Tol Records Finance and Money Management Tips

Archive for November, 2011

So you need to sell your home?

This article is exactly what you need to do, to sell your home or create a bunch of leads of individuals, who are HOT prospects to buy your home.

Before, I share my 3 steroid ideas on selling your homes; you need to take a few simple steps…

PREPARATION

1. You need to locate and interview an aggressive Mortgage Broker, very knowledgeable, with a GREAT TRACK RECORD of closing deals, especially difficult ones.

I cannot stress enough the importance, of having a great broker on your power team. I own and run, the R.E.I.A. (real estate investor club / www.tcreia.com) in my area, so whenever I hear a member, say they got a difficult deal closed, I always make sure to inquire for an introduction, because this might be the broker who can get most of my deals funded.

Remember, you can sell a home ten times, if you can’t get the buyer funded by a mortgage company…who cares, your wasting your time.

2. You should make some effort in fixing the home up; even if it’s a hunker, I’d still get the lawn cut and maybe throw a coat of paint on the property. You’d be amazed at the improvement to even an ugly property, with a simple coat of paint on the front of the property.

3. Go to your local community financing office or local grant and home buyer bond office. For example in my area (South Florida and Palm Beach County), both counties run a FREE class for your buyers on becoming a first time home buyer and when they take the class, they then get a voucher from the county, giving them $10,000.00 toward the purchase of their first home. The best part is sometimes the loans are even forgiven, when certain criteria are met by the new homeowner.

LET’S DO SOME MARKETING ON STEROIDS

Let’s be frank, your going to have to be more aggressive, smarter and persistent than 99% of all your homes neighbors.

There’s no magic pill, but this has been working for both my students and me, for the last year, and we’re always testing and fine-tuning the system.

And I can tell you, that while every other investor, is sitting with their heads in their butts, my students and I are able to sell all of our properties, during one of the worst RE slowdowns in history, and this is in South Florida, one of the most depressed markets in the Country,

1. Buyer First System

Basically you create your own buyers. The best example would be converting a lifetime renter into the American Dream a homeowner. Just so happens, that while becoming the American Dream, they also end up buying your home.

Very simply, create a flyer or postcard, and market to communities of people who would be a great prospect to buy your home.

Who doesn’t want to be a homeowner in America? Nobody, that’s a stupid question, everyone wants to be a homeowner, and it’s bred into us as kids.

The real key is you must understand, that these individuals renting, most are under the impression they CAN’T get a mortgage. They might have tried in the past, and we’re shutdown and embarrassed, only to believe they would live the rest of their lives as a RENTER.

These are the best leads you can focus on, because it’s not a matter of IF they’ll buy your home, they will, the key is can you get them funded or is it the right house for them, financially affordable.

I must also share with you, this strategy will take some of your time and initiative, because their is hand holding involved, mortgage brokers, and helping them get any government help in First time homebuyer money.

2. Fish in some one else’s pond!

Go where the most prospects are for your home. I’ll give you some examples, you need to go where the most and the best prospects are to buy your home, assuming it’s a good deal (priced right, and there’s still built-in equity for your buyer).

If you have any contacts or a friend of a friend, now is the time for using it and your expectations are for these contacts to open doors for you, to their sphere of influence.

For Example, one of my students, Courtney, leveraged a contact he had, his cousin (she was a middle school teacher), and she introduced him into the schools, where it just happened that the schools are in the same area, that he was selling a great starter home.

He sold the home that he needed to the most, but then, once word spread of what he was able to do, the rest of the teachers came out of everywhere, wanting him to help them. He’s since helping the 1st teacher, sold another 5 homes, to 5 different teachers, earning him over $30,000.00 for this simple, leveraged relationship.

So what ponds can you fish in, with your marketing? Think about whom you know (friends, family members, and associates)?

BEST: Teachers, Cops, Firefighters, Government Employees, Bus Drivers, Department of Transportation. (These careers are loved by lenders, they mostly have good credit, and their income is basically guaranteed and very stable.)

GOOD: Large local employers: Supermarkets, Local telephone company (Bell South), Home Depot, Wal-Mart, etc.

3. Use the Internet…

You should definitely have an individual website for your property.

You can get a simple site built for under $100.00.

ü Use www.elance.com or www.rentacoder.com : Two great sites, for getting your site created, they are both similar to EBay. You post an auction about your project (your home website), and then companies bid on your job, and you get to see samples of their work and read all their feedback, after you decided who wins your job, you choose a winner. Oh by the way, both of these services cost you nothing, their completely FREE. ü Take some pictures with a digital camera of your home and you’ll end up emailing them to the site designer, to post on your site. (good example, is www.735airoso.com) ü Treat this as an online, digital brochure, basically being able to do whatever you can conceive. ü You can take a video of the home, with you walking through the home and then have it placed on your site. If you’re intimidated by video, like I was at first, don’t be, because your web site designer can do it for you, very easily.

Now, when ever you talk to someone on the phone or in person, they can quickly look at your property, on the web. This will be the best $100.00 you’ll ever spend on marketing of your home.

4. BONUS: Promote and hold your own, “First Time Homebuyer Seminar”.

Before you say anything, I don’t expect you to be Tony Robbins, if you can get 10 to 15 people in a room, your going to be successful.

We shared this strategy with my mentoring students, and it’s been working excellent for them, from the results I’ve been receiving back from my future millionaires. In fact, one of my students from Miami, Alex, has been executing this strategy like gangbusters.

Before writing this article, I received permission from Alex to share some of his feedback with you, on the Homebuyer seminars that have been very successful for him.

He’s now doing 1 a month, every month. Also, since he’s has a few successfully under his belt, he’s now selling sponsorship space to his seminars, to Mortgage brokers, credit repair companies, and he’s even worked out a joint venture with two different realtors, whom pay him for every property they sell to one of his prospects.

If you’re curious how he’s filling the room, all he’s doing is as follows…

-Flyers in Parking lots, I.E. Wal-Mart, Publix Supermarkets, and local churches.

-Free Advertising on www.craigslist.com

-He uses bandit style signs on the side of the road, 18 x 24, corrugated plastic signs.

-He’s even put up a website that the attendees, can pre-register for the seminar. (Sorry, he didn’t want me giving out the site, for obvious reasons)

-He also is giving them an ethical bribe for attending the seminar; he gives them a few nooks and tapes just for making it to the event. The best part is he received the books for free on the internet, and he’s also allowed to give them away for free and even rebrand them as his own books.

You just can’t get that memo right, can you? You print out the first draft and find a misspelling. You print out the second draft and discover you missed some commas. You print out the third draft and later decide on a new title. Now the final draft is ready for printing. Before you throw away those wasted sheets of paper, stop and realize that you could be costing your business as well as the environment.

You probably know that by recycling you can save landfill space. But did you know that recycling also can produce a profit for your company? Follow these recycling tips and your workplace will be ready to save the world.

* Create a recycling program. Almost all types of office papers are recyclable. So is most plastic, aluminum and cardboard. If your office doesn’t already have a recycling program, contact your local recycling company to see how to start one.

* Use recycled products. If you recycle but don’t buy recycled products, you’re defeating the purpose, in a sense, by discouraging manufacturers of recycled products.

* Conserve paper. Find paperless ways to communicate, such as by e-mail. Also, save used paper for scrap, make double-sided copies and only print pages you actually need. By cutting back on paper consumption, your office will save money and natural resources.

* Recycle office equipment. Did you know that computers can be recycled, as well as cell phones, PDAs, pagers, chargers and rechargeable batteries? Many local recycling companies and retailers, including Staples, offer easy ways to recycle your equipment.

* Recycle empty inkjet and toner cartridges. The fewer drafts you print, the more money you’ll save on cartridge replacements. But when that inkjet or toner cartridge is empty, recycle it through mail-back programs or local retailers like Staples.

In fact, Staples offers a Recycle for Education program that gives $1 to local education charities for every empty inkjet or toner cartridge you recycle in their stores.

If you don’t mind losing $5,000 in 10 minutes, you may enjoy trading commodity futures contracts. There’s an old saying among commodity traders: “It’s easy to make a small fortune in commodities. Just start with a large fortune!” This is not a business for people who are emotionally attached to their money, yet thousands of average “investors” get lured into the commodity markets year after year. Why? Because of the possibility of making high percentage gains using the built-in leverage that is available to commodity futures traders.

The commodity markets include wheat, corn, soybeans, pork-bellies, gold, silver, heating oil, lumber, and numerous other common trade items. The huge companies that operate in these markets use commodity “futures” contracts to lock in their selling prices for the product in advance of delivery. This practice is called “hedging.” On the other side of that transaction is the trader, who speculates on whether the priced of the commodity will go up or down before the contract is due for delivery. Because futures contracts may be purchased using leverage, these financial instruments lend themselves to speculation.

For example, control of a corn contract worth $5,000 may only requrie $500 of actual cash, or 10% of the face value of the contract. If the corn goes up in value, and the contract becomes worth, say, $5,500, the speculator has made $500 on his or her original $500, for a 100% return. Compare this with the regular stock market, which limits leverage to 50%, so that $5,000 worth of stock requires a minimum of $2,500 of capital. If the stock goes up to $5,500 in value, the $500 gain is against $2,500 invested, for a return of “only” 20%. The 100% return sure looks a lot better, right?

You can easily see why investors in search of quick gains are hypnotized by the lure of big profits using maximum leverage in commodity futures trading. The real problem, however, is that the leverage works in BOTH DIRECTIONS. You can lose your entire investment in a matter of minutes due to the wild price gyrations that sometimes occur in these volatile markets. Let’s say the $5,000 contract drops to $4,000 in value instead of increasing. You’ve not only lost the original $500 you put into the contract, but an additional $500. You can go broke quickly this way.

So why do people play this game? Average investors do not wake up in the morning and say to themselves, “Right, I think I’ll start trading commodities.” What happens is, they receive a sales pitch from a commodity trading “guru” claiming to have a “system” for generating sure-fire profits in these wild markets. These “systems” range in price from $25 all the way up to $5,000 or more, and are sold based on the promise of “huge profits” from a small starting investment.

Newsletter writers or commodity gurus regularly pitch the myth about turning $5,000 into a million bucks in less than a year. The typical commodity system pitch comes in a long sales letter or booklet that describes a method for winning on “9 out of 10″ trades or similar inflated claims.

Of course, if it was possible to correctly trade 90% of the time, a person could easily amass millions of dollars in a very short period of time. So why are these guys so eager for you to spend $195 on their super-duper trading course? Because they probably aren’t making any real money with their own trading program! There’s much safer money to be made selling others on the idea of getting into commodity futures trading.

There is no sure-fire way to consistently make money in these markets, simply because the underlying commodity prices can swing wildly back and forth depending on a complex set of variables, many of which are totally unpredictable. That’s why the only people consistently making money in the commodity markets are the brokers, who collect a commission for executing the trade regardless of whether it wins or loses.

There are also a handful of successful professional traders who make a living in these markets. But the vast majority of people who dabble in commodity futures lose money. Unfortunately, with the lure of huge returns and easy money, a fresh crop of innocent traders enters the market each year, only to be quickly fleeced out of their money.

Don’t be one of them! Leave commodity futures trading to the professionals and stick with the more boring forms of investment, such as mutual fund investing or stocks and bonds.