Chapter 2: How NOT to Get Started!

Before we get started in the nitty, gritty details, I thought I should share some background information on myself with you so that you might have a better understanding of how I approach real estate investing. I used to be a CPA with a large accounting firm and hated every minute of it. Every Sunday night, I would have a pit in my stomach with the thought of having to start another work week. My job in the accounting firm was to go audit our clients’ financial statements. So everyday I would go to work at companies that didn’t really want me there. I was an auditor. Nobody likes an auditor. While auditing these companies, I started to feel like I was on the sidelines watching them make things happen. My clients’ companies were making things happen. They were in the game. I felt as if I wasn’t really in the game. I was just checking the score. Who likes to sit on the sidelines? The fun is in the game.

Ever since college, I knew that real estate investing was very profitable. I kept thinking that real estate investing would be a great way to earn a living without having to sit behind a desk all day long. So, like many people, I bought one of those so-called “get rich buying real estate” systems from a TV commercial. I won’t name any names, but if you turn on your TV very late tonight, I’d be willing to bet you’ll find a new version of the same commercial running on some channel.

I read every book I could find on how to buy foreclosed homes and sell them for a profit. I can honestly say that I tried everything recommended by these books and tapes. This book has been written with my blood, sweat and tears from real estate investing. As an investor, I have learned from my own real life experiences. As a real estate broker, I’ve learned from countless clients that have invested in real estate using different approaches. The approach to investing that we’ve moved toward over the years continues to work so well because of the underlying philosophy, which I’ll explain in detail throughout this book. It took a lot of mistakes to realize why investing in real estate was so challenging. Here are some of the mistakes I made...
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My First Try to Make Money…
I found out through the school of hard knocks that “Get Rich in Your Spare Time” really meant spending a whole lot of time making not so much money. One of the books that I read recommended that I go and find sellers that would sell their home to me and act as the bank. So, in essence, I should buy their home, and they would receive monthly payments from me over time instead of their full sales price at the time of sale. With this approach, I supposedly wouldn’t need a bank and could buy homes without having a down payment. The truth was that the only people willing to accept this arrangement had homes that were garbage.

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s mortgage interest rates became so low that there was a huge supply of home buyers. Because there were so many buyers, home sellers could get their full asking price without having to take any risk by accepting monthly payments. The real estate market in general, over the last few years, has been a seller’s market. This means that in most cases the seller calls the shots. If interest rates go into the double digits again, I suspect that these techniques might be more profitable, because the market will become a buyer’s market.
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My Second Try to Make Money…
My next approach to making money was to try to buy foreclosed homes and fix them up for a quick resale. Hey, wait a minute; on the TV commercial, these guys were making$50,000 or $60,000 in a weekend. So this seemed like a logical step in my investing career. So I ran out and got pre-approved for a mortgage. Then the foreclosure book told me to go to sheriff sales and make bids on foreclosed homes. So, that’s exactly what I did.I spent the good part of a year looking for foreclosed homes. This entailed studying legal foreclosure notices, researching the public records, reviewing the foreclosure records at the court house, driving by and looking at the exterior of the foreclosed homes, going to the sheriff sales to bid on these homes.

You notice that above I stated that I spent the good part of the year trying to profit from flipping foreclosed homes.I invested nine months in this approach to real estate investing; except that when you invest, you typically get a return on your investment. In my case, I guess I didn’t invest; I just burned the rubber off my tires. I spent nine months trying to bird-dog these foreclosures without earning $1.00. During this whole time, I wasn’t able to buy any of these foreclosed homes.What I found out is that in most cases, the lender/bank that is foreclosing on the home usually buys the home back at the sheriff sale.

The lender’s position is that they will make more money buying the home at the sheriff sale and then listing it for sale with a Realtor than if they let it sell at the auction. The reason is that they don’t want some greedy investor, like you, to make all of the money. So on every occasion that I was bidding at a sheriff sale, my highest bid was outbid by the foreclosing lenders or someone else.
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Quick Tip: If you are going to buy homes at an auction, you should consider not bidding at all during the auction.My suggestion would be to approach the winning bidder after the gavel drops and offer them a few thousand dollars more for the property. Using this method, the home’s price doesn’t get bid up too high, and you get the home at a much lower price. You would buy the home directly from the winning bidder. The winning bidder gets to collect a few thousand dollars for a few minutes of their time!