2 contracts, 2 deals

well, we finally made some traction on two recent deals -- one is a single family and one is a condo. both are moving along and are well into financing.

the single family deal was pretty easy to get done. there was a little negotiating, but we settled in at a price that was actually lower than what i had modeled, so we should be getting some decent returns on that property.

the condo was a bit of a pain. the condo owner was an out of town owner in a different time zone, so negotiating took longer than what i'd like. in addition, his agent was really bad and didn't communicate the finer points of our offer very clearly. for example, after we made an original offer, the seller countered. well, to get to where we wanted to be, we negotiated with the agents to come down off their fee a bit and then could submit a lower offer than what we had originally submitted. the actual proceeds to the seller would be higher than our original offer. the seller saw that we had moved down and then re-countered back to the original list price! first, the listing agent should have communicated what was going on to the seller. second, once the listing agent got the counter back, he should have realized what had happened and explained it to the seller at that point. instead, he just brought the counter back to our agent. just goes to show you there are buffoons in every industry.

in any case, we are on track on both of these units. and, more are coming out of the woodwork every day.

4 contracts, no deals

over the past couple of weeks, i've ferreted out 4 really good real estate deals and quickly moved to make offers. one was a sfh on the market less than 7 days, and the other 3 were condo units in a complex where we already own some units.

we lost the sfh during a short negotiation to another investor or cash buyer that was going to be able to close quickly. my guess is that two of the condo units went to buyers that are likely going to occupy the units, and were able to be pay more than we were comfortable.

we are still in negotiations on the third condo. i'm optimistic that we will arrive at the price that we want, but we are having to deal with a real bungling listing agent, who has almost lost the deal for us.

just goes to show you that sometimes you can make all the right moves and still lose -- that's how real estate go.

on the hunt today for more properties.

stay tuned . . .

how to become an investor

i helped put together a small group with the intent to get more involved in real estate investing. one of the guys i approached had already been interested in investing, but was facing a lot of hurdles making the leap from being interested to being an investor. he had all sorts of questions, and i told him the main thing is that there is some level of risk involved in investing in real estate. you can find all sorts of reasons not to do it -- what if you get a bad tenant? what if you buy a bad property? what if you can't lease it?

what i told him to remedy this situation is that there are all number of reasons that you can find to stay on the sidelines. if you look with that mindset, you'll keep finding reasons. if you change your mindset, however, you'll see a great number of reasons to become an investor.