InvestorLoft Real Estate Investing Blog

Allen Klosowski (K2 Photo Studio), Josh Mishell (Flying Dog Brewery), Erika Napoletano (InvestorLoft.com), Janie Gianotsos (Food Bank), Josh Clauss (Tuggl.com), and Rich Chirco (Food Bank) - photo by Scott Lawan

Some people ask: what can you really say in 140 characters? The answer might surprise you.

At InvestorLoft, we prefer to ask what we feel is a better question:

What can you DO with 140 characters?

InvestorLoft has been actively involved in the Twitter online community since November of 2008 (you can follow our feed and join the conversation here). It’s here that we connect with other real estate industry professionals, real estate investors and members of our local Denver community and beyond.  Being a Denver-based business, there’s no lack of enthusiasm we have for this city we call home and we’re always looking for a way to give back.

Last night, InvestorLoft was proud to be a part of the largest live gathering of Twitter users in Denver to-date by participating in the monthly Denver Tweetup. A live gathering of “virtual people,” the event saw over 300 local business owners, entrepreneurs and other users of Twitter come out to socialize in full force. Last night was special, however: the event was working to raise funds for the Food Bank of the Rockies. Flying Dog Brewery generously donated the refreshments for the event while another local Denver business, Tuggl.com, worked with the Food Bank to arrange the donations. Eventgoers generously donated $1261.50, which translated to 5046 meals that the Food Bank of the Rockies can now provide to Coloradans in need.

And it was all done through Twitter. The people who attended last night’s event are to be thanked, alongside all of the event volunteers, Flying Dog Brewery and Tuggl.com. If it weren’t for the power of Twitter and social media, InvestorLoft and our co-organizers wouldn’t have been able to get this event organized — we were given 5046 great reasons to keep using Twitter last night! Our Director of Communications, Erika Napoletano, has been an integral part of the planning process for the Denver Tweetup events since their inception in December 2008. From that first monthly event until August’s, they’ve seen attendance steadily increase from 30 guests to last night’s 300. That is the power of Twitter.

If you’re a real estate industry professional using Twitter, ask yourself: what can I DO with 140 characters? As we said, the answer might surprise you. Sometimes it’s not all about your business.

Sometimes it’s about the community in which you DO business.

Watch CBS 4 Denver’s coverage of the event HERE!

We thank @mistymontano and @CBS4Denver for covering the event on the 10pm news last night as well as Kendra Wiig (@polyhazard) for her great write-up on Examiner.com. We’re delighted to have partnered with the Food Bank of the Rockies and glad for the generous donations from our attendees. Additional thanks to Tuggl.com and Josh Clauss for coordinating the charitable aspect, Flying Dog Brewery for their generous donation of libations, venue and marketing support by Josh Mishell, and Allen Klosowski for working with our Director of Communications month after month to consistently create great events for the Denver Twitter community.

Receive buyer leads from InvestorLoft in your market

Realtors – you’ve worked hard and long to be a local expert in your market. You know sales trends, great neighborhoods, ones to avoid and the ins and outs of making offers on short sales. Wouldn’t it be great if you could share that knowledge and expertise with InvestorLoft’s investor buyers?

You can!

If you are a Realtor who meets the following criteria, you are eligible to be a Local Market Expert for InvestorLoft and receive leads from unrepresented buyer members shopping in your area!

Criteria our experienced Success Team Members must meet to join our Lead Network:

• Must have at least three (3) years experience as a real estate professional
• Must have handled a minimum of five (5) investor transactions
• Must have a clean ethical professional record with no ethics complaints against your professional licensure.

Benefits of Success Team Membership:

• More Leads, Less Legwork: receive leads from buyers who do not have representation in your market. Our buyers look to you to guide them through a real estate investment purchase as an expert in your local market.
• Month-to-Month Contracts: start receiving buyer leads for as little as $9 per month (market pricing varies depending on number of listings and local population, one-time setup fee applies)
• Design Your Own Territory: reserve one or several counties in your local market – pay the setup fee only once!

Where are the good real estate investment deals these days?

There’s definitely no shortage of hot investment property floating around out there these days…but where do you go to minimize the “digging” for good deals?

How do you know what markets are hot, lukewarm, tepid and just plain ‘ol cold?

There are a ton of resources floating around out there on the web that are ready and waiting to provide you with timely, market-relevant information to aid in an investor buyer’s decision. This week’s blog post is a compilation of these resources, and we hope that if you have your own tools, you’ll share them with us in the Comments section below:

• Interactive Maps from NAR: Check out the interactive maps for Median Home Price and Existing Home Sales by State
   
• FinancialDynamix from InvestorLoft: Sure, we’re pimping our own ride here a bit, but every property on the site has a built-in calculator attached to it. Once you conduct your search by cash flow, cap rate, cash on cash return , downpayment and more, click on the “View Financials” tab of any property on our site an run the numbers real-time. Find out if it’s just a good price or also a great investment.
   
• Keep Tabs on Forbes.com: They regulary publish great stories like Where US Home Sales Are Rising , America’s 25 Strongest Housing Markets , and America’s 25 Weakest Housing Markets.
   
• Data Sets from Cyberhomes.com: When you log into their home page, they’ve done some preliminary sorting for you. View Home Values, Going Fast Listings (high page views) and more and explore their Real Estate Markets section for timely news and insights. 
   
• Do Some Simple Math: There’s no shortage of doom and gloom in the daily news about the real estate markets and which have been hardest hit. Florida, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, California – they’re in the blogs, online and traditional news reports and on the tips of every professional in the industry. Here’s a tip: start with THOSE cities for finding great investment properties. Foreclosure rates are high, inventory is plentiful, and with a little elbow grease and math, you just might find your next cash flowing gem!

Real estate saw one of the most turbulent markets in 2008 that we’ve seen in years. Now, as we prep for 2009, we’ve compiled this list of top move-forward trends to keep an eye on in real estate during 2009:

1. Realtor and Mortgage Industry Attrition – Those who got into real estate to ride the wave of yesterday’s boom are faced with dwindling client lists and tremendous regulatory changes. Realtors and yesterday’s mortgage brokers will have to a different type of business to have real “staying power” in the current economy. Those who persevere will find that nothing replaces superior customer service partnered with an unsurpassed level of expertise.
2. Growing Levels of Specialization in Residential Real Estate Sector – The recent crisis has demanded a certain level of specialization for real estate professionals. Those that know their way around short sales, alternative financing, foreclosures, seller carry-backs and investment property have pulled ahead of the masses and will likely continue to do so thorughout 2009.
3. Mortgage Metamorphasis – We’re on the lookout for more realistic lending standards. A-paper buyers can’t qualify and the sub-prime borrowers can’t pay, so what’s left? Look for banks to get creative, for the 20% downpayment of our parents’ era return as the norm and for lenders to consolidate and form national lending platforms that are more appealing to Joe American (and likely LESS friendly to Mr. Investor).
4. Hard Money Won’t be So Hard – Purchases still have to close and with the equity markets having been so turbulent, folks are looking for alternative investments in an asset class they know and trust like real estate. Look for a resurgence in private money lending as the real estate industry gets creative.
5. 1031 Exchanges: Hot, Hot, Hot – With 2008 having been so turbulent, we’re expecting more and more investors to look into the benefits of 1031 tax exchanges. Their value for a real estate investor’s portfolio is undeniable so we’ll be bolstering our educational content in this arena for our members.
6. Self-Directed IRA and Real Estate IRA Investing Will Surge – We’re predicting an all-time high level of assets rolled over into truly self-directed IRAs. Investors are seeking alpha outside the stock market and self-directed IRA custodians are wasting no time putting marketing dollars to work to educate investors about this valuable option. Take a look at InvestorLoft’s Self-Directed and Real Estate IRA Learning Center for our 7-part series on the basics of Real Estate IRA investing.
7. A Marketing Paradigm Shift for Real Estate – When lenders and other professionals realize that liquidity lies in the real estate investor’s realm, we expect to see a significant shift in marketing and advertising tactics. Why not advertise and market where your products will be seen by those with the need, desire and liquidity to purchase? Crazy stuff, we know!
8. Home Price Stablization – We can’t speculate as to where the bottom of the market is, but we expect to see home prices stabilize in Q1 of 2009 and remain static until about Q4. It’s a new Presidency and once tax time passes, we’ll see some available dollars head back into the real estate arena as folks see that prices have held for a few months.
9. Refined Refinancing – With so many mortgages set to adjust in the first half of 2009, we’re predicting a new scene on the refinancing front. Sure, rates are low, but if you can’t qualify – what’s the point? Lenders will snap-to and get savvy, tapping into the refinance market to pick-up great borrowers for their books and send high rates packing for those who can qualify. It won’t be so much about the rates this time, but the service and ability of lenders to work with a borrower’s personal situation as the mortgage industry continues to right itself from the 2008 capsizing.

The Treasury Secretary wants to drop mortgage rates to 4.5% in hopes of stimulating more buyers to come back into the market. Certain regions have had moratoriums placed on foreclosure proceedings for those who qualify.

Is it all truly necessary, however?

Is it the government’s responsibility to ensure that every home buyer can continue to pay their mortgage note or should we revert to a more Darwinistic approach and call it a weeding-out of natural selection proportions? 

Some say that if we don’t take strides to end the slide in housing prices then banks will never be able to stabilize and lending will remain out of whack. And on top of it all, unemployment numbers are surging and it’s likely we’ll see the foreclosure trend continue as the economy presents its inevitable challenges.

What say you, the real estate investor? Should the Fed step in to stabilize or should we adopt the “laissez-faire” mentality and let the natural selection process take its toll on the banks, mortgage lenders and homeowners as a whole?

It’s all over the news. You can’t flip channels without hearing about it. The housing market is in a spiraling decline. In a year wrought with mortgage bailouts, increasing foreclosure rates and inventory galore, what does this mean for the real estate investor?

It’s simple. While the foreclosure climate is unfortunate for those caught in its grasp, it offers a potentially favorable scenario for the liquid real estate investor.

Year-end means that banks want to get REO property off their books. This places YOU, the investor, in prime bargaining position. Have you read our article on Foreclosure Listings? If not, it’s an excellent primer and what you need to know and consider when looking at REO properties.

First and foremost, get your financing and purchase funds lined-up. If you’re ready to be aggressive with a bank on one of their properties, cash is king and the more you can bring to the table (100% if possible), the more favorable the bank will likely see your offer.

Our advice? Don’t turn off the news. Keep watching. As the panic thickens, the real estate investment community will find itself in a more and more beneficial position. It’s a well-known fact that you should buy low and sell high. Get in on the current real estate market lows and build yourself a robust portfolio. 

If you have ideas on strategies for foreclosures and foreclosure investing, we look forward to your comments below.

 

 

Online Self-Directed IRA Learning!

Click and learn! We’ve had such incredible traction from investors who currently use their self-directed IRA to invets in real estate that we wanted to let everyone know how it’s done. We’ve launched our Self-Directed IRA Learning Center and invite you to stop by an have a look-and-learn.

From a detailed seven-part series on the basics of self-directed and real estate IRA investing to more advanced strategies, this section of our Resource Library is ready and waiting. There are also the most up-to-date IRS publications available for download for our members’ convenience. One-stop shopping and learning for your investment goals!

There are so many people out there who don’t know that they can use their retirement fund to invest in real estate, and self-directed or real estate IRAs make it simple.

Have an idea for an article you’d like to see in this category? Drop us a comment here.

Investment Property Search at InvestorLoft.com

When we designed our PropScout investment property search engine, it truly was with the investor in mind. There’s nothing more frustrating for an investor than to have to sift through listing after listing to find a suitable property for your investment goals. We deceided that enough was enough and developed a smarter way to search.

This week, we’ll answer a few questions that we’ve received via email regarding the PropScout Search Engine. We’re always looking for ways to improve our service offerings and much thanks to the members below for asking. We’re happy to answer!

How do I know the properties that come up in my PropScout search are legit? – Mark M. (Illinois)

Only licensed real estate agents are eligible to list their properties on InvestorLoft. This means you’re not going to run across fly-by-night deals listed by unscrupulous individuals just looking to grab your earnest money check and run. While there’s no substitute for a thorough due diligence process when acquiring any investment, including real estate, we started from the most logical place to protect our members: the licensed real estate agent.

I have a very specific cash flow requirement for any property I add to my portfolio. Can I search by cash flow on InvestorLoft? – Jennifer A. (Arizona)

On the PropScout search page, just scroll to the line marked “Search by YOUR desired minimum annual Cash Flow” and select from the drop down menu. Hit search, and your results will be on-target and easy to review.

Not only can you search exclusively by cash flow, but cap rate, equity, property type and more. The PropScout Search Engine was designed specifically cater to the needs of the real estate investor. 

How is PropScout any different from searches I perform on other online real estate sites? – Carolyn W. (Colorado)

We’re glad you asked! See, most real estate investors aren’t so concerned with number of bedrooms, granite counter tops and upgraded flooring. They want to know that a property makes financial sense for their portfolio. That being said, you won’t find the typical “residential” search criteria on InvestorLoft’s PropScout. What you WILL find, however, is a solid list of qualifying financial criteria to build a search that suits YOUR needs. Swimming pool? Take it or leave it. Cash flow? Now that’s something we want to hear about!

If you have additional questions about our PropScout Search Engine, ask them here! The InvestorLoft Team will get you answers. Thanks for stopping by!