Flip This Wholesaler

Well, I’ll be darned if it hasn’t been an entire week since I’ve written a blog post.  Sorry about that.

So, what the heck have I been up to?

Working my ass off, for the most part.  Also running my ass off.  I think I’m probably in the best shape right now that I’ve been in since I don’t even know when.  8th grade, maybe.  So, I’m pretty happy about that.

Oh, also, I’m being stalked by the Census Bureau.  Holy crap man, those people mean BUSINESS.

They came knocking on my door yesterday, which scared the living shiitake out of me since no one ever comes knocking on my door.  The building I live in is like Fort Knox, or what I imagine Fort Knox to be like, anyway….. you have to get through 3 layers of security to even get in the elevators, and then once you get on the elevator you have to have a special code to get onto each floor.  So anyway, when I got a knock on my door I automatically assumed it was a Ninja coming to assassinate me.  Who else could it be?  Although now that I think about it, I bet Ninjas don’t even bother to knock.

As it turns out, it was Jim from the Census Bureau who asked if he could come on in and conduct a 5-8 minute interview with me.  I politely declined because I don’t usually let strange men into my home even if they come under the guise of Census Bureaudom. He told me they would call me back today and conduct the interview over the phone, but instead they have been calling me every 5-10 minutes since he left my doorstep.  Seriously.

I guess that will learn me to throw my census papers in my “I’ll get to it later when I have some spare time” pile.

Which looks like this in case you were wondering….

Side view:

Did you ever imagine me to be so organized?

So other than getting harassed by the Census Mafia, and running my ass off, I’ve also been hitting the MLS and making lots of offers.  I took a break for a long while there, and was just working deals with my wholesaling buddies, but now I’m back in MLS-offer-making-mode.

I’ve got one short sale that I think I’m going to get accepted this week.  That’s what the listing agent told me anyway.  It’s listed in the 60s, but the agent said if I made an offer of 40k she could make it happen.  You’d be surprised at the info you can get from some of the agents if you just ask.

I’m also working on another JV deal with Murphy that I think one of my hood buyers is going to take.  It’s a cheap piece of crap, which is this guy’s specialty, so I’m waiting to hear back from him on that.  I’m actually headed back out to that property as soon as I’m finished writing this post to see if I can rescue the kitty that the previous scumbag owners left outside when they moved out.

Anybody in the market for a kitty?  She’s orange with white stripes and fleas.  Any takers?

So, that’s about all I’ve got for now folks!

Later alligators!

P.S.

I forgot to mention that I’m doing a free Q&A training call with Drew Downs this Saturday, May 8th at Noon EST!

If you missed the webinar we did last week, or if you have questions about wholesaling short sales or REOs, or how to find cash buyers in your market, or how to locate the hot zip codes in your city, or if you got Drew’s course and need clarification on any topics, this will be your chance to pick his brain and get your questions answered!  I already have my list of questions ready to go….

To register for the event this Saturday, click here!

See ya there!

P.P.S.

Don’t  forget to stop by here Monday @ 8pm, to discuss this month’s Book Club selection: Influence, by Robert Cialdini.  My good friend Shae Bynes (who is much better at writing book reviews than I am), will be guest posting, so make sure to stop by and throw in your 2 cents.  Or however many cents you’d like to throw in.

P.P.P.S.

Speaking of Shae Bynes, if you guys haven’t been over to her blog lately, she just announced that she’s taking the leap and LEAVING THE RAT RACE once and for all!

Congratulations, Shae!

So, the deal that I was working on with my wholesaler buddy that was supposed to close last month sometime, finally closed today.  Which is good news.  I always cringe when my phone rings on the day of a closing because I’m half expecting the morons at the bank’s title company (or the morons at the bank) to screw something up and delay things even more.  I am officially jaded when it comes to dealing with bank owned properties.  And for good reason.  Thankfully, though, the closing went off without a hitch this time, and I got paid.  Getting paid is always nice.

In other news, I just got another JV deal wrapped up today that might be closing TOMORROW (if you can believe that).  If not tomorrow, it will get done early next week.  This one is actually a short sale that has already been approved that was brought to me by another wholesaler. Coincidentally, the other wholesaler is Drew Downs, whose course I just got a few weeks ago after listening to a webinar he did about wholesaling short sales off of the MLS.  He’s basically killing it right now, and is using an approach that I have not seen anyone else take when it comes to pursuing short sales on the MLS.  And now he is training his competition (me).  Bwahahahahahaha…

So anyway, I contacted him after reading through his material and asked him to let me know next time he got a deal because I have the most kick ass buyers list at the moment.  He sent me a text Tuesday night with info about a deal that had just fallen out of contract, and I was there the next morning at 9am with my new favorite buyer who is looking for houses in that neighborhood. My new favorite buyer (NFB from here on out), took about 30 minutes to make up his mind and commit to the property, and he dropped off an escrow check this afternoon for the entire purchase amount.  Cause that’s just how he rolls.

The best part about all of this (aside from the fact that I’m going to be making 3k in 3 days for doing next to nothing), is that I also called my Cheap Bastard Buyer (CBB) about this same property and he didn’t get back to me about it until a few hours later, and when he did get back to me, he spent 10 minutes telling me what a “piece of shit” (spoken in a very, very, thick Southern drawl) the house is, and naming every single repair that needs to be done to it.

We go through this same routine EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I send him a new property, no matter how good of a deal it is, or how good of condition it is in.  It’s the most annoying negotiating tactic EVER, and even more annoying that he thinks I don’t know what he’s doing.  This ain’t my first rodeo, pal.

So anyway, I let him go on for a few minutes just for fun, and then I told him sorry the house is already gone and by the way, I sold it for full price.  Because it’s a smokin deal.  You cheap bastard.

Hehe.

So yeah, I still don’t really understand how all the paperwork is going to go down with this deal, but as far as I know we’re doing a double closing.  Although Drew said you can sometimes assign short sales (news to me), so we might end up rewriting the contracts and doing it that way. My buyer doesn’t really care how the closing is set up as long as he gets the house with clear title, so if we have to go back and redo the paperwork, it’s not going to be a big issue.

Anyhoodle, I’ll let you know how it all shakes out.  This is new territory for me, so it should be an interesting learning experience.

And thus concludes the longest blog post on the face of the planet.

Later Alligators!

P.S.
My girl Shae, just set up a new fan page on Facebook for her delicious (and nutritious), coffee line. It has magical healing powers because it is made with magical mushrooms. For real. Head on over and fan her up- and check it out for yourself!

P.P.S.
I posted a new article on the BiggerPockets blog earlier today- check it out when you have a second and let me know what you think.

P.P.P.S.
Does anyone else despise WordPress as much as I do?
I want to kick it in the face right now.

Well, I guess I should get the bad news out of the way first….

You may have seen this coming if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time and know the history that me and the Murphster have when it comes to working deals together (like this one, for example).  When we join forces the two of us are like one giant black cloud of bad luck.  It’s almost kind of funny, but then again not so much.

So, yeah, the land deal has pretty much gone straight to hell in a hand basket.

I got the call from Murphy first thing Monday morning, which was an AWESOME way to kick off my week.  I had just gotten back from the gym, saw that I had a missed call from Murph, and when I called him back the first thing he said was, “Steph, I’ve got some bad news….”  (YAY!)

Apparently the head honcho guy from up North decided that these parcels of land are too far away from where they’re going to be building, so they decided to pass on the deal (for the second time). It doesn’t make much sense to us since the land is right smack dab in the middle of several other properties they own, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.  Murphy is still negotiating with the guy to see if they would be interested at a lower price, but I don’t think it’s gonna fly.

Oh well. It’s not the first time one of my deals has gone up in smoke, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I do have some good news to share, however.

Check it out:

That, my friends, is what I like to call a thorough ass-kicking of the month of March!

Each of those red dots represents me getting up at the crack o’ dawn and running 4 miles. This has been a goal of mine for I don’t even know how long, but I have never been able to discipline myself to actually follow through.  Usually I’ll stay on track for 2 weeks or so, and then I’ll start slacking off for one reason or another.

There were some mornings when I felt like a giant pile of dog crap (like today, for example) and the last thing I wanted to do was run 4 miles, but I made myself do it anyway.  Screw slacking off.  I wasn’t put on this earth to be a slacker.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I’ll leave you with some pictures of Chef Steph’s latest adventures in the kitchen…. chocolate chip cookies!!

My good pal, Shae (who is frolicking on the beach in Jamaica right now) got to be my guinea pig. She tells me they were good, but I’m pretty sure she would say that no matter what.

Mmmmmmmmmm……sugar

Health Food

My very first mixer.  I named him “Little Buddy” ($9.99 @ Walgreens)

Little Buddy hard at work

Oh yeah

Sweet, delicious, cookie dough

Almost

Viola- chocolate chip cookies, A-la Steph!

Hehe.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

P.S.
Flip This Book Club meets here at 8pm on Monday- we’ll be discussing Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. Hope to see you here!

Hi Everybody- hope you are having a delightful weekend!

I had planned on posting a Reader Mail video tonight, but my Sony Vaio that is just a little over a year old is BUSTED.  WOOHOO!  Thankfully the 1 year warranty recently expired, which is extra awesome.

It all started Wednesday evening while I was trying to write my weekly article for the BiggerPockets blog.  Fortunately for me I didn’t save my work as I was writing, and then my POS Vaio decided to lose power for no apparent reason, and so I lost everything.  It’s gotten progressively worse since then.

I’ll spare you all the gory details, but bottom line is that I’m sans laptop for the time being.  Thankfully, there’s a business center on the 8th floor of the building I live in, so that’s a good thing.

I do have some good news about the land deal that Murphy and I are working on- the title came back clear on all 3 parcels!  The seller has already signed off on everything, and now we are just waiting on a signed contract back from the guys up North.  They’ve had the paperwork since Monday, so I’m a wee bit concerned that they haven’t gotten it back to us yet.  Murphy talked to them on Friday and they said they are having their atty (the dreaded A word), look everything over and they will have the executed docs back to our title company this coming Monday.

It’s probably nothing to worry about, but you just never know.  I’ve had deals fall apart at the closing table, so I don’t ever count my chickens (or Benjamins, in this case), until they are sitting happily in my bank account.

Other than that, I’ve got that other REO deal that I’m working on with one of my buddies, which should hopefully be ready to go this coming week or next.  Technically, the bank has until the 15th of next month to close, but last I heard, the lady at the bank’s title co said everything will be ready before then.  Famous last words.

What else?

 Oh, This morning  I went out to an event at Pet Smart on the  Humane Society’s MAC (Mobile Adoption Center), and found homes for three doggies!  The dog I was in charge of (Ellie Mae), didn’t end up getting adopted, but she almost came home with me.   If anyone in the Tampa area is reading this and is looking for a sweet little doggie (who got kicked to the curb because her owners got divorced and didn’t want her anymore), Ellie Mae is back at the shelter and ready to be adopted!  (She’s even cuter in person, btw). 

 Have a great weekend Everybody!

Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.

The investor who owns the land that Murphy and I are trying to buy ended up countering our offer of 50k with 52k!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I was expecting a counter offer of 75k, so this obviously makes me very happy.

I’m not crapping my pants just yet, though.

As it turns out, the guy who owns the land bought it at a tax deed sale (which we already knew from looking at the tax records), and never had the title quieted when he bought it.  Now, I’ll just be honest here and tell you I have absolutely no clue about tax deed sales or quiet titles, which is why it’s always good to have a title co/real estate attorney on board who does.

We’re having the title pulled on all 3 parcels of land right now, and hopefully it will all come back A-OK.  According to the attorney who owns the title company we are using, we should be good to go since this guy has owned the properties for 9 yrs and “Generally the rule is that title is marketable after 4 yrs….”

I don’t really know what the hell that means, so I’ll just have to wait until tomorrow to see what the searches turn up.  If everything looks good, we can close immediately.  Our purchase price will be 52k net, with a sales price of 75k net.  We’ll be doing a simultaneous closing on this one as opposed to an assignment because we don’t want the end buyers to see our profit.  You know, just in case.

Of course, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.  Murphy and I don’t have the best track record when working deals together, but I think we both have some good Juju coming our way.

We shall see.

I’ll keep you all posted.

Later Alligators!

P.S.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day!