TropicalREIA.com. A Monthly Insight Into Tropical Real Estate Investors Association P A G E 1 I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

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1 P A G E 1 A U G U S T, I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E : M E E T I N G A G E N D A 1 M EET G A R Y N I- K O L I T S & D O R O - T H Y J A C K S 2 9 S T E P S T O Q U I C K C A S H 3 L O C A L V E N D O R S A N D T R A D E S M A N 4 I F Y O U W A N T T O B E A S U C C E S S A S A R E A L E S T A T E I N V E S T O R, Y O U M U S T H A V E A W E B S I T E 5 Y O U A S K E D, W E D E L I V E R E D : 8 H O M E D E P O T A P P L I A N C E & P A I N T P R O G R A M S Why join Tropical REIA? Discover 100% real estate education from A to Z.. Have a network of investors to share ideas, experiences and to do business with. And more benefits that you cannot find from other real estate group. Courtyard Marriott 1601 N. Congress Ave., Boynton Bch FL We meet 3rd Thursday of every month 5:30-6:45 Networking Main Speaker 7:00-8:30 pm. TropicalREIA.com

2 W E L C O M E P A L M B E A C H C O U N T Y R E A L T O R S P A G E 2 Don t miss this unique opportunity to see your county officials in person! Get answers to your many questions. Dorothy Jacks is a Certified Florida Evaluator and an Assessment Administration Specialist with 27 years of appraisal and assessment administration experience in Palm Beach County. As Chief Deputy, Dorothy shares responsibilities with Property Appraiser Gary Nikolits, CFA, for the overall operation of the office and its staff of 260. Often referred to as the Mama of PAPA, Dorothy led the design team that developed the Property Appraiser s awardwinning PAPA website. As Chief Deputy, Dorothy also oversees the office s public service functions, including our five Service Centers, Exemption Services, Information Technology, Mapping and GIS sections, Public Records and of course PAPA. Dorothy is a past-board member of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO), a world-wide organization of professional assessing and appraising officials. She currently chairs its International Committee. Dorothy also is a past-president of the Florida Chapter of IAAO. Gary Nikolits is a professional real estate appraiser with 38 years of experience appraising property in Palm Beach County. Mr. Nikolits holds the Certified Florida Appraiser (CFA) designation awarded by the Florida Department of Revenue. He is a past President of the Florida Association of Property Appraisers and a 25 year member of the International Association of Assessing Officers (IAAO). Mr. Nikolits is certified by the 15th Judicial Circuit as an expert witness in real estate appraisal. He served for eight years on the Riviera Beach City Council in the 1970 s and also served on the Palm Beach County Health Care District - Board of Directors from 2000 to Mr. Nikolits was first elected Property Appraiser in 1992, and was re-elected to his sixth term in Join your local REIA, source MeetUp and actually get out and meet some people

3 Wholesaling properties for quick cash is something that anyone can do, even the beginning investor. In this article, I would like to give a brief introduction to the world of wholesaling, going over the nine basic steps that are involved in flipping a property. P A G E 23 9 Steps To Quick Cash: The Anatomy of a Wholesale Flip By Steve Cook 1. Make Your Offer. Whether you pursue FSBOs (For Sale by Owners) or properties listed on the MLS (Multiple Listing Service), you re never going to be able to flip a property unless you first make an offer. In making your offer you need to keep your customer, the rehabber, in mind. It should be based upon a conservative estimate of the market value of the property after repairs less a profit margin for the rehabber, money for closing costs (both for buying the property and for reselling it to the retail buyer), money for holding costs, money for repairs and last but not least a profit margin for you. Typically I deduct the greater of 30% or $25,000 for profit, closing and holding costs, money for repairs and about $5,000 for my wholesale profit. 2. Once Offer Is Accepted, Sign Contract to Purchase Property. Once your offer is accepted, you will meet with the seller (if it s a FSBO) or your real estate agent to sign the contract and give them the earnest money deposit. 3. Start Title Work. After signing the contract, contact your settlement attorney (title company, escrow company, etc) to stat the title work on the property. They will order a title search and schedule a settlement date. There are two reasons to start the title work ASAP. First, you want to be ready to settle when you are supposed to settle. Second, in the event that you find a buyer who claims to be ready to by, you want them to be able to settle right away. 4. Begin Marketing to Find a Buyer. There are two main avenues that I use to market my properties. First, I ll call the people on my buyers list to see who might be interested. As I m doing this, I will place an ad in the Investment Properties section of the Sunday paper for the upcoming weekend and send an to contacts I have meet at REIAs. Here s an example of an ad that I ve used in the past: Fixer Upper * 123 Main St., $80K comps, only $40K (xxx)xxx-xxxx. 7. Sign A Contract With Your Buyer and Collect A Deposit. After verifying your buyer s source of funds, meet with them, execute a sales contract or an assignment agreement with them and collect a deposit. Either handwrite or include typewritten verbiage somewhere in your contract a statement such as the following: Received $(insert dollar amount) as an earnest money deposit on (insert date), and then initial it once you receive their deposit. You might also include their check number or write CASH if they give you cash. 8. Submit Executed Documents To the Title Company. Submit both items the executed contract with the original seller and the executed sales contract/assignment with your buyer to your attorney (title company, escrow company, closing agent, etc) and schedule a settlement date. 9. Go To Settlement. Go to settlement, pick up your check and celebrate! When I first started in this business, I believe everyone who signed a contract to buy a home from me. I believed everything they told me and took their word. Often, I got burned; however it didn t take too many slaps in the face before I realized that I needed to take control of the entire process. At that point, I decided to control every deal by lining up contractors, lining up lenders, starting the title work myself through my attorney and mandating that my buyers use my attorney. Before taking control, I estimate about 25% of my deals didn t settle with my first buyer. Since taking control, that percentage has been reduced to about 5% of my deals. 5. Come to An Agreement with a Prospective Buyer. At some point, someone will show interest in your property. Whether you have one potential buyer or multiple potential buyers will depend upon the deal. Each one is different. The more buyers you have, the less flexible you need to be in reaching a final sales price. This article is excerpted in part from Steve Cook s course, Wholesaling for Quick Cash: A Real Life Guide to Flipping Homes. For more information on wholesaling properties for profit, please visit Reprinted courtesy of St. Louis Investment News, July Qualify the Prospective Buyer. Make sure the prospective buyer either has the cash or a line of credit (ask for proof of funds if they say they do) or will be able to borrow the money from a private (hard money) lender to purchase your property. Continued on page 4...

4 LOCAL VENDORS AND TRADESMAN P A G E 4 The Ferguson Firm is a personal service law firm that provides highly skilled and personalized legal services tailored to meet your goals (561) EquityMax has been specializing in nonqualifying, hard money real estate financing for over 25 years. We are the one -stop resource for finding and funding competitively-priced REO properties throughout Florida (954) Our lending philosophy is simple: We lend money the old-fashioned way, based on your track record and a feel for the deal. We do not base our underwriting on the inflexible ratios most lenders use. (410) The Chamber of Commerce of the Palm Beaches is a private, not-for-profit association of businesses that have come together to advance the economic, industrial and civic interests of the Palm Beaches. (561) Are You Ready To Join Tropical REIA? M E M B E R S H I P P L A N S Annual & Quarterly Payment Options Individual Annual Membership: $165/year Tradesmen Annual Membership: $195.00/year or (Auto-renews at $145/yr.) Individual Membership: $45.00 upfront & $45 per quarter Joint Membership: $195/year (Auto-renews at $175/yr.) ($30 each additional member Max. 3) Tradesmen Membership: $55.00/quarter Vendor Membership: $395.00/ year or Vendor Membership: $ / quarterly Joint Membership: $55 upfront & $55 per quarter ($10 each additional member per quarter Max. 3)

5 P A G E 25 You must have a website By Todd Hutcheson, owner of If you want to be a success as a real estate investor, you must have a website. If you do not, sellers will not take you seriously. I have partnered with a website company to give you the very best real estate investor websites that get motivated seller leads. This is your lifeblood. Read the article below ( long but worth it ) about picking a domain name and then click here to get your website. You must have a website. Make sure you pick the right domain name for your real estate investing business. If you don't have a website, you are losing ground to your competitors. Hundreds to thousands of people in your city search for home selling solutions each and every month on google and bing. Did you know that over 40% of searches are now on mobile devices -phones and tablets? If you are still old school, think of the internet as the phone book. Would you have done business in 1985 with someone who did not at least show up in the phone book with a listing? People now google phone numbers to see what shows up about that business. When no website shows up when someone searches for you in this manner or by your name or company name, home sellers are more than likely to try and find another solution. You do not have to have the greatest website on earth to be effective. Here are the bare minimums. 1. A home page with a contact form, phone number, a few seller testimonials, video introduction and a little about your services. Try and make sure there are at least 1,000 words on your home page and 2,000 is even better 2. An about us page telling how long you have been in business. I would suggest using an actual picture of you or your staff on this page. People like to see who they are dealing with. Wear a light blue shirt in the shot as this is the most trustworthy color. 3. A contact us page that has your , phone, address and a form they can fill out to contact you. 4. How it works page. Show them with copy and images how easy it is to sell to an investor. 5. City pages for each city you serve. This page should have the city and state where you buy in the headline and at least two places in the body of the copy. 6. You may also want a page for your specialty like probate, foreclosures, short sales, evictions and the unique things about each of these in your city or state. I often here "I cannot find a great domain name, they are all taken". This is just not true. National REIA members- ISC (Investigative Screening & Consulting) knows the tenants you put in your rentals can make or break your investment I recently bought WeBuyHousesPros.com and WeBuyHousesSeattle.com for only $8. Would you like to own those domains in your market? This was in June of 2015 so it can be done today. I am selling the domains if you are interested. You may find the perfect domain name with houses in the name, but do NOT buy the domain unless you can buy the corresponding homes domain as well. For example, only buy JessyBuysHouses.com if you can also buy JessyBuysHomes.com and point it to the other name. More people search for the word home by a large margin over house with one exception. We Buy Houses is used by investors to find other investors in my opinion. I do not think the general public uses this term, but it is still a great term to let people know what you do. Continued on page 3...

6 P A G E 26 You Must have a website continued... Google currently does not give a great deal of weight to an exact word domain name like they used to. Before 2014 it was very easy to rank for blue widgets if you had the domain name BlueWidgets.com. Google still gives some weight to search terms in your domain name and at a minimum highlights them for you. So it helps to have these search terms in the name you pick. So what terms are people looking for? Sell my home, sell your home, house buyer -with the qualifying words fast, quick and for cash - and we buy houses are some of the best terms and we will use these as the basis for our domain name. If your city name is the same as in another state you may want to add the two letter postal state code after city. For example, there is a Columbus Ohio and Columbus Georgia that are both pretty big cities. You might add GA or OH as in SellColumbusGahome.com. You don't need leads from a state you do not buy in. Make sure you add the state code in this case to your meta title tag and also spell out the state in the Meta Description even if you do not add it to your actual domain name. Sometimes you should also buy the plural as well as the singular. I recently spoke to a REIA on getting more leads for your real estate investor website where one of the websites I reviewed was BrothersBuyHouses.com. I told them to also buy the homes, but also the singular Brother if they planned on doing any advertising at all. Fewer letters is almost always better when searching for a domain. So personally I own and point it to my other site So you should choose Sell(city)home.com as your very first choice if it is available. One reason is it is easier to mistype the longer the domain name. I think you should only buy the.com extension. If you use the.net some people just naturally type.com instead of.net and you lose at least a small percentage of your advertising effectiveness. I also don't care about owning Remember the reason we are giving so many options is it is hard to find a domain where both the home and house version are both available. Why is this so important? Well one of my competitors used to mail out 10,000 letters a month advertising the domain CashforSeminoleHomes.com and I told him repeatedly to register CashforSeminoleHouses.com since the words are interchangeable. I got about 3 leads a month from this domain that I pointed to a special page on my website so I could tell if it was worth reregistering the next year. The answer was yes until he got out of the business. So this is a great trick for generating almost free traffic to your website as the domain only costs you $0.99 with a coupon. If you see a competitor doing a lot of advertising (ask your landlord friends for all the letters they receive each month) and they are advertising JoeBlowbuyshouses.com go and register JoeBlowbuyhomes.com and create a landing page on your site for that domain to point to and rack up the leads. Continued on page 4...

7 P A G E 27 You Must have a website continued... How did I learn that the names are completely interchangeable? I wear a shirt or hat that says on it almost everywhere I go and about 60% of the investors and about 30% of the consumers walk up and say I Buy Houses. What to do if you already have the home domain and a competitor has the house domain. If it is just parked then try to buy it. Go to whois.godaddy.com and see who owns the domain. This will also give you when the domain expires and all their contact information. This is how I bought ibuyhomes.com in I just called the owner and asked if he would sell and he said yes. If they will not sell, put the expiration date in your calendar check each year to see if they re-registered the domain. If not, 3 days after the registration expires, backorder the domain through godaddy or namejet. You cannot get for 45 days after it expires which gives the owner time to redeem. I am also a big believer in separating your buying site from you selling site for two reasons. One, it is easier to get a site about buying houses ranked in google when every page is about buying. I see so many sites that gurus sell where the navigation bar is filled with Sell, Buy, Hard Money, For Investors and other superfluous pages. Two, if you have a buying site, do you want your seller to go back onto your site before closing to try and find your phone number to see their house listed for sale for thousands of dollars more than your contract price. No it is a big mistake. If you are selling homes as well, remember two things. People at REIA meetings search for wholesale homes, but normal citizens who pay more search for the word CHEAP. So register Cheap(city,county, state)homes.com before you register Wholesale(city)homes.com as wholesale is just not easy to spell. One other trick I heard when figuring out which domain name to buy is read the domain out loud as it might be used on radio advertising. If it is not easy to remember or hard to spell, do not buy it. If you know of any friends that have gone out of the business lately ask them if they owned a domain name. If so and there was a valid website with links pointing to the site, try and buy the site from them for $25. You can also use godaddy Auctions and search for domains that are not being renewed. I like to buy domains that are at least 3 years old as google gives preferential treatment to older domains. If buying an older site, make sure you go to MOZ Site Explorer and punch in the domain you are thinking about buying. You will want to make sure they did not have a lot of links for porn sites or other black hat linking strategies that used to work to get sites ranked. Pass on the site if at least 60% of the links are not coming from real estate related websites or if all links are coming from only one website. Join your local REIA, source MeetUp and actually get out and meet some people Websites domains are like internet real estate. Prices for domain names have skyrocketed in the last two years. You must have a website to get more deals. It is worth spending a few hours picking a great domain. Then all you have to do is get the site ranked. A decent domain name these days for our industry is likely going to cost you around $750 to $1,500 if you buy from a reseller. But you pay once and get deals for a lifetime. I hope you have enjoyed the article, please share with friends or let me know if you would like to add to your website or have me speak to your group. And remember, the only place the internet does not work is Orlando so just don't try. Click here to get a website

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