Your buying price must be low enough to make you profits whether you sell them right away or keep them as cash flow properties.

So how do you determine the best price for your property?

A few years ago, it was not un-usual to buy a house at 80 cents on the dollar and wholesale it for a tidy profit because the market supported it.  In fact, you always expected the price of the house to go up within a few months.

In the current market, when you buy a house, you expect the price to go down.   Almost every home owner has lost some equity in the home in the last one year.

When buying a house, you must consider this fact.  Today, the regular price for wholesale properties is 60 to 65 cents on the dollar minus repairs.

Also, tenants have become more choosy since there are more houses to chose from, and are likely to go for a house with a pristine rehab job.

This has made rental prices more competitive.

When you are buying houses, it is necessary to make sure you let the seller know these facts.

So I always let a seller know that even though it seems like they are giving me a deep discount on their property, I have to fix it, then sell it, probably hold it for months and eventually sell it at a deep discount.

And probably I’ll not be able to sell it at all!

I explain that I might lose most of my profits when I hold it.  When most sellers understand these facts, most  of them relax.

I like to make this clear before I can make an offer.  I have come to learn that even though motivated sellers really need to get rid of their properties, they do not like to feel like they are being taken advantage of.

Once they understand the current market conditions, then I can make my offer – and it offer does not look too low-ball and the seller is likely to accept it.

Why do you need to explain all this?

In the current market, it means you must buy houses much cheaper than we used to just a few years ago since you also must sell low in order to sell it at all.

If you buy properties on terms such as lease options, it is also necessary to do this. You must remember that even though the price for properties that you buy on terms is usually higher, it must still be low enough to cater for the facts above.

This way, in a year or two when you try to sell it, the price at that price will support the sale.

When buying houses, it is necessary to to pre-educate motivated sellers so they understand how you buy houses. It is also important to generate leads and follow up with them automatically to convert them to motivated sellers automatically. Find out how an automated real estate investing website can attract, pre-educate and deliver motivated sellers fully pre-screened and pre-negotiated so you close more deals using less time, money and effort.

Real estate investors can now take advantage of the inbuilt social media features for marketing. Websites visitors can make comments through their facebook accounts directly on the websites, and share these comments with their friends without leaving the websites.

The visitors can also use the Like feature that has become quite popular with the social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus.

This release is an enhancement of previous releases that add to the marketing features built into the websites.

With superior search engine optimization, the websites are built to attract targeted visitors. A life-like video speaking model instantly attracts attention and delivers a down to earth, believable message that entices them to take action now.

Visitors can also request free pre-loaded Ebooks that deliver valuable information, and the websites  automatically follow up with them using in-built automation and pre-loaded autoresponder messages. The websites are therefore created to attract visitors and convert them into closed real estate deals.

Being controlled from a simple virtual back office, they are easy to manage even for real estate investors who are new to computers. They come loaded with numerous designs and features, and can be fully personalized and adapted to suit any real estate investing business model.

Most importantly, each website is delivered fully customized and personalized ready for business usually within one hour.

For more information, please visit www.RealEstateInvestorsWebsites.net or call 214-227-8718.

It gets even more complicated when there are junior liens, such as a second mortgage. So how do you deal with junior liens in a short sale? This article shows you how you can make lots of money negotiating junior liens.

As a real estate investor, you probably come across houses where the owner owes more than the value of the property. Actually these properties seem to have become more so common in the current real estate market they seem to be the majority of homes for sale.

If the owner has more than one mortgage, it is possible to negotiate a short sale for both liens separately. This presents a huge opportunity when you are able to negotiate these junior liens.

The owner of a junior lien mostly stands to walk away with nothing in foreclosure. They are therefore more than willing to accept a small fraction of their mortgage balance in a short sale negotiation. Do not be surprised if you pay $5000 for a $50,000 lien.

In the meantime, the holder of the first mortgage an negotiate as must as 15% to 20% of the mortgage balance. You end up creating a lot of equity by negotiating these two liens, creating an opportunity where none seemed to exist.

What challenges do you face in these negotiations?

1) Motivated sellers
The first challenge is convincing the seller that a short sale may be the best way to go. Even though every lender lets defaulting home owners know about foreclosure options, home owners may not have any idea how to do a short sale.

Secondly, short sales can take a lot of time, so the home owner must be willing to wait this long.

They must work with you to provide the tedious paper work required for a short sale, especially when they have to replicate this effort twice.

Of course, they also need to know that short sale may not get approved, and their home could go to foreclosure if negotiations fail.

2) Banks
You must be ready to submit two complete short sale packets. You must be ready to follow up and make sure the paper work has been received. You must be ready to make all the phone calls to each lien holder  and stay close to the process at all times.

If the property was already in foreclosure, you must make sure the lender will stop foreclosure process as you negotiate the short sale. It is not uncommon for a property to be foreclosed in the middle of  a short sale negotiation.

You have to remember that approval of just one of the liens may mean the deal cannot work as investment property.

3) Closing
Lenders usually give some time to allow for closing. Before a short sale can be approved, thy need to see proof of funds. This can be a pre-qualification letter from a lender.

You must have the money to close within the time allowed by the lenders or the property goes back into foreclosure.

Ultimately, you can create a lot of equity by negotiating junior liens which can in turn create big profits for you.

Real estate investors can now pre-educate potential motivated sellers by providing educative Ebooks that benefit people looking to sell their houses. These leads can then automatically continue to receive daily follow-up messages that provide value to the motivated sellers’ needs with a goal of converting them from prospects to people that sell their houses.

A real estate investor will therefore convert more cold prospects to closed deals while using less money, time and effort.

The websites also come integrated with social media such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others so that they can reach more prospects through the social media. This is also quite effective when real estate investors are selling houses in their inventory, enabling them to be more exposed to the market through social media.

The websites come with numerous designs and time-tested, effective copy that converts cold leads to motivated sellers or private money lenders. This means that a real estate investor can have his website set up and ready for business within one hour.

In order to convert more visitors to motivated sellers or clients, the websites come equipped with a life-like video speaking spokesperson that commands instant attention and delivers a down to earth believable message that relates with website visitors.

With superior search engine optimization, real estate investors can attract more leads through the search engines and convert most of them to motivated sellers or clients using less time, money and effort.
For more information, visit www.RealEstateInvestorsWebsites.net or call 214-227-8718.

This can continue bringing you business and profits naturally for years to come.

In this article, we look at the techniques you can use to boost your search engine rankings.

On-site optimization
SEO starts with making sure your website contains the keywords that you target. Ideally the keywords should be included in

1) Title – Page title in found in the meta tags. You can see the page title on top of the browser. When you do a search in the search engines, the title is the one that comes out in bold. This is usually a short sentence that describes the content of the page in 250 words or less.

2) Description – this is also in the meta tags. The meta description can be longer than the title and provide more information.

3) Content – the keywords should be included naturally in the content for the human eye as well as the search engines. Do not over-exaggerate by putting the keyword too many times.

4) Domain name – if at all possible, if the domain name contains the keywords, you will rank better than a domain without those keywords.

Offsite optimization – link building
Offsite search engine optimization involves building links from third party websites to your website. A website with many websites linking to it is considered by the search engines as being more popular, and is ranked higher than less popular websites.

As much as you can, the anchor text you use to link to your website should be a keyword.

You should be careful not to build links too fast, or the search engines could sandbox (blacklist) your website as a spammer.

Building links involves several activities:

1. Articles
When you post content in article directories, they allow you to put a link back to your website. There are hundreds of article directories that can provide permanent links back to your website.

Writing articles will not only bring you lots of business, but will also boost your search engine rankings.

2. Profiles
Whenever you open accounts if websites, such we social networking media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, they allow you to provide a profile inclusing a link back to your website. There are hundreds of such sites available.

3. Web 2.0 properties
Always post your articles in web 2.0 properties and blog sites like WordPress, Squidoo, Blogger, etc with links back to your website.

4. Classified directories
There are thousands of directories that allow you to post short classified ads with a link back to your website.

5. RSS Directories
Whenever possible, if your websie allows an RSS feed, you should submit this feed to RSS directories. This allows your content to be re-distributed to other websites, with a link back to your website.

6. Videos
Video marketing has become very popular. Be sure to distribute your videos to all video sites for best results.

7. Bookmarks
There are hundreds of book mark sites that allow posting your link and a summary of your content. Search engines love these sites, and can boost your search engine rankings within a few days.

8. Blog and forum commenting
If done right, this can be very beneficial, providing drastic search engine benefits. Unfortunately this method is abused and can lead to most of your comments being deleted as spam if not done right.

These are the most popular search engine optimization techniques that are likely to boost your search engine rankings drastically. At the very least, your real estate investing website should be optimized so it continues bringing business for you naturally for years to come.

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.

Real estate investors looking to increase the efficiency of their business now have access to these upgraded websites starting immediately. The websites emphasize prominent capability to reduce the workload that overwhelms most real estate investors, opening up their time so they close more deals in less time, and spending less money.

The websites require no computer or internet expertise, and can be used by any real estate investors even if  they are new to computers. Most importantly, they can be used to manage all aspects of real estate investing from a simple virtual back office.

Using their inbuilt landing or squeeze pages, real estate investors can run targeted marketing campaigns. They can then set up automated emails marketing campaigns using the unlimited autoresponders in order to convert the  leads generated by their marketing to closed deals.

The websites also emphasize direct sales marketing and come with fully personalized sales copy written to convert website visitors to clients, motivated sellers, house buyers or private money lenders. Most importantly, real estate investors have full control of the content and all elements of the website so each website can be fully personalized and branded to suit the needs of the real estate investors business.

Each website comes loaded with over 140 effective designs so investors can change designs any time they want for free. With a video life-like speaking model , the websites command instant attention and deliver a down to earth message that relates with the website visitor converting them to people who are ready to do business.

Each website goes through the most advanced search engine optimization to make sure they get enhanced visibility in the search engines especially in their local market. In addition, they are submitted to all the major search engines before they are delivered so they start attracting business as soon as possible.

For more information, please visit www.RealEstateInvestorsWebsites.net, or call 214-227-8718.

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.

This article goes though what can go wrong with a short sale and how you can avoid loss to your business.

Short sales can create a lot of equity and profits and make good deals even better or create good deals  from deals that were otherwise marginal or non-existent.

The following is a few things that can go wrong in a short sale

1)      Short sales take time

Typically it takes two to three months for a short sale to be completed. Sometimes it can take much longer than you expect, sometimes as long as 6 months.

 Do not be surprised if your file is lost, or the documents you send do not find your file for weeks. It is therefore important to be prepared for these delays and not have short sales as your primary source of income.

 2)      Rejected offers

As much as you may think your offer should make all the sense to the lender and that they should accept your offer, sometimes they just reject them.

 This means you might have to go with their counter offer or increase your offer price. If the offer does not make business sense, you need to be ready to drop the deal.

 3)      Shaky sellers

It is not unusual to have your sellers develop cold feet to the short sale process. Lenders need a lot of information, including a statement of hardship where the seller explains the financial difficulty that forces them to be unable to continue making payments. Usually they may need to see proof income, bank statements, etc.

 On top of this they may request for more information before they can make their decision.

 Some sellers may get discouraged by this process and give up in the middle of the process. As the real estate investor, it is therefore important to explain to the sellers what is involved in the short sale, and the expected time lines and possible pitfalls that can be expected.

 As long as they understand the process,  they are unlikely to have a change of heart in the middle of the process.

4)      Unable to close

You have an approval from the lender but your financing is not ready. Typically, banks will give you a time period within which you must close the deal.

 If you are using private money or hard money to close the deal, it is important to make sure you have the process well ahead and ready to close if you get an approval.

 If you are a realtor who has submitted a short sale offer to the lender on behalf of a buyer, it is important that you get the buyer scrutinize the property so they know exactly what they are getting for the money.

 It is not unusual to a buyer back out or notice problems or repairs and requests to lower the price to cover them.

 The bank may accept or reject such counter-offers,  but being prepared can save you from this experience.

Successful real estate investing requires that you automate most of your tasks and increase efficiency to do more deals spending less time and money. Learn how you can run your business from a feature packed real estate investor website with numerous designs and features that make your work easier.

 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.