Learn Real Estate Investing in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Dallas ONLY $349
Click Here to Receive the MOST INCREDIBLE FREE GIFT EVER!
When it comes to asset liquidity, you do have to make choices. Usually, however, liquidity is not a problem if you have substantial home equity. It’s true that a few years down the road, you might need a chunk of cash for college tuition or some other big expense. But should you need additional money, there are two popular and relatively inexpensive ways to get it. You could take a home equity loan, which is like a second mortgage. Though interest rates vary from bank to bank, the rate on a home equity loan is usually from one to two points above the prime rate.
Like a mortgage, it has fixed payments for the term you specify, usually for 5 to 20 years. It’s true that you will pay interest, but think about it this way. Suppose you put an extra $10,000 on your down payment. If your mortgage charges 6 percent interest, you are saving $600 a year, the amount it would cost you to finance the 10K. It’s as if you are getting 6 percent interest on a savings account. If your home equity loan for 10K charges 8 percent, or $800 per year, in effect it only costs you $200, or 2 percent interest.
A home equity line of credit is another good choice. Instead of borrowing a large sum all at once, you draw money out only as you need it and only pay interest on what you owe. The interest rates on both are attractive, but they have another advantage. Interest paid on both of these types of credit is tax deductible up to $100,000, regardless of how the money is used. Closing costs for either type of loan are low.
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Success,
Milton B. Yates
www.miltonyates.com
Voila: A Crisis in Real Estate Investing Could Be Ending Momentarily…Attention!!!
As the early days dawn on the new federal economic package, two groups are already pretty stimulated. Real Estate agents and mortgage brokers nationwide are talking about the effects of the $168 billion package that includes new, but temporary, rules for mortgages.
The stimulus package raised the ceiling on the ‘conforming loans,’ those loans that are backed by the Federal Housing Administration and have a lower interest rate. It used to be that conforming loans could be no higher than $417,000. In some parts of the country, San Francisco and other parts of California, most homes sell for more than that so many mortgages were expensive, nonconforming, or jumbo, mortgages. The stimulus package will raise the ceiling to %729,750 for the most expensive housing markets. Other markets could also have their loan ceilings raised.
This means more people will be able to finance or refinance their homes, even if their credit is poor or they don’t have a large down payment. Everybody wants to know what this means for their market.
“In Maryland,” a real estate expert, Ken Montville wrote, “If you don’t buy a home or refinance your home before December 31, 2008 you are at risk of losing a competitive rate…when your friendly neighborhood Realtor tells you that NOW is the time to buy, you may want to listen to him or her…with stable prices, major seller concessions, and low interest rates it is truly the best time in history to BUY A HOUSE!”
Another real estate expert from Orange County, Garry Loss, had this to say: “These fixes will give the financial markets time to heal and restore liquidity to the markets in time. It will also allow thousands of homeowners to refinance their loans to more favorable rates and terms. It will take a few weeks before the change will take effect. As a direct result of the stimulus package, expect demand to increase in Orange County along with a huge refinance boom.”
Real estate experts across the board feel that the government missed a chance to perk up the housing market by tying cash payouts directly to down payments on new mortgages.
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
Term Insurance…A Good Option for Real Estate Investing Homeowners DC/MD/VA/Dallas
Some homeowners whose mortgages are not covered
by private mortgage insurance (PMI), take out a term
life insurance policy to protect their families in case of
their deaths. According to the New York Times, laddering
such a policy could be a money-saving step. Here is an
example of laddering: For a $300,000 mortgage, three
policies could be taken over time. For the first 10 years, the
policy would be for $300,000. For the second 10, a policy
would be for $200,000, and for the last 10 years, it would be
for $100,000.
Considering the low rates now being offered on $500,000 term
Life policies, a young person who is in good health might
Consider term life to protect his or her family.
Blessings to Your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
How are you affected by your FICO score!!!!
Fair Isaac Corporation, maker of the FICO credit score used by 90% of banks, says its new scores will do a better job at predicting which borrowers will default on a loan. Called the FICO 08, it will be more forgiving of the occasional late payment but will take a harder line on repeat offenders. They predict that the new system will reduce default rates by 5 percent to 15 percent. Banks and other institutions use the scores to make decisions on loans, interest, insurance, cellphones and in some cases, employment. One other big change in the FICO scoring is the way ‘authorized users’ of credit cards are evaluated. It used to be that children could be listed as authorized user on their parents’ cards. They would then acquire the credit history for the card, even though they were never actually financially responsible for the card. FICO 08 will eliminate any advantage to being an authorized user.
Lenders hope this change will eliminate a legal, but questionable practice of brokering credit improvement by selling authorized user status on credit cards.
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
Overcoming Location Drawbacks with Pre-sell Changes DC/MD/VA/DALLAS
The right house in the right location is the combination that sells. But what happens when the right house is in a location that isn’t perfect? As the sell, you might be able to overcome some location problems with pre-sell fixes. To the right buyer, a perk here and there could make your property very attractive. The main thing to remember is that you can’t change some location problems. You can’t do anything about the school system, the distance from the closest grocery store, or the city’s street signage. Still, some location problems can be minimized.
If recent changes to traffic flow have created street noise around the property, you might be able to create landscaping that minimizes the noise and distracts the eye. The house itself can overcome location problems if it is the best in its price range. The seller should take extra steps to make sure the house is perfect, with new flooring or carpeting, fresh paint, sparkling windows, and gleaming fixtures. Perfection paired with price is an aggressive and successful combination. A great deal on a great house can make a buyer overlook a lot of location problems.
With the right combination of perks and price, the seller puts himself in the position to find the right buyer, someone who isn’t sensitive to street noise or doesn’t mind a drive to the grocery store.
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
The Most Incredibly Highly Effective Habits of Successful Real Estate Investors Cont’d Part 7
Budgeting Revenue
We have finally arrived at the last incredibly effective habit of successful real estate investors; budgeting. WOW! This is a tough one ladies and gentlemen. I think it is common to forget, but we all know in the back of our heads that if we do not budget, we are sitting in a sinking paddle boat.
I wanted to share some quick tips on budgeting for your real estate investing business. Enjoy.
- Create a worksheet using your bills and payouts for the last two to three months so that you can effective monitor the expenditures.
- Make room on your worksheet for rewards for great investing days, weeks, or months.
- Go through the books/records and calculate the gross average of income.
- For each of your expenditures, determine an amount that realistically reflects your actual expenses and then set a spending level that allow room for saving some of that income.
- Subtract the total expenses from the total income to arrive at your net income.
- If the number is negative, your expenses are greater than your income. Your situation can probably be greatly improved by changing your spending habits of your real estate investing business.
- If you have a positive net income, transfer most of it to a savings or investment account at the end of each month. Extra cash left in a business checking account has a way of getting spent.
- After you’ve tracked your actual spending for a month or two, analyze your spending to identify where you can comfortably make cuts.
- Once you’ve got the budgeting process in place, take an in-depth look at your largest spending categories, brainstorm about ways to reduce spending in specific categories, and set realistic goals.
- Update your budget and expenses monthly.
Budget…Budget…Budget!!!
Blessing to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
www.miltonyates.com
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
The Most Incredibly Highly Effective Habits of Successful Real Estate Investors Cont’d Part 6
Business Partnership
The second to last incredibly highly effective habit of successful real estate investors is having a business partnership. A partner is defined as a person who shares or is associated with another in some action or endeavor. They are a sharer or an associate. A partner is a person associated with another or others as a principal or a contributor of capital in a business or a joint venture, usually sharing its risks and its profits.
It is very important that this person is chosen wisely. A business partner should be like minded and have similar entrepreneurial goals. Here are some major reasons why having a business partner is important:
- With a partner, there is more than one brain in operation to discuss and make business decisions.
- Great partners are able to share the load and permit you to take personal time needed for family, vacation, or otherwise.
- Your partner should be able to compliment your skills. Whatever your weakness within the business, your partner should be the strength in that area.
- They also must be able to share in the MAJOR risks when the unplanned occurs – because in any business it always does.
This incredibly highly effective habit can MAKE or BREAK your Real Estate Investing Business. Trust Me. Take your time and choose carefully. A business partnership is JUST LIKE A MARRIAGE. Wins, Losses, and Ties fall on all parties involved. I was fortunate enough to choose the right partner in Valarie Jacobs and together we have become the #1 Real Estate Investors in DC, Maryland, Virginia, and Dallas, Texas. Our company, A.S.A.P. Community Solutions, Inc. has become a powerhouse in real estate investing and looks to move to wherever the market permits. We both are coaching both newbee and veteran investors in their real estate activity and gained a great bit of experience through successes AND failures. So much so that we share them with our students through “the What and the How.”
“The What and The How”™ of A.S.A.P. Community Solutions is an educational company that teaches wealth building strategies primarily through real estate investment. The company offers learning opportunities for real estate investors around the country through various on-site seminars, coaching programs, teleseminars, and an interactive membership website. Milton B. Yates and Valarie Jacobs pride themselves in giving both the WHAT and the HOW in creative real estate investment education. Their students and coaching clients have experienced extraordinary success through their mentorship, interactive training, and hands-on approach to teaching the principles of real estate.
Now get out there…and find you a good partner!!!!!
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
www.miltonyates.com
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
The Most Incredibly Highly Effective Habits of Successful Real Estate Investors Cont’d Part 5
Continuing Education
In the real estate investing world; techniques, loopholes, and strategic secrets almost change by the week. Although it is unquestionably imperative that you follow a system or model of conducting business, you must also consistently press to learn new information about your industry. As quickly as the mortgage rates change by the day, the negotiation method that you used to close a deal last month is not working for investors anymore.
Remember that “what you have now is only a result of what you have done. If you desire a different result, you must change what you’re doing.”
Continuing Education Ideas:
- Find a local REIA, real estate networking society, or other type of group where you can learn through conversation. Anytime you get a large amount of real estate investors in a room, the conversation is all about the most creative deal that investor has done up to that point. You can engage in conversation or you can decide to be a sponge-fly on the wall and soak all the good information in.
- Enroll in specialty real estate investing courses. These courses can potentially help you pin point where you may be missing it. Deals are lost and won in the details.
- Sign up for as many different real estate investing newsletters and blogs and look to hear the difference in strategies from investors all across the world.
- Plan to read at least one book per month related to real estate investing. The newspaper does not count and will trick you into not investing at all.
Try these tips and see how far you can get. Only the most incredibly highly effective real estate investors will even apply this knowledge.
Blessings to your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
www.miltonyates.com
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
The Most Incredible Highly Effective Habits of Successful Real Estate Investors Cont’d Parts 3 and 4
These next two most incredible highly effective habits for successful real estate investors hits home with just about everybody I come in contact with. There is no real estate investing business that can survive the times with them. It is impossible, yes impossible, to sustain the decline of retail buyers, wholesale buyers, and investors without a very strong Buyer’s List and a very strong source or many strong sources for Private Money.
Build a Buyer’s List
I am pretty sure that if you’ve been following along you may have run across my article that touches on how to effectively build a buyer’s list through free ad sites. I can’t say enough about the importance of “THE LIST.” If you do not have anyone to sell your properties to and you do not plan on holding these deals yourself, why are you going out and securing contracts. I really want you to play close attention, however. There are some extremely large buyer’s lists that you can either buy your way into through education or that you can buy online through different list brokers. Although you need to get a buyer’s list, the size does not matter. You want quality, well educated investors who can close the contracts you present to them. It is very clear to see who is buying and who isn’t if you look at affiliations and the contract assignment fees of aggressive wholesalers. If you have 25 legitimate buyers, you are ahead of the game. There is no use in having a list of 800 people if they don’t buy.
I have one more note about the buyer’s lists; you need 3 of them. When you do ads and different solicitations of buyers and investors, you need to make sure you are targeting buyers with different interests. There are retail buyers who are usually possible owner occupants. There are investors who generally need to purchase at 65% of market value less the repairs needed. The last group is the wholesale buyers who are looking for anything that they may be able to hold to rent or lease option for a number of years. In our market, this is the smartest investor. Make sure to change your titles and ad (solicitation) content to appeal to those different groups. Even if it is the same house that you are marketing to attract these buyers. I guarantee you won’t have any trouble building a quality list with this highly effective habit.
Solicit Private Money
Ever since my business partner and I ever got into real estate investing, the first thing we were told to do was to solicit private money to use on our deals. I don’t think we really understood how important it was until we started getting deals and started getting stuck. The rules of the most incredible highly effective habits of successful real estate investors requires that there should be an ever-constant pursuit of private money. You can never have more than enough available to use on transactions of all sizes and terms. I have definitely shared with you a few effective ways to solicit private funds but once again I would say that the free ads sites are one of the best ways to find private funds. Private investors comb the internet looking for the best ways to use their idle funds.
You just have to let people know that they aren’t alone in their frustration with low returns on your investment dollars. And in response to that problem, you have created a solid program that will eliminate the low returns that they are now receiving, and pay them a passive, predictable 10% to 12% interest from real estate notes. It will work, I do promise. Just make sure you never touch the funds. Always have private funds wired to the title company you are using for the transaction and secure all monies with the actual real estate being purchased. This avoids any claims of fraud or theft. Private money is certainly a most incredible highly effective habit of successful real estate investors.
Get with the program!
Blessings to Your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
Warning: Don’t Even Think About Investing Until You Understand the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Real Estate Investors – Part 1 and 2
Time Blocking
One of the most important keys to successful business (whether it be real estate investing or not) is the process of time blocking. This activity requires setting time aside for high priority tasks. Time blocking should take place in both your personal and business worlds. A great way to gain ground on your adversaries is to block time for activities outside of your primary business. These activities way include exercise, vacations, and even spa days. Personal time creates a renewed self and should be very high on the priority list for any business person. When you’ve set aside this personal time, you’ve created an extraordinary edge. Every business person must then turn around and block time for the tasks that a day cannot go without. In the real estate investing world; running comps, making follow up phone calls and sending emails, going on appointments, and marketing are the major functions of a principal of any investing business. Just as the personal time should be distributed, the blocking of time done for your business should be carried out without interruption. You are simply creating mini appointments with yourself that you should honor as if they were with others. This 1st habit will certainly turn you into a Highly Effective Real Estate Investor.
Proficiency in Property Valuation
If you are a plain Jane investor who wishes to know exactly what you should offer on a property, you are ahead of the game. A lot of investors fail to use formulas when they calculate whether a real estate investment lead is actually one at all. Calculating the amount of equity in a deal is futile if your percentages aren’t correct.
What to offer: On a standard cash purchase an investor should be looking to spend no more than 65% of the value less the repairs needed – based on the sales of the homes in the same subdivision with the same specs. Homes that exist amongst new construction and shopping areas must still prove their worth through SALES. There will be no question whether a lead is a good deal or not. If you are having problems with Property Valuation, visit www.RealEstateCompRunners.com, they can definitely help you. This 2nd habit will put you in another league of Highly Effect Real Estate Investors
Blessings to Your Real Estate Investing Business,
Milton B. Yates
Learn Real Estate Investing in DC
Learn Real Estate Investing in Maryland (MD)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Virginia (VA)
Learn Real Estate Investing in Dallas, Texas
