Real estate investors therefore find it harder and harder to sell their properties like they use to.
Likewise, if you are looking to sell your house even if you are not a real estate investor, you find yourself stuck with properties that generate little or no interest from buyers.

In this article, we look at how seller financing can generate interest from buyers resulting to a quick sale even at a higher price.

What is seller financing?
In seller financing, the seller agrees to carry part or whole of the financing for his property.   The seller probably has no mortgage, or probably owes a mortgage on it.

In either case, you may need advice on how to structure the deal and close it properly.   Make sure you talk to your CPA and real estate attorney.

When the seller accepts to owner finance the property, the buyer pays a down payment.   The seller then receives monthly payments just like a bank.

Why seller financing?
The days  when just staging your property was enough to sell it are long gone.   Why should a buyer choose your property when there are numerous other properties in the neighborhood  are selling for a lower price?

Before a buyer ever comes to see your house, they will have to be attracted to it by the terms you have set for the sale.  seller financing attracts a lot of attention for your properties.

With the banks tightening their lending procedures, most people can no longer qualify for a conventional mortgage.   Lots of people have also ended up with bruised credit.  These buyers can only own properties through owner financing.

As a seller, this makes owner financing a great way to generate a lot of interest and possibly even end up selling it at a higher price.

The best price is estimated from comparable sales in the area.

It is important to be careful which properties you use as comparable sales.  Properties that have been sold with seller financing carry a higher price than others sold in the conventional way.  Therefore, its price may not reflect the true value of similar properties.

With seller financing, you end up selling your house faster, even at a higher price.

In a market with so many properties for sale and few buyers, real estate investors that adapt to changing trends are the ones that continue to make profits.   seller financing allows them sell their properties faster where others cannot.

So how do you make sure you have a constant supply of leads for your business?

1)      Target your leads

This is the first thing to do. You must decide who you want to reach in your business. For example, if you are looking for wholesale deals, you are likely to target neighborhoods that are older, say with houses ten years old or more. The price range is likely to be medium range.

If you target owner financed properties, then you will probably target properties that have no mortgage. Similarly, if you target subject-to deals, you are likely to target newer properties that need few or no repairs.

Unless you narrow down your market, you are likely to waste a lot of time following the wrong leads,  and money marketing to the wrong people.

2)      Polish your marketing message

The message you send your leads must be powerful enough to convince them to sign up with you or call you.

No matter which marketing method you use, you must make sure the message has an instant appeal to the prospects and a call to action that makes them give you a call or sign up on your real estate investor website.

3)      Use multiple marketing systems

How do you reach your prospects? There is no single method that is all-ultimate when marketing to your prospects. The response to each method will vary from month to month.

You must therefore use all methods at your disposal – letters, post cards, online advertising  like Craigslist, bandit signs if they are allowed in your area, newspaper classifieds, TV, radio, etc.

This will keep the leads coming in from all directions; when one method may produce a lot of leads now, another one might do better tomorrow. Even though you might have a favorite method, it is a combination of your marketing methods that will keep the leads coming in all year round.

4)      Capture and manage your leads efficiently

So where does your call to action in your marketing message take your prospects? You must give them access to your real estate investor website and phone number.

The prospects that go to your real estate investor website are likely to be fully pre-educated for you and convert leads that are sitting on the fence to people that do business with you. If your website is well designed, once they sign up, you receive a fully pre-screened pre-negotiated deal that requires very little of your time to follow up or move on to the next one.

A good real estate investor website also has an inbuilt marketing system, that automatically follows up with people who have not converted into motivated sellers. This happens without any input from you and converts such leads into people that sell you their houses.

The ones that just pick up the phone are likely to have lots of questions that need answers to, because all they have come across if a short marketing message.

A good website for real estate investing is suggested at the end of this message.

5)      Analyze your marketing

Unless you know where the leads are coming from, you are likely to spend your money in the wrong marketing outlets, and waste a lot of time with marketing that yields poor or no results.

Analyze and measure your marketing and you will have leads coming in all year round with very little input from you.

So what can you do as a real estate investor to be relatively safe with your tenants? This article explores a few options that can protect you.

Yesterday , a friend of mine, Willie,  called me to assist him return a flat screen TV back to Best Buy using my van. Now, Willie is a very composed guy who never raises his voice and always seems to know his way around. On our way to Best Buy, he got phone call that ticked my attention… Willie was raising his voice with every sentence; by the end of the conversation he was shouting and looked so mad that I had to ask him to break the conversation.

It turned out his tenant of 6 months breaks something in the house every month. Her rent is paid by section 8, so she only pays $86. Every month, she has to make sure that something is broken and has an excuse not to pay the $86 so she can fix it. Willie now lives in Texas, her tenant is in Indiana – which means he usually accepts these bills from her tenant!

To make matters worse, she recently called section 8 to complain about the “deplorable condition” of the house – which had passed section 8 inspection just 6 months ago. As a result, section 8 stopped making any rent payments. Now he is stuck with a tenant who breaks down his house, who refuses to move out, and who will not even pay $86.

So what to do? Lots of landlords have similar horror stories to tell. How can we protect ourselves from this nightmare?

1)      Screen, screen, screen!

We are living in tough economic times, and chances of delinquency are now bigger than ever before.

Make sure the rent application is fully completed. Make sure they sign documents that allow you to pull their credit.

Call their place of work to verify employment even if you have a paystub.

Talk to every previous landlord and ask specific questions about their stay there. The questions must be specific, such as “Has she ever been late making her payments?” “Have you ever taken her to court?” “how well does she take care of the apartment?” etc.

These questions allow you to evaluate not only the credit worthiness of the tenant but also the kind of character you are dealing with.

2)      Do a background check

Do a criminal background check to make sure they don’t have a criminal record. I cannot emphasize the importance of this.

3)      Use a good lease contract

Make sure your contract is mandated by your local real estate commission, or that your attorney has approved it. A good contract will protect you on all fronts.

If you do find yourself with a bad tenant, a good contract will protect you in front of a judge. While nothing is bullet-proof, this will be an asset you may value in such bad cases.

4)      Inspect the property

Make sure you take your tenant through the house as they inspect the house. Take pictures of them inspecting the house, as well as any noted problems.

Make sure you sign the contract inside the property. They must initial every page on the contract.

5)      Good luck!

Hopefully this process has protected you and you will enjoy a good cash flow with your properties.

Simon Macharia is a real estate investor in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex. Whether you are buying or selling houses on retail, wholesale or on terms, or even renting them, find out you can be more efficient by closing more deals using less effort, time and money through an automated real estate investing website.

 There are so many motivated sellers in today’s real estate market that you cannot handle all of them.  To save money and be more effective in your direct mail campaigns, you must therefore clean up your mailing lists.
 Here is how to get a good return on investment in your direct mail.

 People in trouble who own real estate form my mailing lists, such as people going through divorce, people with liens, bankruptcy, etc. Most likely these people are looking to get rid of their houses or they end up in foreclosure.

I also look for people who have inherited properties.    Sometimes they inherit the mortgage and if there is no mortgage, they need to cash out.   The beneficiaries usually cannot fix them up and find it hard to sell them in the open market.  These probate properties can be very profitable.

 Absentee owners also form part of my mailing lists. Usually these are land lords, and sometimes people who either divorced or work out of town.   Most land lords are looking to get out after having being burned by bad tenants.   Usually they own several properties which can all be good deals.

Expired listings from the MLS also form a big part of my target properties.  Of course these people have been looking to sell, but have not been successful.

This means I sometimes end up with 1500 to 2000 new leads every week. All this means I can have 1500 to 2000 new leads a week.   I must therefore clean them up and target them better.

1) Geographical area
 Since I live in a big metro area, I can only buy houses from a small area.  This means I only target certain zip codes.   No matter where you live, avoid war zones.

 I avoid houses more than 30 minutes drive away.

2) Price range
Since I wholesale most of my properties, I avoid the very low end properties and the very high end properties.   The middle range properties are better for me because there are more buyers.

3) Recording date
If a property was last recoded less than 10 years ago, it’s out of my mailing list.   Sometimes inherited properties can have exceptions.

 This is because they could have some equity.   If they have refinanced they may not have as much equity.

4) Return mail
I send 2 post cards and if sending direct mail to probate leads, I send several of them over a few months.   Some of these addresses are undeliverable and bounce back.   You must get rid of these  addresses in your next mail sequence to save money.

Simon macharia invests in real estate in the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex. His real estate investing business is fuelled by leads generated by direct mail and through his real estate website. Learn how a good real estate investor website can help you close more deals while spending less money, time and effort.

 Before you get funded, you have to make payments in points plus other fees in addition to high interest rates.  Of course this results to less profits. Of course a lot of them now even need credit rating to lend hard money.

This has stopped a lot of real estate investors from doing deals they once used to finance with hard money.   In this article we cover how you can finance your REOs and short sales.

 Banks always need to see proof of funds before they can allow the deal to go through.   A lot of real estate investors used to depend on hard money lenders for this.  Once you have lined up a reliable source of private money, this can be your proof of funds for your REOs.

If you wholesale properties the process will work the same as with other types of funding except you are using private money.  Contract assignment cannot work in this case.   You have to buy and sell the property on the same closing table in simultaneous closing.

The process goes something like this:

1) Identify the right property
In order to do a simultaneous closing, you must choose properties that will give you a sizable amount of profit.   This is because you must pay some closing costs both when buying and selling the property.  These costs should be absorbed by a big profit margin.

 A profit of $10,000 and above is good enough.

2) Identify your wholesale buyer
This is the person who will buy the property from you, usually a real estate investor.   These properties are usually sold at wholesale prices.

Make sure the buyer shows you proof of funds or the deal might not close!

 You will then sign a regular purchase sale agreement with them.

Of course, you sell the house more than you buy it.

3) Get your private money to the title company
 Have your private money investor wire the money to the title company.   This is the money you will use to close the first transaction.

Depending on what you have agreed with your private money investor, you will pay a small percentage between 1-2% for this transactional funding.

4) Your title company closes the two deals
 Once the deal is closed, you will walk home with the difference between your buying and selling price less closing costs and transactional funding.

 Since your fees are much less, you end up making more money.   This type of transaction works like this:

$100,000 – after repaired value
$50,000 – bank accepts your short sale offer
$75,000 – price you sell to your buyer
$25,000 your profit at closing
Costs:- $1000 private money fees plus any closing fees

As a cash buyer, it also means you can get your properties much cheaper than conventional buyers.

 You can use this method for both short sales and REOs. As long as the numbers make sense, your private money can buy you lots of deals this way.

In other words you use the private money as the source of funds to buy the property from the bank, then flip it on the same table to a cash buyer such as a real estate investor.

Simon Macharia invests in real estate and has done most real estate investing transactions. Learn how a good real estate website can attract private money investors for your business.

One of the biggest questions most real estate investors is how they can identify people with money that are looking to invest in real estate. Once you have identified these private money investors, they can finance your deals whenever you identify them.

This article walks you through how to identify potential private money lenders for your deals.

Whether you have lots of money when you start investing in real estate or great credit score, a time comes when you find yourself stretched thin and can no longer afford another deal. This applies whether you do creative financing for your deals or not.

For this reason, you need a reliable source of cold hard cash when you need it, even at short notice. To be successful, your real estate investing business should not be limited by the amount of money available to do your deals.

For this reason, it is important that you identify potential private money investors who are looking to invest their money in real estate and adopt them as your private money lenders.

Here are the steps you need to follow to attract potential private money investors for your reale state investing business:

1)      Get a private money lenders website

This must be the first thing on your priority list. In this day and age, almost everyone will look you up online. A website tells your story the way you want it presented to potential private money investors.

When they visit your website before they call you, they already know how you do business and are probably already warmed up that they are ready to look at the deals you have.

A good private money lender website comes fully loaded and equipped with personalize content that is written to convince potential private money investors that their money is safely invested with you.

A good website is suggested at the foot of this article.

2)      Look up mortgage documents

Most court houses now have online access where you can access property information including mortgage information online. If you do not have this access, then you have to go physically to your local county court house and search for these mortgage  documents.

The courthouse clerks will prove to be a big help in this process.

What you are looking for are mortgages done by individuals, not companies. Individual lien holders are usually people who have sold their property in owner financing, or have privately financed that lien as private money investors.

Take the names, addresses and phone numbers of these leads. The first thing you need to do is send them a letter explaining to them what you do and that you are looking for private money investors for a high return on their investment.

Of course, you must send them to your private money website, as well as provide your full contact information.

Secondly, if you have a phone number, you may need to give them a call after week or so to follow up with your letter. Of course, you will call the people that have not given you a call or signed up from your website.

Some of the prospects will be ready to lend you their money; in this case, you will just need to present your deals to them as you get them.

Other prospects (owner financing sellers) will be frustrated by the fact that they receive a monthly payment instead of one lump sum for their property. In this case you can help them sell their note to potential money investors at a discount and you make a few thousand dollars on the side.

Of course, others will not be interested in talking to you.

This way you combine the power of an informative interactive real estate website with technology and a little research to attract all the money you need for your real estate investing deals.

For this reason, attracting private money is has become more important than ever before. This article gives you a few pointers you can use to attract private money to finance your real estate investing deals.

Depending on getting a mortgage for your real estate investing deals has become a tight game. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not lend for real estate investing deals.

Even hard money has become tough to get. If you do get a hard money loan, you could end up paying as much as 25% in interest and points.

It is therefore more important than ever before to attract private money lenders or investors. In some cases, only one private money investor is enough for your deals, sometimes you need more than one.

So how do you attract private money investors?

1)    Get a good real estate investing website

The first private money investor I had found me on the internet through my private money real estate investor website.

A good real estate investor website tells your story for you and convinces potential private money investors that their money is safe when invested in your deals.

Before they even get to talk to you, they already know most of the details they need to lend you money. They know how you work, and what remains is presenting your deals as you get them.

And when you present yourself to them in person or hand out business cards, your website becomes the most important presentation kit to potential private money lenders.

A good real estate investing website is recommended at the foot of this article.

2)    Group presentations

Depending on your comfort level, you can do group presentations to several potential private money lenders. This can get you several private money investors at once and can be a very powerful way of attracting private money.

3)    One on one presentations

Chances are that you must meet all your private money lenders. A one on one meeting is easy to organize and manage. I’d recommend you meet in a restaurant for a meal or breakfast where you present your program’s details and benefits.

This keeps the presentation less formal and intimidating as compared to a group of people.

4)    Word of mouth

If you are doing many deals and find that you need more private money lenders, your existing private money lenders probably know friends they can recommend to you.

Whenever someone accepts to become a private money lender, you ask them how much money they have to invest in your deals. You can therefore tell if you will need to look for more private money lenders, or if only one will be enough for you.

Do not hesitate to ask if they have friends they can recommend who would like to invest their money in real estate.

5)    Existing private money lenders

As long as your existing private money lenders are getting a good return on their investment, chances are they will be more than happy to invest in more of your real estate investing deals.

Do not hesitate to present more real estate investing deals as they become available; you might not need to look for more private money investors.

Successful real estate investing must be driven by a ready supply of private cash available from private money lenders. Targeting these lenders requires that you convince them that their money is safely invested in your deals. Learn how you can attract investing cash through a private money website.

 It is therefore important to learn how to evaluate your deals no matter what your business model is.

 The article teaches you tips of evaluating your deals so you make offers that make you money.

 Obviously your business model dictates how you evaluate your deals.

So in this article we will look at some general scenarios which should be a rough guide as to how you make your offers.

 Let us take each business model at a time:

1) Wholesale real estate investing
The general rules for buying a property you are going to flip to other real estate investors is 65 cents on the dollar minus repair costs minus your profit.

In other words when you flip a property to another real estate investor, you must make sure there is enough profit in it for them, or they will not be interested in buying it.

Secondly, you must take your profit into consideration.   The money you make after you sell it must be taken into consideration before you buy it.  Otherwise there will be nothing for you or cannot even flip it if nobody is interested in buying it.

 I prefer to go below 65% of after repaired value in a poor market.  The lower you can get it the better.

2) Buy fix and sell
 This works like wholesale real estate investing, without thinking about flipping profit.

 Since you sell properties at a discount when the market is poor, I still recommend you use the formula for wholesale real estate investing.

3) Subject to’s and lease to own real estate investing
 You can afford to buy properties at a higher price when taking over payments.

 Some people will argue you can still make money with not equity; however, my best advice is to stay out of it.

 When you take over payments, the perfect scenario is when you make money when you acquire the property, get a positive cash flow each month and cash out with a big pay day.

 Cashing out means your lease to own buyer refinances and owns the property.

  The price when your lease to own buyer refinances must therefore be acceptable by lenders.

 In a downward real estate market, you must therefore buy houses with equity.   If the market goes down, this equity will shield you.

 More so, these properties should not require repairs and should have at least 25% equity.

4) Rentals
The general rule of thumb for rentals is that your buying price divided by your yearly rent is less than 10. The less the better.  Of course this is assuming there are no repairs needed.

Successful real estate investing dictates that you buy houses at the lowest possible price, spending less time, money and effort. Learn how a good real estate investing website can automate your business and make you a more efficient and successful real estate investor.

 It is the message in the mail piece that makes all the difference.   It is the driving force behind billions of dollars in revenue generated by effective copy.

 The marketing message must be strong enough to get them call you or visit your website.

 This article concentrates on how to write effective copy for your marketing.
 Motivated sellers get bombarded with tens of letters and post cards, especially when they face foreclosure.   They cannot read all the letters!

They are also in distress, and these letters add to the agony of their experience.

 Suddenly everyone promises to change the world for them.   How can you make them believe you instead of your competition?

 This means that your message must grab their attention, appeal to their emotional needs and have a strong call to action they must act upon. And of course, one that sticks out better than all the others.

Let us look at each in turn.

1) Grab attention
 Your mail piece will be trashed if it does not grab their attention within 20 seconds.   Instant attention is therefore a must.

 They can only read the rest once you have their attention. It should be bold, direct and address a need the motivated seller holds dear emotionally promise to resolve a need the motivated seller holds emotionally.

 In other words, you must convince them that you will deliver relief, which is what a motivated seller needs.

 At the same time you must not be aggressive. Motivated sellers are going through tough times and it is important that you are sympathetic to their situation.

This applies whether you use letters or postcards in your real estate investing business.

2) Appeal to their emotional needs
 It is necessary to be sensitive to their emotional needs even though you must catch their attention.

 Your message must not only promise to buy their house, but also to relieve emotional stress caused by their financial situation.

By providing a solution and appealing to their emotional needs, you will come out stronger and more real than your competitors.

Most of the letters and post cards they receive are aggressive from real estate investors who look like they are swooping on an opportunity to grab their house off their feet.  If your mail piece appeals to them emotionally and sympathetically, you will be the one they call.

3) Have a strong call to action
 A strong call to action is a must whether you market on a website, letters or postcards.   A call to action forces them to take action – call you or visit your website.

 Successful marketing should entice them to visit your real estate investing website.   The website should pre-sell you, tell your story and convince them you are the best buyer for their house.

 Of course the website needs to have a strong call to action which forces them to submit their information online – sending you pre-screened and pre-negotiated deals.

A good real estate investing website is recommended at the end of this article.

Successful real estate investing must be driven by closing more deals spending less time, money and effort. Automating tasks and running real estate investing business is streamlined by having a real estate investor website that cuts down your work load while making you a more efficient deal maker.

This article focuses on marketing properties that you have for sale and how to reach out to potential buyers and sell your houses fast.

Of course, the main assumption when you are marketing is that you have prepared the house for sale. This may involve staging, general cleanup and presenting it in a way potential buyers will get interested.

You need to get a few things in place:

1)      Get a real estate investing website

You must have a stage for presenting your properties. A good real estate investing website serves this purpose.

From a good website, you can create description for the house, upload pictures, any documents such as disclosures, comparable sales, etc. You can also present video virtual tours if you have any.

Your real estate investor website acts as your staging platform for your properties. Check the end of this article for a good recommended website.

2)      Build a buyers list

A buyers list is a list of buyers who may be looking to buy houses where you buy and sell. Again, a good real estate investor website is necessary – it acts as the place to manage your buyers list and send out email messages to potential buyers.

3)      Target your market

You must have a geographical target market where to direct your marketing campaigns. Most likely you will want to target the immediate neighborhood more aggressively than places farther away.

4)      Humanize your marketing message

Do not describe your property like a thing. Describe its unique features and how they appeal to the needs of the buyer.

Highlight how these advantages help a potential buyer. Instead of saying located near a school or park, say something like “your kids can walk to the nearby elementary school or play in the nearby park”.

You must appeal to the emotional psychology of potential buyers by highlighting benefits rather than features.

5)      Target all marketing media

Some people read newspapers, others search on the internet.

Of course the first thing to do is to email the property to your buyers list! Your buyers list contains people who are looking to buy in your local area. Do not be surprised if you get your buyers here.

Make sure you post your property in all marketing websites you know, including places like Craigslist, Kijiji, etc.

Make sure not to forget social networking media like Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Target your local newspapers signs in front of your property, leaflets in your community bulletin boards, bandit signs if your city allows it.

And always make sure you send them to your website to view full property details. It is from your website that they get a chance to join your buyers list

6)      Review your marketing

Always have a way to determine the success or failure of your marketing and to change at a moment’s notice.

Remember marketing is a numbers game. Good luck selling your properties!

No matter what your real estate investing business model is, your real estate investing business can be more efficient so you spend less time, money and effort closing more deals. Learn how you can manage all aspects of real estate investing and automate your business from a real estate investor website that runs real estate investing.