The following is a list of articles that will provide helpful tips, insider information and educational opportunities.

by Andy Heller and Scott Frank
So you want to invest in residential foreclosures? Not sure quite where to start? It is helpful to understand first that there are three faces to “foreclosures”, each with very different characteristics.

Is it really possible to make money off the leads that you have been throwing in the trash week after week, month after month? What kind of difference would it make if you could deposit an extra $13,000 in your bank account in the next 29 days without spending another dime on marketing, renovations, or vacant house payments? What kind of difference would that make in your life, for your family, and mostly for your confidence in your ability to create cash flow?

Most consumers have found themselves to be heavily reliant upon “credit” and all that it avails. As you have heard me say in my presentation time and again, the credit bureaus were initially created to show and report our credit worthiness. Progressively the bureaus were posed with a variety of options on how to maximize their bottom line. I would tell you that I was not there for that initial board room meeting; however, if it were up to me to dictate exactly what I believe to have been said, the conversation probably went something like this.

Why don’t people pay their real estate taxes? And just what gives the city, town and county the right to sell your property at a tax sale? Tax sale occur when property owner fails to pay their real estate taxes. City, towns, counties are in the business to provide essential services to its citizens, such as police department, fire department, water sewer, department of sanitation, public school, libraries, etc. not to manage property. Property taxes help fund local governments. The tax collector, county treasurer’s responsibility is to serve the public and collect taxes, and real estate taxes are their main source income and revenue.

by David Lindahl

Having rehabbed over 521 properties in the last nine years and collected over 1600 apartment units I’m often asked, how can I become wealthier faster investing in real estate?

by Bruce Mack

Beginning in 1981 I had a string of bad luck. I had my house foreclosed on in 1981, had a car repossessed shortly there after and in 1985 filed bankruptcy. I know what it’s like to lose everything including my dignity and ask the question, “How could this happen to me?” I was an honest businessman. I owned a well-established corporate recruiting firm that placed a lot of people in prominent positions in banking, insurance, finance and more. I had several offices on the west coast. But as they say, sometimes bad things happen to good people. If anyone needed a book like this one after my string of “bad luck”, I did.

by Robert Shemin, JD, MBA

Analysis paralysis--one of the biggest blocks of successful investing. That's when you stumble into a good deal, then stop dead in your tracks. You worry about the decision, and never do anything. In my first six months of investing, I looked at hundreds of great deals and froze.

by Wendy Patton

Partnerships can be very lucrative for real estate investors. A partnership is “a legal relation existing between two or more persons contractually associated as joint principals in a business. Real estate partnerships can be used for many applications. If you have time, knowledge, or money, then you are a perfect candidate to partner with someone with different qualifications.

By Steve Herbert, GaREIA Past President

In 1998, I made one of the best decisions of my professional career. I became a member of GaREIA. Simply put, my membership at GaREIA has proved invaluable to the success of my real estate investing business.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have people standing in line to give you new dollars that you can use for profits? What would you do if you had more private money lined up than you had motivated sellers? This is not only the predicament that you would want to put yourself in, but it’s also what can happen if you follow the attached plan.

by Justin Ryan and Wendy Patton

As homeowners and investors, one thing all of us have experienced over the last several years is this: Real estate markets move and change. Just as real estate markets appreciate in value over time, they also make price corrections and adjust downward. All of our markets are continuously in motion. Having a detailed understanding of market timing is more important than ever in today’s real estate climate.

by Bill Twyford

Every investor has heard how important it is to build rapport with distressed homeowners. What we never hear about is how to do it. What is it about someone that makes us instantly like or dislike them? We don’t really know what it is about that person, we just know it’s something.

by Bill Twyford

The key to success is knowing how to communicate with others. Whether you are a real estate investor, work at a fast food restaurant, or are a doctor, without good communication skills people won’t like you. Have you ever met someone and didn’t like them, but didn’t know why you didn’t like them? They just “rubbed you the wrong way.” Subconsciously you did not like their communication skills. My goal is to teach you to master your communication skills so that you can have others eating out of the palm of your hand.

by David Lindahl

There are only three reasons to be in real estate, if any one tells you any differently then they don’t understand real estate investing.

The three reasons to be in real estate are cash now, cash monthly and cash later. Let’s take a closer look at each one of them.

by Bill Twyford

Having a firm grasp on language patterns will help you close more deals. In addition to using embedded commands, which are word groups that order you to do something, you must incorporate assumptive language patterns into your vocabulary. Assumptive language patterns assume the outcome of what you are asking.

by Caryn McKinney and Mark Klee

Based on our experience as we talk to investors across the country, we’ve found that when most investors hear the word “bankruptcy,” their first reactions are intimidation and avoidance. Why? Well, the biggest reason is the fact that bankruptcies are a legal process involving the federal government. Clearly, these typical reactions confirm why we’ve found bankruptcies to be an incredibly untapped and profitable market that offers little or no competition … for those who are willing to learn the simple basics and stick to a plan!

Like most investors, you aspire one day to become a commercial real estate investor because that’s where the BIG money is – Just one deal can put you into early retirement.

I have heard many people say that generating leads for creative real estate investing is a numbers game. That may be very true, but there are definitely things that you can do to make those numbers work in your favor, and greatly improve your odds with less money spent in the process.

Why do we need to generate leads? This is what I tell my students: You must learn and understand my axiom, proven time and time again:

LACK OF LEADS = LACK OF DEALS = YOU ARE OUT OF BUSINESS!

If you market your services to people in foreclosure, or to any targeted list as I have described in a previous article, you are going to get leads. Please remember – Leads are not deals….yet. Some may become super profitable deals that put thousands of dollars in your pocket, but you must be able to evaluate them and focus like a laser beam on the best leads and discard all the rest.

The temptation for the new investor is when they start getting leads is from their marketing, that get excited (understandably!) and start to contact everyone. It only takes a few days of this to understand another of my important axioms:

Not All Leads Are Created Equal!

One of the crucial mistakes I have seen newer foreclosure investors make is failing to analyze each deal all the way through the process, including the selling or exit strategy. They get excited about the deal and sometimes forget that as soon as they own the property, expenses begin, so you must invest with the end in mind. How you exit, or sell the property will often determine how you should buy!

Here are the basic exit strategies you need to know and understand the implications and expenses, if any, of each

• Flip the property, either wholesale or retail, to a quick buyer or an investor
• Reinstate the foreclosure and retail to an outright buyer who gets a bank loan
• Reinstate and sell by you acting as a “bank” using owner financing instruments
• Reinstate and keep the house, then rent it out.

It is crucial to you as a foreclosure investor to fully understand all the options and alternatives that are available to owners in foreclosure and the consequences of each. Every owner facing foreclosure has the following options opened to them.

Many times sellers in foreclosure will put their head in the sand and then when it finally hits them they are about to lose their home, finally ask you for help. Should you pass on a deal that is 2 days from a foreclosure sale?

In my first 5 articles on this series on foreclosure investing, we talked about the ways to find, evaluate, and close foreclosure deals. Now it’s time to……

Show You The Money!