In my last post I told you that Brent and I had signed up for the Financial Freedom Program (FFP) at Lifestyles Unlimited, a real estate investing club here in Houston. The FFP program includes training which consists of a two-day seminar. Since we signed up our daughter Brittany, she attended with us.

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