elusive first deal! - Posted by James (WA)

Posted by Ray (NJ) on January 28, 2000 at 22:20:22:

Seems that you’ve got the ultimate motivation. Best of luck.

With regards to Q1: I’d say it depends on your area. In my town, it is the norm for land to outprice building. In fact, an old, small 2BR house sitting on a very small 3,000 sq.ft. lot (building value: $25,000) may SELL for $250,000. In fact, I could name literally hundreds of properties fitting that exact description. The properties won’t carry themselves, but are excellent for flips. And if you’re lucky enough to get one for just 10% off asking price, you’re looking at a potential of $25,000 profit per deal. Not to hard to take, huh?

Q2: Locating the owner can be as simple as popping on the web to see if your county has RE transactions online, to as difficult (sarcasm) as driving to your local courthouse, and spending 10-15 minutes looking it up in the tax books.

Q3: Don’t have personal knowledge of the effectiveness of any of the flipping courses. Read the articles. Honestly, in my opinion, the “details” of flipping are minimal compared to L/O, buy and rent, etc. Here’s a 30 second course. Find out what comps are, put an assignable contract on a property at a discount substantial enough for your finances, find a buyer (actually, that should be step #1), sell your contract. If you structure it right, in WORST case, you only lose your earnest money, which can be as little as $1 buck. (Unusual, but $100 should do it - and still not very risky)

Go get 'em!

Ray

P.S. Get your wife out there, too. What great motivation for the both of you. See who can do the first, the most, etc.

elusive first deal! - Posted by James (WA)

Posted by James (WA) on January 28, 2000 at 13:49:17:

Well here I go!

I jumped into this thing with both feet. I went into debt to buy a couple of courses on flipping. I can’t afford to not make it. I started yesterday going out and locating junkers, fixer-uppers. I spent about 3 hours out and located about 8 possbilities. I came home did my fatherly and husband thing and then stayed up till midnight getting information from the public records at county building website for each of the houses. A few of them look juicy, at least from my perspective. A couple of questions though.

  1. What if there is more land than house and the house is assessed far less than the land? Is it still worth looking at?

  2. What is the best way to locate the owner?

  3. Who has (in your opinion) the absolutely best course or information on flipping?

I am too broke to fail!!! I have all the motivation I need to succeed, desperation!!! I have a goal to have at least 2 under my belt by the end of February. My wife said she wont quit her $9.00 per hour job until I’ve flipped at least two and she sees the money!

I’ll let you know when it happens!

James Stone

Re: elusive first deal! - Posted by Chris

Posted by Chris on January 29, 2000 at 08:09:09:

James-

Check your county appraisers website or tax collectors sites. Actually I have to get some information from one to complete the search fields on the other. That should give you the owner’s address information.

www.octitle.com has a lot of good information for property information searches. Check out all of the articles on the CREonline website-you can find the links for them within the yellow border at the upper left side of the page.

-Good Luck, Chris