a heavy partier, don’t hire him!! He will definitely have some no show days.
Now if you have extra time on your hands and this is your first project and you’re excited and really want to be involved, then you could try and save some money and play the role of the GC yourself. Make a list of the repairs
That needs to be done and start getting estimates. You should get 3 separate quotes on each repair Quick tip: Be sure that you call contractors that give free estimates, make that clear on the initial call because some guys don’t tell you that they charge for estimates up front, they just hand you a bill. Again, I can’t stress this enough… don’t just go with the cheapest guy out there. You have to ask a lot of questions, get references, and make sure you feel comfortable with them, and do that for each contractor that you’re going to need; the plumber, the carpenter, the painter and so on. Oh, and if you have any skills that you can bring to the table, then by all means role up your sleeves and get to work.
Once you have a really good idea of how much you’re going to spend on fixing up this house and how much you’ll be able to sell it for then you can figure out what your profit will be and is it worth the time that you will be putting into the project. It’s not hard to make money in real estate but you have to do your homework and you have to do all things I talked about in this article.
If you’re interested in finding bargain properties in Orlando visit our website at https://sellmyhouseinorlando.com/ or just call me at 407-902-7749. I hope this information
was helpful to you. Thanks for reading.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Make it “not about the money”… you’ll make more money!
I do a tremendous amount of reading whether it’s newspapers, magazines, blogs, tweets, etc. Most of the reading I do involves what I do for a living…Real Estate Investing in Orlando. The one thing that I am noticing more and more is that real estate professionals are using social media more than ever. Unfortunately, a lot of the content that I’ve seen out there lately doesn’t have much value to it. I would say that a good percentage of it just seems like an ad trying to get the reader to a squeeze page or a website where the whole purpose of the squeeze page is to get your information and add you to some buyers or sellers list. Then once you’re on that list you will receive a weekly or sometimes even a daily email about why you should sell your house to this person or you’ll receive a list of overpriced investment properties. Is that really what the reader signed up for? Did they really get any kind of useful advice out of what they just read?
Don’t get me wrong, I tell my coaching clients all of the time that they need to use social media as part of there marketing. If they aren’t, then they are missing the boat. What I also tell them is to provide good content when they post a blog or an article. Whenever I write an article, blog, free report, etc. I always do it with the intention of providing the reader with at least one thing that would be helpful to them. What I mean by that is the reader actually took something away with them that they can implement or at least think about. I’ve found over the years that when you make it “not about the money”…you make more money!
People are not stupid and when you go out of your way to provide them with good service, not only will they appreciate it but they will come back to you to find a great investment property or to do their short sale for them. Not only that but when they have a friend that needs to stop a foreclosure, they will call you. I guess the moral of this story is… Good Content Is KING!
I do a tremendous amount of reading whether it’s newspapers, magazines, blogs, tweets, etc. Most of the reading I do involves what I do for a living…Real Estate Investing in Orlando. The one thing that I am noticing more and more is that real estate professionals are using social media more than ever. Unfortunately, a lot of the content that I’ve seen out there lately doesn’t have much value to it. I would say that a good percentage of it just seems like an ad trying to get the reader to a squeeze page or a website where the whole purpose of the squeeze page is to get your information and add you to some buyers or sellers list. Then once you’re on that list you will receive a weekly or sometimes even a daily email about why you should sell your house to this person or you’ll receive a list of overpriced investment properties. Is that really what the reader signed up for? Did they really get any kind of useful advice out of what they just read?
Don’t get me wrong, I tell my coaching clients all of the time that they need to use social media as part of there marketing. If they aren’t, then they are missing the boat. What I also tell them is to provide good content when they post a blog or an article. Whenever I write an article, blog, free report, etc. I always do it with the intention of providing the reader with at least one thing that would be helpful to them. What I mean by that is the reader actually took something away with them that they can implement or at least think about. I’ve found over the years that when you make it “not about the money”…you make more money!
People are not stupid and when you go out of your way to provide them with good service, not only will they appreciate it but they will come back to you to find a great investment property or to do their short sale for them. Not only that but when they have a friend that needs to stop a foreclosure, they will call you. I guess the moral of this story is… Good Content Is KING!
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