http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/stevedavis.html

Until next time…

Reba

The seminar always falls on the first weekend of the month (in Houston anyway, different weekends in San Antonio and Dallas) and we attended the first weekend in May. The days are long and jam packed with info. Day one starts at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 5:00 with an hour for lunch. I don’t even remember getting any breaks! The chairs are super hard. Brent and I took our patio furniture cushions, they are about 5″ thick and my butt still hurt. But it was worth it.

Day-one covers everything you need to know about single family house investing “according to Del”. I’m finding that Lifestyles Unlimited philosophy is just a bit different than some of the ‘gurus’ you find selling their ‘courses’ on late-night TV. Del teaches “investing for cash-flow” which is a lot different than flipping houses.  Most of the ‘gurus’ teach to tie up contracts and flip them to investors. They teach putting out ‘bandit signs’ to get people to buy your investment houses with ‘lease to own’ contracts and the like. They teach wrap-around mortgages, how to flip short-sales, and the list goes on. That’s not what Del teaches.

Del follows more of what Robert Kiyosaki teaches in his “Rich Dad Poor Dad” book series, which is ‘invest for cash-flow’, not capital gain. Of course, in these times with foreclosures flooding the market, you can’t help but get huge capital gains when you buy at so low below market, but cash-flow is what should drive your purchase. Basically, if you buy for cash-flow, you can accumulate enough properties to eventually cover your expenses and at that point, you become financially independent and never have to work at a J.O.B. again. To me, that would be heaven and I’ve convinced Brent that we have to go there .

The top things I took away from that day were:

• Del’s three rules for investing:

1. Never lose money.
2. Investments should ALWAYS have cash-flow.
3. You can’t get rich slow.

• Best product ~ Best price

1. Your property should be the best house in the neighborhood.
2. Your property should be offered at the best rental price in the neighborhood.
3. These two rules will rent your property in DAYS instead of weeks.

• The bread and butter deal is:

1. Three bedroom
2. Two bath
3. Two car garage
4. 1200-1800 square feet
5. Less than $100,000
6. Preferably less than $40 per square foot

I’ll go through some numbers for properties in upcoming posts but the three things listed above are paramount for single-family home investing.

Day-two was a blur. It focuses on multi-family (MF) investing which is much more complicated than single-family (SF) and the investor needs tons more money. Where it is possible to start SF with less than $20,000, you should have at minimum $60,000 and preferably $100,000 to invest in MF. Because we are no where near ready to invest in multi-family deals, a lot of what was taught on Sunday of the seminar went in one ear and right out the other. What I did learn was that it’s possible to work your way up to MF and I plan to do so. I also learned that I am probably better programmed to be a ‘passive’ investor more so than a lead investor. I just don’t think I would be comfortable putting ‘other people’s money’ at risk.

Multi-family investing will give us cash-flow with ‘extra zeros’ on the end and someday, we’ll be there, but for now, single-family is where we’ll start.

Until next time ~

Reba

I guess the shows resonated with me because of my experiences with my grandfather growing up. He always owned some sort of rental property and if my grandfather could own rental property, then I should be able to own rental property too, right? So one day my daughter and I were talking about her future and what career she might want to pursue. She has always loved real estate and I remembered about the radio show. We looked up Lifestyles Unlimited on the internet and I couldn’t let it go. They were having a free workshop that weekend, so Brent and I decided to go.

Low and behold, we signed up for their Financial Freedom Program ($500) which is their lowest level program. It gives us the ability to call any time with any question about real estate investing and a mentor will help us. We also get to attend vendor meeting/networking events, vendor presentation nights, and other networking events. Lastly, and probably most importantly, it gave us a two-day training seminar with Del that is offered monthly and can be taken over and over if we so choose.

So that Saturday morning Brent and I paid our money and signed up for the next ‘two-day’ which was the first Sat/Sun in May. Then we went back to living our lives.

Each month on the Thursday night prior to the seminar, Lifestyles holds a case-study night. The night is filled with presentations from people who have purchased property. These people get up in front of a crowd of people and show slides of their property and analyze the numbers showing how the property makes them money. It just so happened that our daughter was in town for the case-study night (she’s in college and lives in San Marcos, TX), and since guests are welcome, she came along.

It was our first case-study and we were all amazed at how many people were in attendance. Lifestyles serves beer, wine, and snacks, and tons of people just come to network and see the deals that are being presented. I’d say there were about 300 people there. It was very exciting and our daughter got excited as well.

The Lifestyles membership includes all family members up to 18 years old and allows those over 18 to join for half price. Brittany was so excited that we went ahead and signed her up, that way she could attend the two-day seminar with us on the upcoming Sat/Sun since she was in town anyway.

The next day was Friday and the day before the two-day. Brittany and I were cleaning out her room getting ready for a garage sale we had planned for the first weekend in June and the phone rang. It was the real estate agent with whom I had my grandfather’s house listed. We had an offer on his house! It was very exciting because this piece of property is in East Texas on the Hwy 30 service road on an acre of land and it had been on the market for about 8 months with very little showings and no offers. The offer was only a few thousand less than our asking price, I couldn’t have been happier. He sent me the offer, I signed, and we were on our way to selling the last asset my grandfather owned. I was almost finished executing his estate ~ YAY!!

That night it dawned on me that sometimes things just fall into place. Brent and I joined Lifestyles on blind faith that some how we would be able to make real estate investing work for us. Then, the day before we were scheduled to attend the training seminar, my grandfather’s house sells, the very sale that would give us the capital we need to get started investing.

Do you think maybe my grandfather was trying to tell me something from above? Hmm….

Until next time…

Reba