Tag Archives: joint venture

Your “Veteran” Stories…

If you’d like to share stories of veterans in your life, we’d love to hear about those men and women that sacrificed themselves, their families, and in many cases, their lives. Or even just the stories of the men and women that fought in wars here and abroad and their courage and character.

No matter what we think politically or the viewpoints on many of the past and present wars, we need to respect and honor the people that served the country. If you’ve got a great story that could touch our readers, please do share!

One of the organizations we support – and feel strongly about – is the Wounded Warrior project. Too many soldiers come home injured, unable to find work, and finding it very difficult to put their lives back together after service. This organization is doing some wonderful things and if you can get involved, donate, or support in other ways, there are hundreds of thousands of men and women that would appreciate it!

Also, if you have another charity that you support that helps Veterans and their families, please do share it with our readers.

Real Estate Investing Mistake #7: Not Having Joint Venture Agreements In Place

Real estate investing is exciting when you’re just getting started. Real estate is all you can think about and all you can talk about. Your enthusiasm rubs off on others and you instantly start attracting people that want to lend money on for deals, partner with you on properties, joint venture with you on aspects of your business, etc.

The problem is that when you’re so excited, it’s hard to imagine anything EVER going wrong. Why would you need anything more than a handshake and verbal agreement?

Sure, you may be laughing as you read this, but you’ll see… when it comes time to putting a joint venture together, you’ll be eager to get moving along and you just might make this critical real estate investing mistake… and it COULD wind up costing you tens of thousands of dollars, friendships, and worse. Continue reading

7 Steps to Getting Started In Real Estate

There are only 7 steps you need to master to be successful in real estate. If you fail to master any single step, you’re building your real estate business on a weak foundation. Wouldn’t you rather build your home on a rock-solid, unbreakable foundation?

Step #1: How To Set Your Business Up And Build Your Team

I defer to Napoleon Hill! If you look at people that have been successful in the past, a common thread is the people they are surrounded with. You need to build your team with the RIGHT people.

Remember, you get what you pay for! (To give you an idea Continue reading

Must-Have Forms

Here, you’ll find must-have forms that you can use when you’re speaking to sellers, evaluating deals, and working with other people in the business.

To download the forms, you’ll need to mouse over the link and “right-click” and “save as”

pdf Seller Call In Worksheet (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Property Selection Grid (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Marketing Tracking Sheet (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Evaluating Creative Financing (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Target Market Worksheet (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Standard Contract for Purchase & Sale (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Joint Venture Agreement (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Acquisition Spreadsheet (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Closing Process/Critical Dates (Right Click & Save As)
pdf Customary Closing Costs (Conventional) (Right Click & Save As)

Building Your Real Estate Team

We’re often inclined to think that we can handle it all in our real estate businesses, especially in the early phases of the business. There are 7 key people that you need to have on your team… I realize it’s a balancing act because you’re often faced with balancing the financial aspects of a new business with finding the right people. However, the cost of NOT getting the right advice can be crippling.

My very first partnership was with a long time friend. We’d attended some workshops and trainings, asked an accountant and attorney we knew what we should set up for the business entity, and ultimately set up a basic corporation with an s-election. We weren’t real clear on what we needed it for and were primarily looking at the tax beneifts. Well, from a tax perspective, we did alright, I suppose. But, what we didn’t factor in was what was going to happen when we inevitably wanted to go in different directions.

We were warned by a good friend and mentor early on. He said, “Partnerships will only survive as long as both people need each other. Once either one is able to stand on his/her own, the partnership no longer works.” And we, of course, said, “Yeah, but we’re different.” Continue reading

Free Real Estate Marketing Ideas…

Recently, Brandon and I were elected to chair the marketing committee at Keller Williams. The company model doesn’t include a marketing “budget” for the office. Marketing is the sole responsibility of the agents within the office to orchestrate and execute.

Despite that, agents all agree when they sign on to have $50 taken out of every closing to pay for office marketing. A decent model when listings are selling. However… when the market comes to a screeching halt and sales dip, the marketing budget dips too! We were running an ad that cost nearly $5000/month largely paid for by individual agents that wanted their listings showcased in color in the Sunday classified section once/month.So… here’s what happened! We got “elected” to the committee at the end of January. The first meeting we were able to pull together was the first week of March. In the interim, prior to having our first meeting and even recruiting our committee, we immediately slashed the ad! The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results! This is absolutely true when it comes to marketing! Continue reading

Partnerships: Beware!

I can remember back years ago when I was getting started in real estate with my first business partner and long time friend. We heard the warnings. We read all the horror stories of partnerships gone bad. And then… we decided that we were different and our situation was “different”!

You see, we’d been friends for years before, had started several different businesses together and had lived and worked closely for the past 5 years. So all those bad things that happen to other partnerships surely wouldn’t happen to us.

Plus, we were going to make sure we did things right! We were going to set up a business entity. After going back and forth from attorney to CPA; LLC to S corp, we eventually settled on the S Corp. It was cheaper and since we couldn’t find any conclusive reason not to, we dove in and were now 50/50 partners in our own business.

A few years later after our adventure began, we found ourselves in litigation and in an ugly battle! So, why did things take such a turn for the worse?
Continue reading