Email from Brian Kurtz, my Inner Circle member / Realtor out of Downriver area in Western Wayne county:

“ I am continually amazed at the excuses "investors" come up with to NOT do deals. Here's my new favorite. GREAT house that needs almost ZERO repairs. Bank drops the price down $50k below market. Deal should be a no-brainer. So what doe they come up with? "I wonder what is WRONG with this house. The numbers are SOOO good it feels like there must be something wrong we can't see. Why hasn't it sold yet if it's such a good deal?" So if the repairs are too high they say there are too much repairs, or the price is too high. If there are NO repairs, they say there is something wrong with the deal, but they don't know what, so they won't do it. Weird.”

Somebody told me long time ago that you can make money or you can make excuses – impossible to do both at the same time.

It is not uncommon for me to get at least 10-15 emails / faxes every week where real estate investors are complaining about the “trouble” they are having finding money to fund the foreclosure deals – Junkers / pretty homes.

But when I ask them where exactly they have looked so far or what they have done so far to find the money – the answer in almost 98% cases is silence. The 2% who reply back – I will tell them where to go and get the money. There is no shortage of money – hard / mortgage / private – what is always in short supply is real estate investors in Michigan who know where to go and get it.

Same thing with finding deals. Same thing with finding good contractors.

A friend of mine work as Realtor for a big name franchise real estate operation. He is in the office with another 209 realtors. He has been doing it for 14 months now. Majority of his office mates have been at it much much longer.

He has asked the owner several times to be excused from the weekly Tuesday meetings where typically 180-200 realtors show up with weekly progress reports. He told the owner that he is so depressed by their combined tales of woe and despair that it takes him almost a day to get back to track.

He on the other hand in four months of becoming the Realtor is in the Top 5 consistently – taking home anywhere from $10,000 - $15,000 per month in commissions.

But the owner wont let him go home because he wants him to come and tell these other people in the room what he is doing hoping against hope that they might also copy him.

He on the other hand is as open as he could be so he gets up ever week, dutifully and tells them exactly what he is doing. Lead sources / ads / what he is saying / what he is not saying etc. And in all due fairness – it is no big deal on “what” he is doing.

The secret to his success is that he is doing something.

The other 200 Realtors are doing absolutely nothing.

Find hard to believe?

Grownups showing up to “work” and not doing anything and having the cojones to complain next week about how hard it is to make money???

Better believe it.

I have seen it; lived it; managed it; and lived to tell the sordid story.

Majority is not interested in not doing anything. Period.

Oh sure everybody says that they want to make money.

The same way everybody writes the three goals on December 31 midnight every year – quit smoking, lose weight, make more money.

All you have to do is look around and you will understand immediately that particular strategy is not working out.

Cigarette companies are making tons of money. We are the fattest nation on the planet and we are spending $113 dollars for every $100 coming in. Credit card debt is at all time high since the time credit cards were introduced.

Clear your head out of all the garbage. Make a list of Things To Do ASAP and get all of them done. Then you have a right to complain. But not before.

By the way, Brian is not alone in this – all REO Realtors who have truck load of good listings have similar tales – they don’t understand why investors are so much interested in talking and looking but not buying anything. Good deals – REO’s / Short Sale / Motivated Sellers – all around you and me.

Question is what have you done today to find one?

We had a pretty crazy coaching session last week - couple of my members are hitting some major homeruns doing Short Sales. Part of the reason is that they know what the heck they are doing. Part of the reason is banks are SWAMPED with foreclosures and willing to take bigger discounts that ever before.

The amusing thing is these guys are very "Unqualified" to do Short Sales - they are getting major discounts on their rookie deals. I mean how dare they collect $38,000 on their first deals. :-)

There are reasons for this….

3 years ago, it took some serious set of skills and a really banged up house to get a $50,000 discount on a Short Sale in Michigan.

Now it is so common that it is not even a big gulp to fax it in to a bank.

How things change in a matter of months.

"I have been in real estate for over 15 years. I have been involved in more short sales the past 8 months then the previous 14 years all together. Now it isn't uncommon for a seller to bring money to closing." - Chris Dowell, Realtor

Chris is a realtor in a Kansas City and he posted the above comment to my blog recently. He is not exaggerating.

I can tell you on a personal note that I never thought that I would see banks discount 40% to 50% on first mortgages. That is just incredible.

If you not listened to Rodney yet talking about his Zero to 8 deals in 60 days than you are really missing out. You can listen to the LIVE recording (it is from my coaching session) in MP3 on the Michigan Short Sale Bootcamp page.

I think that the thing that impresses me most about Rodeny is he is done what most real estate investors never bother doing:

1. Implement what he learned from me.

2. Did not wait to become "perfect".

3. Launched his Short Sale business with a complete understanding that he does not know everything but he will get better with every deal.

4. Doing some great “word of mouth” advertising. I mean you would think that with around 10,000 houses in foreclosure in Michigan – some of these people would have relatives, co-workers, friends etc. It helps to let people know what you do and could do.

5. I liked his style of actually overdoing it. He did not had to put that fence up in his first deal. His buyer was not that particular about it. But he did it anyway. And that has paid very handsomely for him. You wont know why
on this call but suffice to say that $3,000 fence turned into a very profitable goodwill for him.

I predict that the the “amount” of discounts in Michigan will only get higher. As banks pile up more inventory it will be tougher for them to justify sitting on these houses for months (11-13 months in Michigan for redemption even before they get the keys) and do nothing.

I don’t know about your property taxes but majority of suburbs in Michigan have high property taxes – going higher every year. Banks don’t pay Homstead rates but rather non-homestead at a mucho higher rate.

The number of foreclosures rises which means more “inventory” for the Loss Mitigation Departments to liquidate. The more agitated they become to sell these houses as quickly as possible.

One of the interesting thing that we keep hearing over and over again is the banks calling my members and asking what they could do to make the deal happen?

Huh!

Banks playing nice..

What is this world coming to?

Nora is doing couple of commerical Short Sale right now. She has this whole side business going on consulting on Short Sale Deals. More on that some other day. Talk about a perfect stay At Home Mother business. :-)

And the Attorney who is foreclosing for the bank called her and said – Hey we want whatever your buyer could pay. Come one and lets play ball. Call us we want to talk.

Lawyers calling investors.

This is the dawn of a new age. :- )

It is pretty exciting time to be in Michigan real estate. Kind makes me wish I was starting out in 2006 rather than 2000. Writing all those hand written letters to homeowners in foreclosure nearly broke my wrist back then.