We had a 25% increase in the number of wholesale deals posted to MyHouseDeals.com in August. 632 wholesale deals were added to our database in August, which is great news for our members. Our goal is to continue to bring you the most and best deals. Always.

How are deals added to the website?

There are two main ways deals can be added to the website. They are…

#1 - Investors add their deals by posting them at http://www.myhousedeals.com/property/create/ Once the investment property is submitted, our team verifies the information and supplements it with maps and pictures and approves it so that Premium members can access them immediately. This all happens in a matter of hours, sometimes minutes.

#2 – Our team scours the Internet, newspapers, and our own network of investors looking for new deals. We have staff dedicated to finding deals for you full-time, every day. They dig deep to find deals that have not been posted anywhere else on the Internet. They also ensure that you are getting the most complete and up-to-date information about any deal.

Together, these two sources provide you with more deals than you can handle on the website!

But August wasn’t a great month just for wholesale deals. Check out some other noteworthy numbers!…

404 new Motivated Sellers Leads added
632 new Wholesale Deals added
627 previously posted deals and leads followed-up on for availability and accuracy
401 deals and leads marked as sold or no longer available

$24,082,370.00 combined equity of deals and leads posted in August!

Who says real estate investing has to take time away from your family? This family of eight is adding “fun and profits” to the family mix by teaming up to rehab and wholesale properties part-time.

Their company name is FCF Ventures, and they’re based out of Austin, TX. Over the last few months, they’ve bought five properties from MyHouseDeals.com. Two of the family members appear in the video below. Check it out!

Not only did they make $50,000 in profits, but they also got a refund of their Premium Elite membership fee. Call us crazy, but we give refunds to all Premium Elite members who simply do a deal. We like to reward those who TAKE ACTION!

Congrats to the family at FCF Ventures and thanks for participating in the video! If you want to be in the next video, simply become a Premium Elite member today, do a deal, and shoot us an email. We’d love to feature you!

Until next time, happy (and profitable) investing!

Thank you to all who attended our Live Event on Saturday! Putting on these events helps us to get closer to our members and hopefully open up a valuable networking channel for local investors. Our goal is also to educate our members about the latest trends, and we feel we accomplished that by providing different training sessions on lending, rehabbing, landlording, and creative ways for making investing work for you when you don’t have a lot of funds available.

As usual, it was a great crowd — I think we can say once and for all that MyHouseDeals.com are energetic, interested, and smart. You guys had great questions for our speakers and also proved that there’s plenty of deal-making going on in Houston. Way to go!

If you weren’t able to attend the event, we hope that you’ll join us for the next one. Check out some of the best moments by clicking the photo below. You’ll be taken to our Facebook photo album, where you can view the pictures and tag anyone you recognize from Saturday…

While checking our photos, please remember to “Like” us on Facebook (you can do so by clicking the ‘Like’ button next to our profile picture.) It’s a great way to get updates and news about real estate investing and to network with fellow members. If you want to bypass the pictures and go straight to our page, just follow the link below…

http://www.facebook.com/myhousedeals

And speaking or networking, check out the final shot of the networking wall from the event. There you’ll find deals, calls for partners, offers from vendors, and financing offers! (Click the image to view the magnified, scrollable version.)

If you were there, we hope you enjoyed the content provided. Can’t wait until the next event!

Our next Live Event with Training and Networking happens in Houston this Saturday! You won’t want to miss it, so click the image below to reserve your spot (it’s free!)…

This is going to be another awesome opportunity for networking with other Houston investors and for learning about what’s working in real estate investing right now! We’ve arranged for two in-depth training sessions. They are…

Panel of Rehabbers & Landlords

In this session, our expert panel will share their most valuable tips and strategies for reaping big profits in the current market. They will also answer your questions directly during a lightning round of Q&A, so have your questions ready. Topics include:

- Where they’re finding their deals
- How they’re financing them
- How they’re keeping repair costs low
- How they’re STILL selling or renting quickly

We’ve assembled a panel of experts that can tackle these topics like no other. They are…

Eddie Gant	Eddie is the owner of one of the largest home buying operations in all of Texas. Eddie has bought and sold over 400 houses. He also owns a mortgage company and a hard money company. In short, Eddie knows the real estate investment business inside and out. His specialty is rehabbing and re-selling properties for maximum profits.
Glenn Dickson	Glenn manages a portfolio of about 500 single-family homes and small apartments through his company, Complete Property Services. He is a past Board Member and Vice President of the Realty Investment Club of Houston (RICH), an investor, holds a real estate broker license, and has been in both residential and commercial real estate for about 18 years.
Brant Phillips	Brant bought his first investment property less than 3 years ago when he had almost no cash to his name. Since that time he has gone on to buy almost 50 properties, and he did this while working a corporate job and raising a family. Brant has since left his corporate job to pursue real estate investing and entrepreneurship full-time. In addition to his investing business, he owns and operates Rent Ready Contractors.

What’s new in the world of lending? Market update for long-term loans for investors and end buyers presented by Roger Salinas of Zeus Mortgage. Find out…

- Current lending rates and where they are headed
- How to increase your chances of qualifying for a loan
- Recent legislation that directly affects real estate investors
- How to find the best financing option for your investments

But that’s not all. In addition to training, we’re bringing your favorites back (and then some!)…

- Networking
- Vendors
- Networking Wall
- Case Study
- Deals

It all happens on Saturday. Hope to see you there! Save your spot by clicking the link below…

http://www.myhousedeals.com/HoustonLive

In July, we added over 900 deals to the website. That’s quite a number! Many of these deals got sold within the first week after they were posted. Several more were sold within the month. The deals that didn’t sell and are still available will probably see their asking price reduced so that they still offer value to investors.

Tip: Follow-Up on deals and leads that you weren’t able to negotiate down when they first became available. If they are still available on the website, it’s likely that the seller is more motivated to further discount it.

So how do we keep track of over 900 deals each month? One of our goals is to make investing easier for our members. One of the most effective ways to do that is to keep information on the website relevant and fresh. We accomplish this by following-up on every deal posted on the website. That’s right. We have staff manually following up with sellers every day to keep the information you access as a free or Premium member of the website current.

After the initial follow-up process to initially approve each deal, we also follow-up with sellers 15 days and 30 days after a property is posted. If during that time the property was sold, we make them unavailable on the website. But the real value for you is on the cases when the property is still available. Two main things happen…

1. We go over all the information available on the deal to make sure it is still accurate – This includes ARV and Estimated Cost of Repairs review and an updated list of repairs.

2. We discuss the asking price with the seller and encourage them to reduce it – If the deal is still available after 15 or 30 days, it is likely that it does not offer enough equity for investors, so we talk to the sellers and encourage them to lower their asking price with the incentive that their deal will likely sell faster.

In July, we followed up on 591 deals! This is just one of the ways we work to make things happen for our investors.

Here are other important numbers for the month of July:

Motivated Seller Leads Posted – 397
Wholesale Deals Posted – 505
Deals Followed-Up on – 591
Deals Marked as Sold – 402
Total Equity posted to MyHouseDeals.com – $26,963,028

We hope you are taking advantage of the wealth of information we have available for you at MyHouseDeals.com!

As many of you know, last week we hosted a special webinar with Jack Mize entitled “Getting Started – Real Strategies to Replace Your Job with Real Estate Even if You Have Little to No Money or Credit.”

During the webinar Jack discussed wholesaling, what we believe to be the perfect strategy for beginning investors, and all the important details you should know to begin wholesaling immediately. Content included

- How to remove (real and perceived) obstacles to enable your success
- How to leverage your strengths and identify your weaknesses
- The importance of the two D’s – Dreams and Drive
- How to find the best players for your real estate investing team
- How to find DEALS
- How to find BUYERS
- How to CLOSE the deal

The webinar was a huge success and for a week now we’ve received requests for a replay from folks who missed it and others who simply must watch it again (they couldn’t take all the notes they wanted the first time around.) So here it is, the webinar replay! Just click the play button below to watch it…

Enjoy!

– Doug

I spent a few minutes with Eddie Gant, one of the most active rehabbers I know. Eddie is a pro when it comes to dealing with rehab properties, so there’s no one better to answer some of the most frequently asked questions we get about the topic here at the MyHouseDeals.com offices.

When looking for properties, are there any types of neighborhoods that you stay away from completely?

Not overly but I guess if it’s the worst of the worst and there’s burn outs and junk cars in the street and gangsters walking up and down, I will occasionally shy away from those. I will occasionally buy them, but I buy them low. I mean we’re talking under $10,000; I will buy them, but I’m a little more careful with them than I used to be.

Is that because you are afraid that during the rehab some things may get stolen?

Yeah break-ins, theft is the big one. People will steal everything. It’s all about the theft.

Do you install some sort of security system to keep your property safe during the rehab?

We normally don’t put security systems in them until they’re broken into. I’ve never had a house only broken into once, it’s never happened. If they come once, they’re coming back. That’s not an exaggeration. If they break in the first time, they’re definitely coming back. So we put the alarm in, they come back the second time, and usually the alarm goes off and they scatter. They don’t steal anything, but you have to replace the door or the doorframe or whatever.

What do you think are the three biggest mistakes that beginning investors make when they’re trying to rehab and resell property?

Foremost is that they don’t manage their contractors effectively. Also, sometimes there’s a tendency to start NOW because you want a house so bad, but you pay too much to try and get the deal. Number three, is that they don’t utilize other resources to help sell their houses. You should spend your time trying to find your next deal rather than spending your time doing something that you can get other support team members to do, like the sales and things.

Sometimes people try to do too much work themselves. Don’t be out there painting cabinets and putting in countertops yourself, be looking for your next deal. Pay somebody to do that, allow for it and then you be looking for your next house.

If you were to start over in real estate investing, what would you do differently?

I’ve been asked that a lot. I used to not have a real good answer but I think I do now. I do not have a real estate license, and I’ve been in this business 8 years. I would probably have gotten my real estate license early, and I’m probably eventually going to get mine.

Why is that?

So I can list my own properties, save a little commission, have access to all the comps and MLS, and even get referrals for retail deals that we can’t buy because the sellers owe too much.

***

Eddie Gant is a very successful real estate investor in Houston, TX. Many investors, including myself, consider Eddie to be the largest home buyer in Houston, if not all of Texas. He’s bought over 400 single family houses in the last 8 years.

Eddie also owns a mortgage company and a hard money lending company. In short, Eddie knows the real estate investment business from the inside out. He’s familiar with and teaches all types of real estate investing.  Eddie’s specialty is rehabbing and reselling properties for maximum profits; since he focuses almost exclusively on rehabbing

This is an excerpt of the interview I did with Eddie “Tips on Rehabbing for Maximum Profits”

These are some of the questions I had for Eddie. Now I’m curious… If you had access to some of the top real estate investors in the nation, what questions would you ask them? Share them by leaving a comment below. Dig deep and make it good. I just may be able to get you the answers you need…

Until next time,

– Doug