Why Use Private Money For Real Estate Investing? Limited Hassles and Paperwork!

The last time I went through the traditional mortgage application process I thought I would choke on the paperwork. The number of phone calls and faxes involved was ludicrous. I thought to myself ?There must be a better way.? The good news? there IS a better way, and it?s called private money for real estate investing.

When you initiate the process of applying for mortgage financing, you had best realize that you are unleashing a blizzard? a blizzard of forms, applications, faxes and phone calls back and forth with the lender. If you would prefer not spending countless hours in front of the copier, or with the phone receiver glued to your head, then consider the alternative of private money for real estate investing.

By developing a system of finding and using private money for real estate investing, you will enjoy the benefit of greatly reduced hassle and paperwork. The last private money loan I closed on involved exactly three phone calls and one meeting with my lender to sign a simple note. In fact, we had an enjoyable lunch together, so even that part was completely painless.

The simple fact is that when you develop your own group of lenders, all of whom stand ready to provide you with private money for real estate investing, you are creating freedom for yourself? freedom from the mind-numbing experience of applying for loans, proving you make what you say you make, apologizing for past credit mistakes, explaining gaps in employment, and begging for special dispensation.

Talk about a de-humanizing experience. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that, when there is a much better alternative?

The alternative is to apply just a little bit of effort and develop a group of consistent, loyal lenders to partner with. The great news is that when you make a decision to find and use private money for real estate investing there is a wealth of information available to you.

To start your research on finding and using private money for real estate investing try http://www.private-money-real-estate-investing.com.

Now, go make more offers!

The Key to Real Estate Investing Success… Revealed!

How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers dispensing real estate investing information, but really selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (”not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker?

Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like, “Yes Mr. Ker we do take traveler’s checks. Yes, cash is OK too. “HEY BARNEY DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED??” There’s your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!”

I have to admit that’s where I began. I attended a “conference” and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more somber account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units.

I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator. I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny!

I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out.

Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I’m not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK…here we go … Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys……hmmm.

To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my “network”), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said “no”, and I went home and went to bed for two weeks… too depressed to function.

All that work, and this guy just said “no”.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!

Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash.

I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful real estate investing information, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started.

The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don’t know any better.

That is: “I know all this real estate investing information inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I’ve got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell.

This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.

And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day.

Now, that’s obvious isn’t it?

Well it can’t be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I’m trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

And what is this shift? It is: Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That’s what it comes down to.

If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without a lot of customers.

Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute.

Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first, and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you’ll finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you (although this is not what is taught in how-to-do-it real estate investing information).

And this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

Look at Domino’s. A marketing machine! Very average pizza. But aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market.

Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you’d know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing he rode Microsoft up over IBM to the $243B company it is today.

Of course this doesn’t mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You’ve got to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too.

After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. But more importantly, doing what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to.

Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

OK, so, marketing. Really fabulous! But, what does it mean? So far it’s just a word I’ve said 10 or twenty times, right?

Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They haven’t been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

I don’t want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here.

Pick up just about any book or course with real estate investing information or that is about creative real estate and you’ll find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any.

What you won’t find anywhere in those books, courses or real estate investing information is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:
A benefit-telegraphic headline
A true marketing message
An offer, or offers
A reason to respond immediately
Precise response instructions and mechanisms

With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor: make offers to motivated sellers!

Hopefully you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It sifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals.

Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They don’t offer sellers anything more outstanding than you, do they? They are not privy to any real estate investing information that you are not. They certainly don’t offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They don’t have any better phone manner than you.

Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is: Create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That’s it! That’s the difference.

So did you get the message here? I hope so.

If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you’ll make the change.

About the author:
Ben Innes-Ker is a full time real estate investor and author of the Motivated Seller Magnet - Automatic Lead Generating System. He is constantly fine-tuning his marketing and business systems to make his investing more profitable with less effort, so he can spend more time enjoying life with his wife and 2 young children. To receive your 23 page special report that reveals how you can achieve this too, visit the high leveragereal estate investing information website.

Why Use Private Money For Real Estate Investing? Reason 1

I?ll never forget it? my Realtor phoned and breathlessly told me about a deal that was too good to pass up. He described the property and the price and I had to agree- it sounded like a fantastic opportunity. Sadly, I told him I had no ready cash, and my credit was already overextended. I would have to pass. I glumly hung up the phone.

This experience, several years ago, lead me to examine how I was financing my investment properties. Because I was tied in to using my own cash and conventional mortgages, I was severely limited in the number and kind of properties I could acquire. I decided then and there to begin learning all I could about private money for real estate investing.

I gradually began to develop a stable of private investors, partners really, who had money to loan and were ready to make it available to me at a moments notice. Since I started putting the principles of private money for real estate investing to work, I haven?t had to pass on a ?once in a lifetime? deal for financial reasons again.

A perfect example occurred a couple of weeks ago that illustrates what I?m talking about. Again, my realtor phoned and told me about a foreclosure listing he had. The bank had sold the property, but the deal had fallen through. These have always been great opportunities for me, and this was no exception. Thanks to the fact that I have access to plenty of private money for real estate investing, I knew just what to do.

With just a couple of phone calls, I had lined up the financing I needed to proceed with the deal, and I stand to make several thousand dollars on this property when I close on it at the end of the month.

That?s several thousand dollars I would have been forced to watch fly into the pocket of some other investor if I didn?t have ready access to a flexible source of cash, namely my private money lenders. I?ve got several who are friends now, and our deals are always win-win situations for all parties.

If you need another reason to start building a network of lenders who can provide you private money for real estate investing, this is one of the best.

How Does Real Estate Investing Work - Make The Calls

Another in a continuing series that answers the question - ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? - for beginning real estate investors, and experienced investors who want to hone their skills. Today, I?ll give you an overview on making targeted calls to sellers and other investors.

When you?re ready to stop asking the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, and dig in and get busy, one of the most productive things you can do is pick up the phone and make calls. You?ll learn more in a few days just talking to sellers, buyers, and other investors than you would in a whole semester at college.

Unfortunately, the thought of picking up the phone and making calls gets some people all sweaty and nervous. Face it, if you?re one of those people you have a choice? you can sit in a chair and continue asking anyone who will listen, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, or you can face your fears and overcome them. Only one thing has been proven to work consistently for overcoming these kinds of fears.

Action.

If you?ve decided to stop asking, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? and make some calls, you probably have two questions that need answering. First, who should you call? Second, what should you say when they answer? I can give you some tips.

Who to call

The answer to ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? can be summed up in this statement: ?People make it work.? If you?re willing to engage, network, and get involved with people, you can be ultra-successful. If not, you may as well become a financial analyst in a cubicle someplace. Real estate investing probably won?t work for you.

The answer to who to call is in the classified section of your paper every week, perhaps every day. Here?s a partial list of people you should be calling and talking to: For Sale By Owner (FSBO), We Buy Houses (other investors), Property Wanted (buyers), Realtors, (especially those focused on investment property and foreclosures), Estate Sales (auctions, etc.). You want to answer the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? These folks can help you find out.

But you need to talk to them. Go ahead, they won?t mind? that?s why they put the ad in the paper in the first place.

What to say

This is the one that freezes some people up. If you?re one of them, you may be wondering, ?What will I say??

Really, this one is super easy, because you learned what to say when you were about 2 years old. You may not remember, but I?ll bet your parents do! ?Daddy, what?s this? Mommy, why? Daddy, why does that lady have a moustache? Mommy, why is that man so fat??

Ring any bells? It?s questions that helped you learn about the world when you were two, and not much has changed. Questions will help you learn, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

So, once you get folks on the phone, ask them questions. Then, be quiet and let them answer you. They will answer you, I promise. Most folks love to tell their story. All you need to do is get them started and stand back. Each person you call will give you a little piece of the answer to, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

More on what questions to ask in my next article. For now, here?s more information on Beginning Real Estate Investing

Now, go make more offers!

Why Use Private Money For Real Estate Investing? Limited Hassles and Paperwork!

The last time I went through the traditional mortgage application process I thought I would choke on the paperwork. The number of phone calls and faxes involved was ludicrous. I thought to myself ?There must be a better way.? The good news? there IS a better way, and it?s called private money for real estate investing.

When you initiate the process of applying for mortgage financing, you had best realize that you are unleashing a blizzard? a blizzard of forms, applications, faxes and phone calls back and forth with the lender. If you would prefer not spending countless hours in front of the copier, or with the phone receiver glued to your head, then consider the alternative of private money for real estate investing.

By developing a system of finding and using private money for real estate investing, you will enjoy the benefit of greatly reduced hassle and paperwork. The last private money loan I closed on involved exactly three phone calls and one meeting with my lender to sign a simple note. In fact, we had an enjoyable lunch together, so even that part was completely painless.

The simple fact is that when you develop your own group of lenders, all of whom stand ready to provide you with private money for real estate investing, you are creating freedom for yourself? freedom from the mind-numbing experience of applying for loans, proving you make what you say you make, apologizing for past credit mistakes, explaining gaps in employment, and begging for special dispensation.

Talk about a de-humanizing experience. Why would anyone willingly subject themselves to that, when there is a much better alternative?

The alternative is to apply just a little bit of effort and develop a group of consistent, loyal lenders to partner with. The great news is that when you make a decision to find and use private money for real estate investing there is a wealth of information available to you.

To start your research on finding and using private money for real estate investing try http://www.private-money-real-estate-investing.com.

Now, go make more offers!

The Key to Real Estate Investing Success… Revealed!

How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers dispensing real estate investing information, but really selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (”not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker?

Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like, “Yes Mr. Ker we do take traveler’s checks. Yes, cash is OK too. “HEY BARNEY DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED??” There’s your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!”

I have to admit that’s where I began. I attended a “conference” and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more somber account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units.

I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator. I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny!

I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out.

Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I’m not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK…here we go … Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys……hmmm.

To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my “network”), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said “no”, and I went home and went to bed for two weeks… too depressed to function.

All that work, and this guy just said “no”.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!

Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash.

I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful real estate investing information, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started.

The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don’t know any better.

That is: “I know all this real estate investing information inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I’ve got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell.

This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.

And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day.

Now, that’s obvious isn’t it?

Well it can’t be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I’m trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

And what is this shift? It is: Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That’s what it comes down to.

If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without a lot of customers.

Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute.

Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first, and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you’ll finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you (although this is not what is taught in how-to-do-it real estate investing information).

And this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

Look at Domino’s. A marketing machine! Very average pizza. But aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market.

Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you’d know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing he rode Microsoft up over IBM to the $243B company it is today.

Of course this doesn’t mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You’ve got to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too.

After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. But more importantly, doing what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to.

Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

OK, so, marketing. Really fabulous! But, what does it mean? So far it’s just a word I’ve said 10 or twenty times, right?

Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They haven’t been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

I don’t want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here.

Pick up just about any book or course with real estate investing information or that is about creative real estate and you’ll find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any.

What you won’t find anywhere in those books, courses or real estate investing information is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:
A benefit-telegraphic headline
A true marketing message
An offer, or offers
A reason to respond immediately
Precise response instructions and mechanisms

With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor: make offers to motivated sellers!

Hopefully you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It sifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals.

Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They don’t offer sellers anything more outstanding than you, do they? They are not privy to any real estate investing information that you are not. They certainly don’t offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They don’t have any better phone manner than you.

Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is: Create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That’s it! That’s the difference.

So did you get the message here? I hope so.

If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you’ll make the change.

About the author:
Ben Innes-Ker is a full time real estate investor and author of the Motivated Seller Magnet - Automatic Lead Generating System. He is constantly fine-tuning his marketing and business systems to make his investing more profitable with less effort, so he can spend more time enjoying life with his wife and 2 young children. To receive your 23 page special report that reveals how you can achieve this too, visit the high leveragereal estate investing information website.

How Does Real Estate Investing Work - Make The Calls

Another in a continuing series that answers the question - ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? - for beginning real estate investors, and experienced investors who want to hone their skills. Today, I?ll give you an overview on making targeted calls to sellers and other investors.

When you?re ready to stop asking the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, and dig in and get busy, one of the most productive things you can do is pick up the phone and make calls. You?ll learn more in a few days just talking to sellers, buyers, and other investors than you would in a whole semester at college.

Unfortunately, the thought of picking up the phone and making calls gets some people all sweaty and nervous. Face it, if you?re one of those people you have a choice? you can sit in a chair and continue asking anyone who will listen, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, or you can face your fears and overcome them. Only one thing has been proven to work consistently for overcoming these kinds of fears.

Action.

If you?ve decided to stop asking, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? and make some calls, you probably have two questions that need answering. First, who should you call? Second, what should you say when they answer? I can give you some tips.

Who to call

The answer to ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? can be summed up in this statement: ?People make it work.? If you?re willing to engage, network, and get involved with people, you can be ultra-successful. If not, you may as well become a financial analyst in a cubicle someplace. Real estate investing probably won?t work for you.

The answer to who to call is in the classified section of your paper every week, perhaps every day. Here?s a partial list of people you should be calling and talking to: For Sale By Owner (FSBO), We Buy Houses (other investors), Property Wanted (buyers), Realtors, (especially those focused on investment property and foreclosures), Estate Sales (auctions, etc.). You want to answer the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? These folks can help you find out.

But you need to talk to them. Go ahead, they won?t mind? that?s why they put the ad in the paper in the first place.

What to say

This is the one that freezes some people up. If you?re one of them, you may be wondering, ?What will I say??

Really, this one is super easy, because you learned what to say when you were about 2 years old. You may not remember, but I?ll bet your parents do! ?Daddy, what?s this? Mommy, why? Daddy, why does that lady have a moustache? Mommy, why is that man so fat??

Ring any bells? It?s questions that helped you learn about the world when you were two, and not much has changed. Questions will help you learn, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

So, once you get folks on the phone, ask them questions. Then, be quiet and let them answer you. They will answer you, I promise. Most folks love to tell their story. All you need to do is get them started and stand back. Each person you call will give you a little piece of the answer to, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

More on what questions to ask in my next article. For now, here?s more information on Beginning Real Estate Investing

Now, go make more offers!

How Does Real Estate Investing Work - Make The Calls

Another in a continuing series that answers the question - ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? - for beginning real estate investors, and experienced investors who want to hone their skills. Today, I?ll give you an overview on making targeted calls to sellers and other investors.

When you?re ready to stop asking the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, and dig in and get busy, one of the most productive things you can do is pick up the phone and make calls. You?ll learn more in a few days just talking to sellers, buyers, and other investors than you would in a whole semester at college.

Unfortunately, the thought of picking up the phone and making calls gets some people all sweaty and nervous. Face it, if you?re one of those people you have a choice? you can sit in a chair and continue asking anyone who will listen, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??, or you can face your fears and overcome them. Only one thing has been proven to work consistently for overcoming these kinds of fears.

Action.

If you?ve decided to stop asking, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? and make some calls, you probably have two questions that need answering. First, who should you call? Second, what should you say when they answer? I can give you some tips.

Who to call

The answer to ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? can be summed up in this statement: ?People make it work.? If you?re willing to engage, network, and get involved with people, you can be ultra-successful. If not, you may as well become a financial analyst in a cubicle someplace. Real estate investing probably won?t work for you.

The answer to who to call is in the classified section of your paper every week, perhaps every day. Here?s a partial list of people you should be calling and talking to: For Sale By Owner (FSBO), We Buy Houses (other investors), Property Wanted (buyers), Realtors, (especially those focused on investment property and foreclosures), Estate Sales (auctions, etc.). You want to answer the question, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work?? These folks can help you find out.

But you need to talk to them. Go ahead, they won?t mind? that?s why they put the ad in the paper in the first place.

What to say

This is the one that freezes some people up. If you?re one of them, you may be wondering, ?What will I say??

Really, this one is super easy, because you learned what to say when you were about 2 years old. You may not remember, but I?ll bet your parents do! ?Daddy, what?s this? Mommy, why? Daddy, why does that lady have a moustache? Mommy, why is that man so fat??

Ring any bells? It?s questions that helped you learn about the world when you were two, and not much has changed. Questions will help you learn, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

So, once you get folks on the phone, ask them questions. Then, be quiet and let them answer you. They will answer you, I promise. Most folks love to tell their story. All you need to do is get them started and stand back. Each person you call will give you a little piece of the answer to, ?How Does Real Estate Investing Work??

More on what questions to ask in my next article. For now, here?s more information on Beginning Real Estate Investing

Now, go make more offers!

The Key to Real Estate Investing Success… Revealed!

How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers dispensing real estate investing information, but really selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (”not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker?

Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like, “Yes Mr. Ker we do take traveler’s checks. Yes, cash is OK too. “HEY BARNEY DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED??” There’s your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!”

I have to admit that’s where I began. I attended a “conference” and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more somber account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units.

I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator. I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny!

I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out.

Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I’m not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK…here we go … Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys……hmmm.

To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my “network”), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said “no”, and I went home and went to bed for two weeks… too depressed to function.

All that work, and this guy just said “no”.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!

Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash.

I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful real estate investing information, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started.

The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don’t know any better.

That is: “I know all this real estate investing information inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I’ve got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell.

This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.

And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day.

Now, that’s obvious isn’t it?

Well it can’t be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I’m trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

And what is this shift? It is: Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That’s what it comes down to.

If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without a lot of customers.

Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute.

Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first, and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you’ll finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you (although this is not what is taught in how-to-do-it real estate investing information).

And this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

Look at Domino’s. A marketing machine! Very average pizza. But aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market.

Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you’d know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing he rode Microsoft up over IBM to the $243B company it is today.

Of course this doesn’t mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You’ve got to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too.

After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. But more importantly, doing what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to.

Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

OK, so, marketing. Really fabulous! But, what does it mean? So far it’s just a word I’ve said 10 or twenty times, right?

Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They haven’t been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

I don’t want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here.

Pick up just about any book or course with real estate investing information or that is about creative real estate and you’ll find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any.

What you won’t find anywhere in those books, courses or real estate investing information is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:
A benefit-telegraphic headline
A true marketing message
An offer, or offers
A reason to respond immediately
Precise response instructions and mechanisms

With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor: make offers to motivated sellers!

Hopefully you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It sifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals.

Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They don’t offer sellers anything more outstanding than you, do they? They are not privy to any real estate investing information that you are not. They certainly don’t offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They don’t have any better phone manner than you.

Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is: Create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That’s it! That’s the difference.

So did you get the message here? I hope so.

If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you’ll make the change.

About the author:
Ben Innes-Ker is a full time real estate investor and author of the Motivated Seller Magnet - Automatic Lead Generating System. He is constantly fine-tuning his marketing and business systems to make his investing more profitable with less effort, so he can spend more time enjoying life with his wife and 2 young children. To receive your 23 page special report that reveals how you can achieve this too, visit the high leveragereal estate investing information website.

The Key to Real Estate Investing Success… Revealed!

How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers dispensing real estate investing information, but really selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (”not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker?

Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like, “Yes Mr. Ker we do take traveler’s checks. Yes, cash is OK too. “HEY BARNEY DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED??” There’s your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!”

I have to admit that’s where I began. I attended a “conference” and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more somber account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units.

I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator. I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny!

I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out.

Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I’m not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK…here we go … Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys……hmmm.

To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my “network”), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said “no”, and I went home and went to bed for two weeks… too depressed to function.

All that work, and this guy just said “no”.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!

Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash.

I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful real estate investing information, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started.

The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don’t know any better.

That is: “I know all this real estate investing information inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I’ve got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell.

This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.

And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day.

Now, that’s obvious isn’t it?

Well it can’t be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I’m trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

And what is this shift? It is: Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That’s what it comes down to.

If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without a lot of customers.

Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute.

Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first, and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you’ll finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you (although this is not what is taught in how-to-do-it real estate investing information).

And this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

Look at Domino’s. A marketing machine! Very average pizza. But aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market.

Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you’d know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing he rode Microsoft up over IBM to the $243B company it is today.

Of course this doesn’t mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You’ve got to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too.

After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. But more importantly, doing what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to.

Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

OK, so, marketing. Really fabulous! But, what does it mean? So far it’s just a word I’ve said 10 or twenty times, right?

Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They haven’t been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

I don’t want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here.

Pick up just about any book or course with real estate investing information or that is about creative real estate and you’ll find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any.

What you won’t find anywhere in those books, courses or real estate investing information is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:
A benefit-telegraphic headline
A true marketing message
An offer, or offers
A reason to respond immediately
Precise response instructions and mechanisms

With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor: make offers to motivated sellers!

Hopefully you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It sifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals.

Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They don’t offer sellers anything more outstanding than you, do they? They are not privy to any real estate investing information that you are not. They certainly don’t offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They don’t have any better phone manner than you.

Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is: Create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That’s it! That’s the difference.

So did you get the message here? I hope so.

If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you’ll make the change.

About the author:
Ben Innes-Ker is a full time real estate investor and author of the Motivated Seller Magnet - Automatic Lead Generating System. He is constantly fine-tuning his marketing and business systems to make his investing more profitable with less effort, so he can spend more time enjoying life with his wife and 2 young children. To receive your 23 page special report that reveals how you can achieve this too, visit the high leveragereal estate investing information website.

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