Success Story

[reipro]

Ours is a very simple story. Over the last 7 years we have been very blessed to have learned about Real Estate from some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry.
If you look at what makes a successful person in any industry I would have to say that there are several common threads. Here are some of them.

#1 and the most important ACTION Ideas are a dime a dozen some who puts there ideas or someone elses into practice is pricesless. You will never get anywhere sitting on the couch waiting for the money to drop in your lap. It happens to few people the ones that win the lottery, but how many of those people are there. Get off the couch and take action. You also have to remember one important thing there is a difference between looking busy and taking true ACTION.

#2 Failure is not an option!
Do not get me wrong not everything that we have done has been a success. We have had many failures! You just have to remember that failure is an event not the person. Get up every morning and swing the bat!


#3 find out who is the best in what ever industry you are working in or want to be in.
There is no sense in reinventing the wheel it has already been done. Ask your freinds, ask your banker, attorney or CPA. Do they know anyone who is successful in what it is that you want to do. Find this person and mirror there success

#4 Build a great team of people around you
It is a must to have a great team of people around you to be successful no one and I mean no one does it all by themselves. You will need the following people.
1) Attorney
2) CPA
3) Banker/Investors
4) Insurance agent
5) people who specialize in what ever your field is

Please notice that I put these in order of priority. I can not tell you how many people we have trained that went out and put a team togeteher and never did a deal. This is a waste of time it goes back to number 1 action.

If you take action and make things happen it will make it easier for steps 3 & 4. Sometimes these people will even find you. Because they are also people who take action and they will here about the action you are taking and also want to seek you out.

I hope this helps!

David
Whether you think you can or you think you can't your right - Henry Ford

 

[Yankees338]

Good lessons! Thanks for sharing; glad to have you here.

 

[Antonio.]

Thank you for sharing this infomation.

 

[andviv]

Excellent advice in here... but I was expecting to read about how you started, how you made deals, explain the deals.. in short, I was expecting your story.
You say you have been successful but did not mention what you have done other than "learned about Real Estate from some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry" and "trained people". PerhapsI was expecting more details. I think maybe this thread should be in another section as there is pretty good advice, but not under "fastlane multi-millionaire stories".

And yes, the advice does help. Thanks for sharing.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Excellent advice in here... but I was expecting to read about how you started, how you made deals, explain the deals.. in short, I was expecting your story.
You say you have been successful but did not mention what you have done other than "learned about Real Estate from some of the most knowledgeable people in the industry" and "trained people". PerhapsI was expecting more details. I think maybe this thread should be in another section as there is pretty good advice, but not under "fastlane multi-millionaire stories".

And yes, the advice does help. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, thank you for the tips. However, I have to agree with the above -- the devil is in the details. People want to hear about the trials, the errors, the ups, the downs, the process in education -- the choices, both good and bad, that produced success. When people see that success is a process and not an event, they have a greater understanding of the commitment and perseverance required.

Perhaps I will make a sticky post regarding the posting of personal stories -- we need details that will help others both be educated as well as inspired.

Again thanks, all of what you say is very valuable in the success process.

 

[reipro]

I will go into more detail of how we did what we have done. This may ramble a little as I am not a great typer.

Stacy who is a great fan of Oprah saw Robert on her show. She told me I had to watch the show. I was like NO WAY I am not watching Oprah, but I finally did. I was amazed at what Robert had to say. Stacy offered to buy me Richdad Poordad. So she did. Please realize that I have a degree in Business from the University of Kansas (which at the time I went there was in the Top 10 Business schools in the country) I had never read a text book. And I mean Never.

So I sat down and read Rich dad poor dad from cover to cover. That is when it all started in July of 2000. My significant other (Stacy) who most of you know from the Rich dad board as Successenterpriesellc and I decided to buy our first rental properties. We had bought the Carlton Sheets "No Money Down Videos" some time before that.

So we moved to Lincoln, NE and and bought 2 duplexes for a total of 4 units. I had always been good at getting people to give me money. So in order to get the deal started we were just like everyone else. We did not have 20% down for the property. So I found a bank that would give us a 97% loan on the property. So we had to come up with 3% which we got a cash advance on a credit card for. US Bank at the time had 100% equity loans on properties and they would use the tax assesed value so we had purchased the property for less than the tax assessed value so we had instant equity since it was our primary residence. We borrowed enough on that to pay back the credit card and have enough for a down payment on the other property.

Now is when the fun starts. Right after we bought those properties we both worked for the same company and were making about $150K a year total household income. Stacy position with the company was eliminated and I was fired about a month later.

We now have 4 rentals one of which we live in and about $120K in bad debit credit cards, auto payments ect. and no source of income other than the rentals which 3 of the 4 paid for the payment, taxes and insurance.

At that point we decided to start flipping houses. You all know what happened then was 9/11 we had 2 houses that were completely finished and on the market and we could not give them away. So we finally sold one of them at break even and got some cash back and rented the other one.

We looked at each other and said there has to be an easier way. So Stacy got on the Richdad board and met Mark Kemp (utahinvestor) We hooked up with him and learned how to buy foreclosures and notes at a discount. After doing this for about a year the Vegas Event happened on the Richdad board and we started training people how to buy notes and how to work with Homeowners in Foreclosure. This created a tremendous amount of cashflow for us, but it was still a job. I had to get on an airplane and go train people. So what we decided to do was start taking the deals that we were doing on our own and selling them as Rent-to-own. This way we could 1031 the profits into other properties and keep flipping them over until we did not owe anything on them.

As we have been doing this for the last couple of years we have built us some great equity in some of our properties and should own all of them free and clear in about 5 more years.

So we started in the year 2000 with no money and 120K in bad debt. Today as it stands we have about 7 million in good debt and a net worth of about 3 million. So in short I owe everything to STACY and I will tell anyone who asks that! She is the love of my life and I am the luckiest guy in the world to have her.

I know this is kind of short. So if anyone whats to talk more about our story I would be glad to talk to them on the phone shoot me an e-mail at reipro9369@yahoo.com and we can talk.

 

[andviv]

Now that's more like it.... thanks for sharing.

 

[terrancefoster]

now that's hot

 

[JesseO]

Thanks for your posts here, Reipro =)

 

[Satpoint]

now that's hot

haha, there you have it.

Thanks for posting!

 

[S928]

Reipro, thanks for sharing your story; it's definitely inspirational.

 

[phlgirl]

Reipro -

Sounds like we might have a similar business model. Our company buys single family homes (in the JAX area), which we typically buy either from the bank (short sale), from the homeowner, or from bank (REO). We rent them out and intend to hold them for 5-7 years.

I would be very interested in hearing more about your 1031 strategy. I have used the 1031 a few times in transferring funds from PHL to JAX but really like the idea of recycling the funds to end up with a properties free and clear. Seeing that you have to identify exchange properties for at least the value of that which has been sold, how does this work? I am trying to make it work on paper here..... I must be missing something

Also, any advice on getting these banks to give you the leads first? Is this just something that takes time, after establishing a rapport? As we work short sales, we try to make good contacts, with each bank, but some of these LM departments are so large - everyone is working in a silo, with blinders on..... I have thought about approaching smaller, local banks? We get solid leads from mailing campaigns, newspaper ads, bandit signs, etc. but with the foreclosure rates as they are, it has me thinking if we had a few good bank contacts, it would provide us all the leads we need and we could reduce the marketing effort/expense.

Really apppreciate any input you might have. Thanks so much for sharing your story.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

David; thx for the update and the details!!!!

 

[reipro]

Phlgirl,

Shoot me an e-mail and we can talk on the phone it is much easier than typing.

reipro9369@yahoo.com

 

[Yankees338]

Great post. Appreciate all the details! Thanks a lot for sharing.