Hello again fellow investors,

It’s been a busy week at myHouseDeals.com. I’m back from San Fran, and my team and I are finalizing something that’s been secretly in the works since September of 2007. Starting sometime tomorrow, AtlantaInvestorNetwork.com, myPhillyDeals.com, and myFloridaDeals.com will become myHouseDeals.com!

That’s right, we’ll be supporting members and compiling wholesale deals and motivated seller leads in three more cities. This brings us to ten metro areas total: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-FW, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, NYC/Tri-State, South Florida, and Washington DC.

The three web sites mentioned above are currently being operated by my twin brother, Trent Smith. But he’s been so busy investing and running currentforeclosures.com that he hasn’t been able to improve those three sites as much as he would like.

And since we’re always improving myHouseDeals.com, it just makes sense to move those deals and investors over here. Some of the improvements that members in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and South Florida will see include:

- The ability to search for properties based on equity, ARV, repair cost, and asking price.

- The ability to search for wholesale deals and motivated seller leads with just one form.

- More deals! You’ll be getting up to TWICE as many motivated seller leads.

- Easier browsing of the properties. Get a quick glance at the property images and maps all from one listings page.

- Enhanced screening of the deals to weed out over-priced and over-shopped REOs, HUD homes, and bank foreclosures.

- Did I mention more deals?

If you’re a member of one of the sites we’re assuming, this means that you’ll now log-in to your members only area at www.myhousedeals.com/members using the same username and password. And if you wish to inquire about your account, just click on the Contact Us link at the bottom of the myHouseDeals.com home page.

If you’re a member of one of the already existing cities, this just means that you’ll now be able to add Atlanta, Philadelphia, or South Florida as additional market areas on your account. And you can do so at half the price of your primary membership.

As we expand to more metro areas, add more properties, get more members, and hear more success stories, I can’t help but reflect on when I first started the site in March 2005. When the site first launched, its name was HoustonInvestorNetwork.com, and we served — as you can imagine — Houston area investors only.

I was the sole person working on the site’s creation. I had 2 guys in my office working short sales for me, but that’s all they did. It went on like that for about a year. Then, I took on a super star employee named Lauren to help with the expansion to the Dallas-FW area. At about that time, I changed the name to myHouseDeals.com.

And from there, the site just kept growing. And to help it grow, I hired more people, all of whom I’m thrilled to have. We currently have a “crackerjack staff” of 12 people, which includes Travis, Alex, Charles, Liz, Monika, Jessica, Sarah, Dori, Anne, Kate, Kristine, and Rodini. Lauren just left (tear) because she’s pregnant (but congrats!). And we look forward to bringing on Taylor next week!

As you can see, it takes a LOT of us to round up all of these deals, put on webinars, handle customer service, and develop the website. Anyone who thinks I do this all by myself is sadly mistaken! I can’t thank my staff enough. They’re the driving force behind the entire site.

I also want to thank you for your support of myHouseDeals.com. Without valued members like you, we wouldn’t be where we are today. We look forward to providing you with more deals and investing education than ever before. And as we expand, we’ll keep customer service and, most importantly, “deal flow” at the top of our list.

Thanks again for your support. And welcome aboard Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Miami members!

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Doug Smith
President
myHouseDeals.com

P.S. Not a member of myHouseDeals.com yet? Start your free trial at www.myhousedeals.com/freetrial, and get access to dozens of new wholesale deals and motivated seller leads each month. We do the hard work of finding and compiling these deals so that you can focus on buying them and reaping the profits!

Hello again fellow investors!

My twin brother and I are in San Fran this week to attend the annual Web 2.0 Expo. A lot’s been changing on the web lately and San Fran & San Jose are right at the heart of it. I’ve learned dozens of new things that I’ll use to improve myHouseDeals.com. And Trent will use what he’s learned to improve his site, currentforeclosures.com. Look for even more exciting features in the upcoming weeks and months!

Here’s a pic from today. I’m in the black jacket … 

The last speaker of the day was Max Levchin, the co-founder of PayPal. He’s no longer a part owner, but he did ok when he sold his share for $34 million. A lady was interviewing him today on the stage. Her last question was, “What advice would you give to those who want to be where you are today? Financially retired and pursuing your passions.”

He paused for a minute and then gave the perfect answer. It’s perfect because it’s the absolute truth. He proceeded, “As Winston Churchill said, ‘Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever give in. Never give in.’” Then he went on to explain that his first 4 businesses failed, and he was in financial ruins when he helped start Paypal. He simply wouldn’t give in.

I encourage you to carry that quote with you on your path to real estate investing riches. Sometimes you’ll have deals that fall through, embarrassing moments with motivated sellers, frustrations when your house doesn’t sell as fast as you’d like. But if you follow the advice above, you’ll be where Max is … financially retired and doing what you love.

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Doug Smith
President
myHouseDeals.com

P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, claim FREE access to hundreds of wholesale deals and motivated seller leads, plus $1,253 in FREE gifts by going to www.myhousedeals.com/freetrial today. See you there!

NOTE: This is probably the most important blog posting I’ve made all year. Pay close attention.

So, you need to sell your rehab. It’s been on the market for several weeks. The paperwork for a few interested buyers has come across your desk. But their credit and job history aren’t much to speak of.

A year ago, you would have handed them over to your mortgage broker, and he or she would have easily put them into the house with a sub-prime loan. But not anymore! … Because almost all of those loan programs have disappeared.

So what do you do? Do you continue searching for a buyer with near perfect credit? Or do you rent the house until more loan programs become available? Or do you stop making your mortgage payments and let the bank foreclose? The answer: None of the above!

Instead, you do what all savvy real estate investors are doing in today’s “credit crunched” marketplace. You hand those bad credit buyers over to a mortgage broker who knows how to process FHA loans. Your broker gets them approved, and you sell your houses up to 50% faster than the average Joe.

Nowadays, FHA loans are the easiest types of loans for your buyers to qualify for. With that said, not all of your bad credit buyers will qualify. But enough of them will to make FHA loans your secret weapon.

FHA uses what’s known as “common sense underwriting”. Nothing is set in stone. For example someone with a certain credit score, a certain income, and a certain work history isn’t certain to qualify or be denied. FHA looks at all of these factors combined, and if one area is weak, it doesn’t “kill the deal”.

Prospective buyers with either no credit or at least a 580 mid score are most likely to qualify. But I’ve heard several stories about buyers with scores under 580 who got their loans approved. They had other factors that made up for their low scores.

The other advantage of FHA loans (besides that they’re easy to qualify for) is that you can couple them with a “down payment assistance” program that allows your buyer to put only $500 down. Folks, this is HUGE. A low down payment means everything for selling quickly, especially in low-income areas.

Your mortgage broker should know about these assistance programs. You can read about the two most popular programs at www.nehemiahcorp.org and www.thegenesisprogram.org. FHA is aware of and cooperates with both of these organizations.

Not all mortgage brokers work with FHA loans, and not all know how to incorporate a down payment assistance program like the ones mentioned above. One lender that specializes in these FHA loans and their assistance programs is Cornerstone Mortgage. You can find them at www.houseloan.com or you can call 281-873-8800.

They’re based out of Texas, but they do loans in 38 states. Some of these states include: California, Virginia, Maryland, Florida, and Georgia. They don’t do business in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, or Pennsylvania.

Here are some general guidelines for the FHA loan program:

• - Two Years of steady employment helps. College and high school counts toward work history.
• - Last two years Income should be the same or increasing.
• - Credit report should typically have less than two thirty day lates in last two years.
• - Bankruptcy’s must be at least two years old, with good credit since.
• - Foreclosure’s must be at least three years old, with good credit since.
• - Cash reserves of $4,000 or more in a 401k or other retirement program helps, but is not required. It can make up for other problems.
• - The new mortgage payment should be approximately 30% of their gross income.

If most of these statements are true for your buyer, they probably qualify for a FHA mortgage loan.

In short, FHA loans allow you advertise “$500 down, bad credit OK” … just like we could before the sub-prime meltdown. And you can actually deliver on this promise.

The loss of sub-prime loans hurt investors in the short-term. But if you steer your bad credit buyers to these FHA loans, you’ll thrive in a down market.

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Doug Smith
President
myHouseDeals.com

P.S. Need under-shopped and under-priced investment properties? Look no further. Start your free trial at www.myhousedeals.com/freetrial, and get access to dozens of new wholesale deals and motivated seller leads in your market. We do the hard work of finding and compiling these deals so that you can focus on buying them and reaping the profits!

Before I reveal the best ways to find short sale deals, let me first explain what a short sale is.

A short sale is the process of getting a mortgage company to accept less on a mortgage than is due as “payoff in full”. This process is best described through a hypothetical scenario. Let’s say that a seller wants to sell their property to you so that they don’t get foreclosed on. And let’s say that you want to buy their house for $70,000 but they owe $100,000 on their mortgage. The short sale process allows you to get their lender to accept $70,000 as “pay off in full” without holding the seller responsible for the difference between the $70,000 and the $100,000.  And it keeps a foreclosure off of the seller’s credit report. Short sales allow investors like us to reap large profits from “no equity deals” by CREATING equity.

Now on to the good stuff! The best ways to find these deals…

If you don’t have any money to spend on marketing, the best place to start is by getting referrals from other investors.  Regularly attend your local real estate investing meetings, and let other investors know that you do short sales. Ask them to refer “no equity” deals to you, and tell them that if you get the short sale accepted, you’ll pay them a referral fee of $500 to $1,000. This strategy is attractive because you don’t have to come up with any money out of pocket. You pay the referring investor AFTER you get paid.

If you have a little money to spend on getting these deals, you should buy the pre-foreclosure list from a local list provider.  And you should call these people one-by-one to see if they’re willing to sell their property to you. If their phone number isn’t listed, get it from whitepages.com, anywho.com, or zabasearch.com. Almost all metropolitan areas have one or two local companies that sell this list. To find that company, go google.com and search for “YourCity pre-foreclosure list”. They compile this list at the courthouse, and they sell it to investors for a small monthly fee. If there is not one in your local area, two of the more popular national providers are RealtyTrac.com and Foreclosure.com.

You can also find plenty of short sale deals under the Motivated Sellers tab in the Members Only area of myhousedeals.com. The sellers on this list recently filled out an online form saying that they need to sell NOW, and they’re willing to sell at a discount. A large number of them are behind on their mortgage payments and willing to let you work a short sale. We get emails from investors like you every week who tell us about their latest successful short sale deal that they found in this section. (Get access to these Motivated Seller Leads by starting a FREE Trial here.)

Now, if you have at least $500 to spend on getting short sale deals in your pipeline, then pay attention closely. Your best bet is to send out thousands of direct mail pieces to people on the pre-foreclosure list. Get the pre-foreclosure list from one of the sources mentioned earlier, and mail out one or two different types of high-response direct mail pieces. There are two direct mail pieces that have worked extremely well for me.

First is the “check letter”. To pull this one off, you need to buy a box of Versa Checks from Office Max or Office Depot. The first third of each paper you mail is the check, and the bottom two thirds is a white space. I suggest that you put a few thousand dollars as the check amount.  I personally put $11,000 and on the signature line, I type, “Please call me now to get this check signed.” And I put my phone number nearby.

On the white space below the check, you should put a marketing message that encourages them to “Please call me for free consultation on how to stop foreclosure.”   Some people call because they want to get the check signed, and some call because they want the free consultation. Once they do call, let them know that they may or may not qualify for that money.  A lot of times they don’t because they have no equity, and you shouldn’t give them $11,000 when you have to do a short sale.

The other excellent way to get people to call is through another direct mail piece, the post card.  I send what appears to be a yellow hand-written post card.  I choose yellow because it grabs their attention and handwritten for the same reason. But the neat part is that you don’t even have to handwrite your message. You can actually get handwritten fonts from myfonts.com.  You can download these fonts and put them in a word document and type away. Then email the document over to your mailing service, and have them mail it out. You just sit back and wait for the calls to start pouring in.  Believe me, with the “check letter” and the “yellow hand-written postcard”, they will.

If you want more ideas for effective direct mail pieces, you can get them from the pile of letters on the dining room table at the seller’s house. These letters, of course, were sent by other investors. Often, there will be two or three pieces that stand out from the crowd. For the most part, you can copy those and integrate them into your next mailing. Just be sure to avoid the pieces with plain white envelopes and/or plain white letters. The sellers will likely put these boring pieces in the garbage can before they even read your message.

So how many direct mail pieces do you mail to each person? And what do these pieces say, word for word? All of this and much, much more is covered in my Advanced Short Sale System. Go to this page to learn more and to place your no-risk order. The system comes with a 100% money back guarantee, so you can’t lose.

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Doug Smith
President
myHouseDeals.com

Big News!…

Long time member of myHouseDeals.com, Derek Lechler, was featured on TLC’s Flip That House on April 6th.

Derek graduated from college in 1998 and went on to work in Corporate America for a couple of years. Then he quit his job and started investing in real estate and has enjoyed great success. He’s a long time member to MyHouseDeals.com and has bought at least 25 properties off the site totaling profits of approximately $500,000.

Recently he was contacted by the producers at Flip That House and they filmed an episode about one of the latest deals he bought off MyHouseDeals.com. He purchased the property for $26,000 and put about $18,500 into the property. He recently sold it and made a little over $27,000. Not bad!

I had a chance to interview Derek at one of his latest flips. Check out the video by going to http://www.myhousedeals.com/flip-that-house/derek.

He’s buying up properties and taking advantage of the current market. Don’t be scared off by the negative media coverage! Check out this picture of Derek and me in front of one of his recent rehabs. It’s almost done and he’s already moving on to his next profitable flip. 

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Doug Smith
President
myHouseDeals.com