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Suggest You - Cheap Lots - Lots of Income
How to Get the Best Rates on Life Insurance in Virginia club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s.We all want to find the best deal possible when it comes time to buying anything. That’s one of the reasons used car salesmen are so good at negotiating with penny pinching customers. The same can be said of life insurance agents in Virginia who want to sell policies but still want to make money. With over 25,000 agents selling life insurance in Virginia, consumers should have no problem finding one who will work well with them.For an average individual in Virginia looking for a life insurance policy they are really concerned about one thing and that’s finding the best rates possible. There are ways to approach the business of getting a life insurance policy that can result in discounted rates. The key is to know what to look for before you start talking to overzealous agents.Less coverage doesn’t always come cheaper. Many life insurance companies actually charge more for policies that don’t fall on a certain dollar level. An example is if someone wants $425,000 in life insurance coverage. They will be quoted a rate and yet a policy for $500,000 may actually cost less. The reason is that many life insurance companies sell coverage by the dollar and the more you buy, the less each dollar of coverage costs.Think long and hard about a policy that has a lot of extras. You may think it’s a great idea to buy a policy that pays more for accidental death, but it also means you’ll be paying more for premiums. Another extra that many people don’t need is coverage that pays their premiums in case they are in an accident or become ill and disabled. If you already have a solid health insurance plan in place with disability, skip this coverage. Just buy the life insurance you really need and you are much more likely to get the best rates possible. David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David Determining the Purpose of Your Website Recently I made a great deal on about 16 lots on the Southside of San Antonio. I tend to take the internet for granted but when I think back about the best deals I ever made, I realize that most of them have come from the Internet in one form or another. Now I guess you could say it’s that way because that is where I choose to focus my attention. The truth of the matter is that I’ve done about every kind of marketing that makes sense and you just can’t beat the Internet’s “Bang for the Buck.” At any rate, this deal racked up about $108,000 in less than one year. I know for sure it would have never happened if it was not for the World Wide Web.When I first meet with a client, one of the things we do is attempt to determine the purpose of their website. On a website planning worksheet we use, there is a list of purposes many websites have in common. The client goes through the list and ranks the items in order of importance. So the most important item will be 1, and there will only be one item labelled with a 1.Here are the items in that list: To gain a favorable impression of the company or organization. To develop a qualified list of prospects To sell products directly taking credit card information over the Internet To encourage potential customers to contact us by phone or mail to consummate a sale To make available product information and price lists to distributors To make available product information and price lists to customers To strengthen brand identification Another good idea is to come up with a succinct mission statement for your site. You might even come up with one for your eyes only, then one that can be used as a tagline of sorts on your site.One of our clients, The Christian Chronicle, has a good example. Their tagline on their site is "An international news source for members of churches of Christ." They've identified not only what the site is all about, but even the target audience for the site. An internal mission statement for the Chronicle might be "Provide impartial reporting of news relevant to members of the churches of Christ."Whatever the case, a website should never be created just to create a website. It should some purpose, whether that purpose is just for fun or to make money. Establish that mission for your site and then work to fulfill it. I had been experiencing some success building little 1,200 sq. ft. houses on scattered lots in and around the Southside of San Antonio. I liked the little business and the partner I was involved with so I decided to crank it up a notch or two. I decided to put out the word that I was looking to buy some lots. What is the first thing I do when I decide to “PUT OUT THE WORD?” I go to my computer and start sending out some well thought out messages. I have taken great care to collect an extremely large amount of email addresses pertaining to the RE community in my market. Today I have over 6,500 realtors email addresses and another 600 email addresses of RE investors. All of them actively involved in RE in the San Antonio area where I live and work. Because I have learned to network among these email addresses I am reasonably famous in my town for doing what I do… Investing! It is the “BIG FISH in a SMALL POND” kind of syndrome but that’s what you need when you’re searching for deals. On this one particular day I decided to hit my entire Investor List first. I normally don’t like to send out more than 250 emails at a time but I was really, REALLY eager to buy some lots and I had all my time freed up to do just that. I honed a message that looked like this; ATTENTION INVESTORS Mitch Stephen is looking for scattered lots to build small, affordable houses on. If you come across unwanted lots in the lesser parts of town, I am interested in speaking with you about them. The lots must be at least 4,000 Sq. Ft. The lots must be at least 50’ wide. I am ready to buy today! Mitch Stephen 210-669-4020 Mitch@Homes2Go.NET Within about 5 minutes I had constructed the message and sent it out in an email to the 600 or so investors in San Antonio. Now, I’m going to take a little “side step” here and use this paragraph to drive home a message to all of you out there; Were else in the world can you hit 100s – even 1,000s - of people in your direct market with a personal message within 5 minutes for virtually FREE??? If you think I’m a bit over the top when I get excited about Internet Marketing? …well that is why! There is no other effective way to reach so many in an instant. So many of the investors I know out there are missing the opportunity completely. Now, where were we… oh yeah…I was trying to buy some lots… With my email campaign delivered I figured I’d have some lots in inventory within a week or so... and I was right. I didn’t pick up as many as I’d hoped to, but I did have 3 on the hook right away. I was buying lots for $8,000 to $12,000 each. They were standard lots of the minimum size; 50’ X 100’. It was a fair price… not great but not bad either. I used the same message but modified it for Realtors. Compared to the INVESTOR COMMUNITY the realtors are a bit touchy… Sooooo, when it comes to the realtors, I methodically send out 250 realtor emails a day instead of hitting the entire group at one time. Let’s do the math; I have about 6,500 realtor email addresses, I send out 250 a day, I don’t have to create a new message for 26 days. Actually it’s even longer than that because I don’t send out emails on the weekends or on Holidays. Why don’t I blast all of the realtors at once? I actually spread it out for several reasons: 1. I don’t want to create more leads than I can respectfully handle. Nothing will hurt your business faster than asking for help and then NOT responding when help calls you. Even if the deal is a complete loser you need to respectfully decline. Imagine a person holding out their hand to shake hands with you and then you decline to extend your own hand… that is what it is like if you don’t respond to an email that has responded to your request. 2. I don’t want to beat my list of realtors up everyday because they’ll soon request to be “REMOVED” from my LIST. Nobody likes to get hit with an endless barrage of mails day after day. YOU don’t like it and THEY don’t like it…NOBODY likes it! 3. I want to stay in front of my network every 2 to 3 weeks with a viable message. By presenting myself every 2 or 3 weeks I have a better chance of staying in the forefront of their minds. TOP of MIND AWARNESS is what I want to accomplish. When someone in my network runs across a deal, I want them to think of me. 4. Some realtors in the community tend to frown on an investor if they think they are available to every other agent out there. I don’t know why that is but it is true. When confronted with agents that want me to sign up with them “exclusively” I always ask them, “Dear Mr. Agent, could they live with only ONE client? If they don’t understand where I’m coming from after that question… I move on without them. HINT: It works against you if you put a multitude of email addresses from one real estate office in the same distribution list. That is another reason why I have 26 folders for 6,500 realtors… 250 email addresses to each folder. By having this many folders I can easily spread an office of 26 realtors into one realtor per file. Imagine how easy it is for me to generate leads! Imagine how many people recognize my name after a few months! Imagine how many people think of me during the day as deals come across their desks! I simply go to my site, select another 250 realtors, copy and paste the same message into the email and hit send. I can send that same message to a different 250 realtors a day for almost a month before I have to change the message. It takes about 30 seconds a day to send out that message. I do it first thing in the morning before I start my daily adventures. Sometime during the day or in the evening I check my email in box for favorable responses. If I have a lot of responses I will not send out another email message until I have contacted every responder and opted in or out of their proposal or offer. In this particular case it wasn’t until about 45 days later that I got the email I had been REALLY looking for. I received an email from an investor named David whom I’d met at the local real estate investment club (San Antonio Real Estate Investment Association – SAREIA) many, many months ago. I can’t tell you how many emails addresses I harvest from my local RE club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s. David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David Marketing Your Business Online rmally don’t like to send out more than 250 emails at a time but I was really, REALLY eager to buy some lots and I had all my time freed up to do just that. I honed a message that looked like this;How can a business that is already successful in reaching their local market extend their marketing reach online? The good news is that the traditional offline marketing that has always worked so well will still work at least as effectively to promote your online presence. The other side of the coin is that to promote your business online, the old traditions need some updating to keep up with online marketing best practices.Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let's jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won't be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can't quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.1. Site optimization This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example "precision-engineered bolts" is likely to get better placement than a generic term like "engineering parts". You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in ATTENTION INVESTORS Mitch Stephen is looking for scattered lots to build small, affordable houses on. If you come across unwanted lots in the lesser parts of town, I am interested in speaking with you about them. The lots must be at least 4,000 Sq. Ft. The lots must be at least 50’ wide. I am ready to buy today! Mitch Stephen 210-669-4020 Mitch@Homes2Go.NET Within about 5 minutes I had constructed the message and sent it out in an email to the 600 or so investors in San Antonio. Now, I’m going to take a little “side step” here and use this paragraph to drive home a message to all of you out there; Were else in the world can you hit 100s – even 1,000s - of people in your direct market with a personal message within 5 minutes for virtually FREE??? If you think I’m a bit over the top when I get excited about Internet Marketing? …well that is why! There is no other effective way to reach so many in an instant. So many of the investors I know out there are missing the opportunity completely. Now, where were we… oh yeah…I was trying to buy some lots… With my email campaign delivered I figured I’d have some lots in inventory within a week or so... and I was right. I didn’t pick up as many as I’d hoped to, but I did have 3 on the hook right away. I was buying lots for $8,000 to $12,000 each. They were standard lots of the minimum size; 50’ X 100’. It was a fair price… not great but not bad either. I used the same message but modified it for Realtors. Compared to the INVESTOR COMMUNITY the realtors are a bit touchy… Sooooo, when it comes to the realtors, I methodically send out 250 realtor emails a day instead of hitting the entire group at one time. Let’s do the math; I have about 6,500 realtor email addresses, I send out 250 a day, I don’t have to create a new message for 26 days. Actually it’s even longer than that because I don’t send out emails on the weekends or on Holidays. Why don’t I blast all of the realtors at once? I actually spread it out for several reasons: 1. I don’t want to create more leads than I can respectfully handle. Nothing will hurt your business faster than asking for help and then NOT responding when help calls you. Even if the deal is a complete loser you need to respectfully decline. Imagine a person holding out their hand to shake hands with you and then you decline to extend your own hand… that is what it is like if you don’t respond to an email that has responded to your request. 2. I don’t want to beat my list of realtors up everyday because they’ll soon request to be “REMOVED” from my LIST. Nobody likes to get hit with an endless barrage of mails day after day. YOU don’t like it and THEY don’t like it…NOBODY likes it! 3. I want to stay in front of my network every 2 to 3 weeks with a viable message. By presenting myself every 2 or 3 weeks I have a better chance of staying in the forefront of their minds. TOP of MIND AWARNESS is what I want to accomplish. When someone in my network runs across a deal, I want them to think of me. 4. Some realtors in the community tend to frown on an investor if they think they are available to every other agent out there. I don’t know why that is but it is true. When confronted with agents that want me to sign up with them “exclusively” I always ask them, “Dear Mr. Agent, could they live with only ONE client? If they don’t understand where I’m coming from after that question… I move on without them. HINT: It works against you if you put a multitude of email addresses from one real estate office in the same distribution list. That is another reason why I have 26 folders for 6,500 realtors… 250 email addresses to each folder. By having this many folders I can easily spread an office of 26 realtors into one realtor per file. Imagine how easy it is for me to generate leads! Imagine how many people recognize my name after a few months! Imagine how many people think of me during the day as deals come across their desks! I simply go to my site, select another 250 realtors, copy and paste the same message into the email and hit send. I can send that same message to a different 250 realtors a day for almost a month before I have to change the message. It takes about 30 seconds a day to send out that message. I do it first thing in the morning before I start my daily adventures. Sometime during the day or in the evening I check my email in box for favorable responses. If I have a lot of responses I will not send out another email message until I have contacted every responder and opted in or out of their proposal or offer. In this particular case it wasn’t until about 45 days later that I got the email I had been REALLY looking for. I received an email from an investor named David whom I’d met at the local real estate investment club (San Antonio Real Estate Investment Association – SAREIA) many, many months ago. I can’t tell you how many emails addresses I harvest from my local RE club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s. David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David Home Insurance - Do You Even Need It? R COMMUNITY the realtors are a bit touchy… Sooooo, when it comes to the realtors, I methodically send out 250 realtor emails a day instead of hitting the entire group at one time. Let’s do the math;Is home insurance required by law? Do you need to get home owner insurance? The answer all depends on your situation.Car insurance --or some sort of proof of financial responsibility -- is pretty much required by state law, no matter where you live. However, home insurance is different in that it is not required by law. Your bank or mortgage lender though, will require that you have home owner insurance coverage or they won't finance your home. This is so they can protect their interests; if you're home is damaged or burns down and you default on your loan, they can still recoup their investment.What's more, if you live in a flood-prone region your bank or mortgage company will probably require flood insurance which is sold as a separate policy.So if you own your home free and clear, you probably won't be required to purchase home insurance. However you are still liable for lawsuits on your property, and all costs of repairs from damage to keep your home habitable. Unless you have enough assets to protect yourself from these financial risks, home owner insurance is your best bet.Your standard policy will provide coverage for your dwelling (the home), contents (personal belongings), liability and living expenses while your home is being repaired. You can also get extra coverages for such items as jewelry and computer equipment. You can also purchase an umbrella policy which provides much higher coverages especially for liability.If you want to save money on home insurance, the best thing to do is shop around for comparison quotes. You may also save by taking advantage of discounts such as insuring your car and home with the same company. When you shop for quotes, provide the same desired coverages to each company to get an accurate comparison. For convenience, visit an online site that allows you to enter your information once and get several quotes back. I have about 6,500 realtor email addresses, I send out 250 a day, I don’t have to create a new message for 26 days. Actually it’s even longer than that because I don’t send out emails on the weekends or on Holidays. Why don’t I blast all of the realtors at once? I actually spread it out for several reasons: 1. I don’t want to create more leads than I can respectfully handle. Nothing will hurt your business faster than asking for help and then NOT responding when help calls you. Even if the deal is a complete loser you need to respectfully decline. Imagine a person holding out their hand to shake hands with you and then you decline to extend your own hand… that is what it is like if you don’t respond to an email that has responded to your request. 2. I don’t want to beat my list of realtors up everyday because they’ll soon request to be “REMOVED” from my LIST. Nobody likes to get hit with an endless barrage of mails day after day. YOU don’t like it and THEY don’t like it…NOBODY likes it! 3. I want to stay in front of my network every 2 to 3 weeks with a viable message. By presenting myself every 2 or 3 weeks I have a better chance of staying in the forefront of their minds. TOP of MIND AWARNESS is what I want to accomplish. When someone in my network runs across a deal, I want them to think of me. 4. Some realtors in the community tend to frown on an investor if they think they are available to every other agent out there. I don’t know why that is but it is true. When confronted with agents that want me to sign up with them “exclusively” I always ask them, “Dear Mr. Agent, could they live with only ONE client? If they don’t understand where I’m coming from after that question… I move on without them. HINT: It works against you if you put a multitude of email addresses from one real estate office in the same distribution list. That is another reason why I have 26 folders for 6,500 realtors… 250 email addresses to each folder. By having this many folders I can easily spread an office of 26 realtors into one realtor per file. Imagine how easy it is for me to generate leads! Imagine how many people recognize my name after a few months! Imagine how many people think of me during the day as deals come across their desks! I simply go to my site, select another 250 realtors, copy and paste the same message into the email and hit send. I can send that same message to a different 250 realtors a day for almost a month before I have to change the message. It takes about 30 seconds a day to send out that message. I do it first thing in the morning before I start my daily adventures. Sometime during the day or in the evening I check my email in box for favorable responses. If I have a lot of responses I will not send out another email message until I have contacted every responder and opted in or out of their proposal or offer. In this particular case it wasn’t until about 45 days later that I got the email I had been REALLY looking for. I received an email from an investor named David whom I’d met at the local real estate investment club (San Antonio Real Estate Investment Association – SAREIA) many, many months ago. I can’t tell you how many emails addresses I harvest from my local RE club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s. David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David Wealth - What Does Your Financial Future Look Like? gents that want me to sign up with them “exclusively” I always ask them, “Dear Mr. Agent, could they live with only ONE client? If they don’t understand where I’m coming from after that question… I move on without them.Do you realize that the actions (or inactions) that you are taking now will affect you in the coming years?What you did (or didn't) do last year and the year before is what is affecting you right now.So, what sort of a future are you setting yourself up for?To have a decent future you are going to need money. World economies are dictating that you are not only going to need money, you are going to need PLENTY of money. This is because there are more and more people competing for the same amount of resources. This is simple economics.Again, what are you doing NOW to position yourself?Most people are ramping up their spending and putting more and more debt on their credit cards. When they max one card out they just go and apply for another one or they increase the limit on the one or ones that they already have.Banks will happily saddle all and sundry with as much debt as they can. This is the wealth plan for the bank and its greedy CEO's and share holders. Unfortunately, for Joe or Jane Citizen, going down that path is the start of financial disaster.Remember, what you are doing today - RIGHT NOW - is going to affect your financial future in the years ahead. If you are spending money like there is no tomorrow then, for you, that will be your reality.To avoid this you need to educate yourself and take action now - BEFORE you one day come to the stark realization that you have sold yourself out and are settling for a lifetime of future struggle and poverty.Don't let my words come back to haunt you. Do something positive for your financial future NOW! Don't leave it all to chance. HINT: It works against you if you put a multitude of email addresses from one real estate office in the same distribution list. That is another reason why I have 26 folders for 6,500 realtors… 250 email addresses to each folder. By having this many folders I can easily spread an office of 26 realtors into one realtor per file. Imagine how easy it is for me to generate leads! Imagine how many people recognize my name after a few months! Imagine how many people think of me during the day as deals come across their desks! I simply go to my site, select another 250 realtors, copy and paste the same message into the email and hit send. I can send that same message to a different 250 realtors a day for almost a month before I have to change the message. It takes about 30 seconds a day to send out that message. I do it first thing in the morning before I start my daily adventures. Sometime during the day or in the evening I check my email in box for favorable responses. If I have a lot of responses I will not send out another email message until I have contacted every responder and opted in or out of their proposal or offer. In this particular case it wasn’t until about 45 days later that I got the email I had been REALLY looking for. I received an email from an investor named David whom I’d met at the local real estate investment club (San Antonio Real Estate Investment Association – SAREIA) many, many months ago. I can’t tell you how many emails addresses I harvest from my local RE club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s. David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David UK Resident Doctors and Dentists - Are You Planning Your Financial Future Or Being Sold Policies? club… but I’d guess it is in the 100s.There are really only two types of services you can choose from when getting help with planning your finances, although some financial advisers do not offer both.The key question you should ask yourself is which one is best:Financial Advice or Financial Planning?Clients that get financial advice often end up treating their financial programme like a shopping trip. They simply progress through life collecting policies. It is very much an event driven exercise.For example, you may have children so you buy some life assurance or see an advert and buy an investment policy etc. Because it is event driven the advice is reactive/problem solving, and will almost always result in a policy being sold to you (or doing the research yourself and you buying the policy without advice).The problem with this is that there isn’t any form of measurement that takes place until it’s too late. You reach the checkout, i.e. retirement, and have to hope you have enough in your trolley to last you for the rest of your life. Or worse, something goes wrong on the way to the checkout – illness, accident etc and you have to rummage in the trolley in the hope that you have something in there to deal with the problem.In simple terms it is a retail service and the people that provide it get paid according to what they sell (assuming they are paid by commission and not by fees from you).Having said that, a financial advice service may be appropriate for your needs now before you progress to a more comprehensive financial planning service.Financial Planning is much simpler and more effective.The first step is to work out what your objectives are, making sure you spend time to work out both your needs and your wants. The next step is to work out how far all your existing plans and investments will go towards achieving your objectives.Cashflow forecasting software is then used to build the framework of your financial plan, marrying up your objectives with your current and future sources of income.Cashflow modelling is crucial as it gives your Financial Planner a context within which advice can be provided because it highlights any areas of vulnerability. More importantly, it gives you a context within which you can make decisions as the effects of vari David wanted to know if I was still looking for lots. He went on to explain that he had received my email several weeks ago and that he had saved it just incase he ran across what I was looking for. As luck would have it… he had bumped into a family trying to settle an estate. They needed to sell 16 small lots on the Southside of San Antonio to close out the estate. I responded with a phone call to David and he explained the situation. The estate had 16 lots they needed to sell as soon as possible. Selling the lots was the last step in closing out an arduous estate. He asked me how much I could pay per lot and still come out good on the Deal. I told him that I could pay up to $12,000 a lot, but for it to be a GOOD deal for me I’d need it to be around $8,000. David was a smart a shrewd investor. He knew that if he gave me a GOOD DEAL I would be more likely to strike and strike fast. He also knew he could get the lots at a good price. David asked me if I would be upset if he negotiated a deal to purchase the lots for $4,000 and then sold them to me for the $8,000 I told him, as I had stated before, That $8,000 would be a very good deal for me. After all, he offered me the optimum of what I had asked for. I never begrudge the amount of money anyone else makes on the deal if I am happy with my position. I agreed to buy the lots at $8,000 if he could get a contract for less… no matter how much less. Later that week David had consummated a deal with the estate at exactly what he had set his sites on… $4,000 per lot. I contracted to buy the lots for $8,000 if everything was fine legally and if I could get a title commitment on each lot. Let’s do the math; David would contract the 16 Lots at $4,000 each… total strike price of $64,000 I would agree to buy the 16 lots at $8,000 each… a total price of $128,000 David had set himself up to make a cool $64,000 in one transaction covering 16 lots and I would have 16 lots at a killer price to build affordable homes on. Did it bother me that David was going to make so much so fast?…not in the least. I would make my money too, eventually. As I stated before, I had already had some success building 2 houses from the exact same set of plans on 2 separate lots. I intended to build that exact same house yet again on every lot David was offering to sell me. Obviously, my building costs would be very predictable. My contractors had already absorbed the learning curve and therefore would be able to build the new homes in a “cookie cutter” fashion. My previous experience told me that the homes would be sold before the paint was even dry and that I could expect about a $20,000 minimum profit per home. Let’s do that math; 16 homes x $20,000 profit each = $320,000 Needless to say… I was very happy with the deal. I figured I could complete the building and the sales of the homes in about 12 months. I was also ecstatic about the location of the lots. They were in exactly the type of lower income area I was looking for and they were close to a very popular, main thorough fair. I signed the commitment letter for David immediately and awaited closing instructions. Things took a turn for the worse when I discovered that the lots were smaller than the size I had requested in my first email to my investor list. I had asked that the lots be at least 50 ft. wide and a minimum of 4,000 sq. ft. in size. These lots measured only 25’ x 100’ and that was way short of what I needed. I could not build a decent home on a lot that was only 25’ wide. Furthermore, the city code wouldn’t allow me to build a house on lots that small. I called David and explained to him that no one could build on a lot that was 25’ x 100‘ and that it would take 2 lots to build 1 house. He acknowledged my previous email… and that I had, in fact, requested lots that were at least 50’ x 100’ to build on. As luck would have it, many of the lots were contiguous. There was a clump of lots on the main street and a clump of lots across the block and yet another clump just down the street from there. The lots could be easily paired up to create 8 lots measuring 50’ x 100’ lots and thus we made a plan “B.” David would go back to the estate and re-negotiate the deal, explaining to the executrix of the estate that their sales price would have to be cut in half because the lots were too small to build on individually. My hat’s off to David. The big problem with all of this negotiating and then re-negotiating was that the estate consisted of 13 heirs. 13 heirs had to agree! I have dealt with my fair share of estates and believe me when I tell you; it is hard enough to get 2 heirs to agree on a sale… much less 13 heirs. Still, David persisted and several weeks later I had a revised contract in my hand and we were off to the races yet again. Now, the math looked like this; David had contracted to buy the 16 lots for $2,000 each (down from $4,000 each). It would take 2 lots to equal 1 building site so the 8 building sites would cost me $4,000 each. I had lost 50% of my potential sites but I was still at the price per building site I was excited about. David had re-contracted with the estate to buy 16 lots for $2,000 each… $32,000 for 8 building sites. In essence, I contracted with David to buy the 8 building sites for $8,000 each… $64,000 I was down to 8 lots I could build on instead of 16, but I was still happy with the prospect of building 8 homes at a profit of $20,000 each… 8 homes x $20,000 profit each = $160,000 profit Everything seemed to move quickly after that. Soon it was time to close and I was off to the title company to sign docs. It was turning out to be a routine closing when suddenly the closing agent asked me to sign a disclaimer acknowledging that the lots were situated over the “Kelly Plume.” Now, exactly what is “The Kelly Plume?” Well, as it turns out, the “Kelly Plume” is a region of land that has been affected by chemicals used by the Kelly Air Force Base to clean and rebuild jet engines. A toxic chemical used by the air force beginning in the 1950s (a practice that ended years ago) had been steadily soaking into the ground and had affected a water table some 80 feet below the surface. Over the years it had spread. It had permeated out under numerous neighborhoods throughout the Southside. Apparently it was gaining some media attention at the time. They wanted me to sign off on a disclaimer and, more specifically, newspaper articles that proclaimed this as an EPA hazard. Needless to say, I was heartbroken. I stopped signing papers and the deal was left dead on the table. I sited “Undo Duress” as my reason for not closing because there had been no mention of this in the events leading up to the closing. Nobody argued my reasoning. I called David to tell him of the unfortunate events. As you can imagine, he was heartbroken as well. After all, he was a day away from receiving a nice paycheck for his entrepreneurial efforts… now all was lost. None the less, David was a consummate Pro. He took the change of events in stride and agreed that I had done the logical thing by NOT closing the deal. I was relieved that David understood because the last thing I want to do is sign up for a deal and not close. I’ll say it again, David was a consummate pro. It took me a day or two to get over the loss. Never letting a deal die easily I began to rationalize the prospect of going ahead with the deal; 1. I could build the homes at a cost of $60,000 total investment (Land Included) and sell them with a disclaimer acknowledging the Plume. It was a reasonable thought because I could actually reason with potential Buyers that the city did NOT use that water. Every Restaurant, YMCA, School, Hospital and Household in the region used water piped from a completely different source. In fact, the only way that specific water would be a problem is if someone actually drilled a well that tapped the contaminated water. People are not going to drill a “private” well in an inner city which offers clean water at the spigot. The deal was still over stressed. I would have too much money invested to take that kind of risk. 2. I could buy the lots and sell the lots ONLY. If I didn’t have to build a house on the lots I would only be into each building site for $8,000. I could possibly sell the lots for $15,000 each, but still, it didn’t meet my “Risk Reward” comfort level I did my best to consider all options, but as far as I was concerned, the deal died at the closing. There was nothing left to do about it. Having to sell with a “DISCLA
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