Real Estate

This morning I discovered something terrible while standing in the shower…

I had forgotten a towel. 

And worse, I was not at my house. I’m spending the week with my fellow host of the BiggerPockets Podcast, Josh Dorkin, and his wonderful family and I couldn’t simply streak through the home to get back to my room.

Soaking wet I looked around at my options. I had just one: a small 6″ towel. Let’s just say it took a while to dry off.

You see, I went in unprepared.  Had I spent a few seconds preparing for the morning, I would not have made this simple mistake.

And you know – real estate investing, and house flipping in general, is kind of the same way. (You were wondering how I was going to tie that in!)  If you go in unprepared, you are going to be scrambling for solutions.

Not a good thing.

Therefore, the following list is going to give you 101 “quick tips” to help you prepare for your next house flip so you don’t make the same mistakes I have!

At the end of the list, I want to encourage you to add your own tips in the comment section and, of course, if you would please do me the honor of sharing this post on your social media, I would be forever grateful!

Let’s get going!

(click to continue reading on BiggerPockets)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

Look, I’m a pretty conservative guy.

And most of my friends will probably hate me after this post… but here’s the truth: I love the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour. 

Why?

Let me explain.

Do Minimum Wage Workers Deserve $15 an Hour?

Well, let’s get one thing straight first: I don’t think these people deserve it.

In my opinion, people don’t deserve something like that. As you probably know, I’m a red meat-eating, lumberjack-resembling American capitalist. People don’t deserve a specific income. Things are worth what they are worth, not what the government decides.

However…

Just because they might not deserve it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t help me, as a real estate investor. It probably won’t help them, in the long run, but it will help me.

Why The Minimum Wage Needs to Be Increased

(click to continue reading on BiggerPockets)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

Have you ever enjoyed dinner at a fabulous restaurant or experienced incredible customer service at a local store?  What’s the first thing you want to do?

If you are anything like me, you probably want to tell your friends all about it.

We love to share stuff with others that we find awesome, useful, or interesting and today I’m excited to share something pretty awesome with you.  For any real estate house flippers, agents, property managers, wholesalers, or anyone else in the real estate industry – this new app is going to make your life a whole lot easier.

It’s called “Dispatch.tv” and it’s all about helping you manage your life with video. Let me explain how it works.

(I’m not connected with Dispatch.tv at all and don’t get any sort of compensation from bragging about them. I just really like it!)

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

Let’s get a little crazy, shall we?

No, not in the sense of “run naked through the woods” kind of crazy.

That didn’t turn out so good last time.

No — you came here looking for property investment tips, but I don’t want to give the standard “you make your money when you buy” or “be sure to use an investor friendly CPA” tips. There are plenty of posts for that.

I want to get a little more unconventional.

5 Property Investment Tips

The following five tips might seem a bit crazy, absurd, or flat-out wrong at first glance. However, I believe these property investment tips are some of the most important I’ve ever shared, so I encourage you to spend some time digging in.

I also would like to ask one two quick favors. There are “social share” buttons all over this page, so if you enjoy this post, could you do me a solid and share this post on your favorite social network? And secondly – I need to beat my good buddy Scott with the most comments on a post, so I’d appreciate you leaving a comment at the bottom of this article! After all, he currently has the #1 and #2most-commented posts on BiggerPockets for the past month!

We can’t let a kid from Vanderbilt beat me.

With that- let’s get to the tips! We’ll start with one that is a bit controversial…

1.  (click to continue reading on BiggerPockets)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

Do you wanna hear something not a lot of folks know about me? I used to be a front-end personal banker at a national bank. Yep, I was the guy who sat in the desk and took loan applications and tried to get you to refinance your house. Man, I hated that job. Really, it was awful. So much sales pressure, so many hours of staring at the clock. So many reminders that I should be out investing my money, rather than working for it. However, my job did give me some inside information about how the loan process works. Want to know what I found out?Loans were like a gun safe. They could be opened with the right code.  Every time. I titled this post with the word “guaranteed” NOT because I believe you will always be able to get a loan approved, but because I wanted to demonstrate that the lending process is not a mystery. It’s a lock that can be opened with a code. If you enter the right code, you WILL get your loan approved.  Can you enter that code today? Maybe, maybe not. Unlike the code to a gun safe, this code is not something I can simply tell you; it’s something you need to have. But I do know that IF you enter it right, if you have what it takes, you are going to get approved. Whether you are looking to buy your first home, purchase an investment property, refinance a current loan, or something totally different, this post will give you the tools you need to crack that code and hear a resounding “yes” from the banker, every time. As always, I’d love if you’d take a second to share this post on your favorite social media channel, and don’t forget to ask questions or leave a comment below the post! With that, let’s get to it!

Understanding How a Loan Works

Before getting into the details of just how to get your loan approved, let’s talk about the basics.How does a loan even work? Obviously, there are a lot of different kinds of loans and lenders. There are conventional banks, mortgage brokers, portfolio lenders, hard money lenders, private lenders, and more. Each is going to have their own system. However, let me make a few quick points about the loan process: Typically, the person who you are talking with is just a sales person (like I was). They are not the ones ultimately responsible for saying “yes” or “no” to your loan. When you go into a bank and sit down with the banker, most likely they are simply there to collect your information and be the contact person for you. The real decision-maker is in the “underwriter.” The underwriter is an individual trained to look at all the puzzle pieces that the salesperson gives them and approve or deny a loan based on facts. The underwriter knows all the rules, laws, and regulations and can make an informed decision. However, while the underwriter has all the power, the underwriter is usually not very creative and definitely not emotionally involved (purposefully). To get a loan approved, you must accomplish two things:

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.