Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

Our business fascinates me.

Whether it’s creative deals or watching how REIA groups develop and maintain individual cultures or observing how different types of people react to the pressures and rewards of being real estate entrepreneurs, I find myself filing, categorizing, reorganizing, and contemplating where real estate investing fits in the bigger world, and how the people in it behave.

One of the things that I started to notice a few years back is that certain people seem to be drawn like a magnet to steel to certain strategies in the real estate business. And from what I can tell from working one on one with students, these tendencies appear to precede any actual exposure to real estate education and strategies.

Before I explain more (and potentially affect your answer to this question), let’s do a little thought experiment.

First, try to gain some neutrality about whatever money “things” are going on for you right now. If you have bills due that you can’t pay, or just saw your social security retirement statement and realized that you can’t possibly live on that, or just got a bonus at work and are feeling flush, try to chill about it for a moment. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, get centered, and read on. Read More...

Many folks believe they procrastinate because they are “lazy”. As a result, they beat themselves over the head and feel bad about it.

(Maybe you do too.) 

It’s not true though.

Procrastination has nothing to do with laziness.

This is just a cop out. It’s a story you tell yourself so that you get to feel bad for a little while “punishing yourself” for not taking action and following through on the commitments you made. Trouble is, it only makes your procrastination worse and reinforces the negative cycle.

You need to break the cycle.

How?

By understanding what really causes procrastination. It’s not what most folks think. There’s something deeper at play, something unconscious, and it’s stopping you from getting into action, staying in action, and following through on the commitments you made to others and yourself.

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If you don’t think that real estate investing is a relationship business, you haven’t been paying attention. 

It’s your connections with other investors that bring you the local knowledge, the referrals to the right professionals, the money, the partnerships, and the deals that let you prosper now, and for years to come.   

But these relationships don’t ‘just happen’ for most people. You have to be intentional about building and maintaining them, just like you’re intentional (I hope) about building a rental portfolio, or a buyer’s list, or a marketing plan.   

REIAGC exists, in large part, to provide a platform for you to find and interact with like-minded folks who can encourage and help you be successful, but you have to do your part, too. Here are some tips for the 95% of us who aren’t just natural ‘connectors’:  

1. Be intentional about your professional development. There’s no job you can have or business you can be in where your value isn’t enhanced by knowing more. 

And in real estate, tha
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There is a Major Flaw in Real Estate Investing that very few people want to admit, and fewer still have the answers for how to overcome it.

The major flaw with Real Estate Investing is not the education. There are a tremendous number of great educators out there, who provide really great content. It is also not that you didn’t study the courses and didn’t learn from them. I know that many of you did genuinely go through the courses and then try to follow them, giving it your full effort. I followed that path too.

I have been a Real Estate Investor for over 35 years and an educator for over 25 years. I have completed over 2,000 Deals. What I found by working with (beginning and experienced) Real Estate Investors for that long, is that for most, fear comes up and stops them from getting what they want. There is too much of a gap around lack of money to get through the fear about how you are going to invest in real estate. For many, it is just too much to overcome.

This Real Estate Investment Business is so incredible, it provides so many benefits for so many people. It can provide an incredible living for your family and a secure financial future. It provides people with home ownership and incredible opportunities for themselves. It is truly a business
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Many people think and have been taught that land is risky, expensive, doesn’t have cash flow and takes a long time to convert into profits. And in this article, I want to focus on the one thing I hear mentioned about land all the time and that irks me the most when I hear people talk about it. And that is that:

“LAND DOESN’T CASH FLOW”

While it technically is correct that land itself does not cash flow the same way a rental house cash flows, there are some distinct ways to make land cash flow.

And when I am saying you can make land cash flow, I am not particularly talking about traditional income land like Farmland or land with billboards or cell phone towers on them.

Certainly, that works too, and it is absolutely possible to take a piece of land in a city and rent it out as a parking lot, a storage place, or even as a place to put a cell phone tower or billboard on. There are many land owners who have made a nice steady income by buying a piece of land in rural areas next to an interstate and then either fixed or non-fixed (trailers or old trucks with advertising surface) and renting out the surface to businesses in the area forever. Just a few of them make more income a month than most people earn in their jobs. Read More...

In my 25+ years in the real estate business, I bet I've met more than 100,000 investors at all levels of knowledge and experience. Some have become amazingly successful, while others have lost steam or experienced dramatic failures.

During this time, I've noticed that there are certain characteristics that come with real estate investing success. As a matter of fact, that I have come to believe that I can predict with fair accuracy whether a particular investor will be successful. All I have to do is find out a little about their attitudes and actions, and I'll know what their chances of becoming successful are.

Before I outline the specific characteristics that I've found in successful investors, I’d like to define what I mean by "successful investor".

A successful investor is NOT the person who owns the most properties or does the most deals, or who has the most zeros in his net worth.

A successful investor is simply a person who knows what he wants - financially, personally, and in terms of what he wants to contribute to the world - and successfully uses real estate investing as a way to get those things. For a successful real estate investor, real estate is a means to an end, not an end u
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I don’t know if ya’ll really understand what it’s like out there in the cold, hard real estate investing world.

Apparently, it’s lonely, nasty, and a cutthroat, and more than a little sad and desperate.

From everything I read on the various social media sites and groups, there are an awful lot of so-called real estate entrepreneurs who truly believe that the “pie” is only this big, and that everyone else is protecting their piece with barbed wire and brass knuckles, and that to carve out your piece, you have to beg for crumbs, or pay a fortune, or take away someone else’s piece by snaking their sellers or stealing their private lenders or bribing their tenants to call the building department on them so that they’ll be motivated to sell.

Seriously, I’ve heard all of that complained about, or bragged about, or recommended as a strategy.

Years ago, when I was just a wee little newbie, there was a guy who belonged to my local REIA group who always wore a button to the meetings that said YAFTAX.

This fellow was one of the big dogs—owned lots of rentals, had been in the group forever, was on the board, all that intimidating stuff—but after a few months, I finally got up the nerve to ask him what YAFTAX was.

He smiled at me and said, “Say it out loud”. I said, “Yaf-tax. Ya-af-tax. Ohhhhhh. Ya have to ask”.

He went on to explain that he attributed his success largely to his willingness to ask for ANYTHING from a seller. A lower price, better financing, leave the furniture, whatever it took to make the deal work for him, whether or not he thought the seller would say yes.

That’s turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned.

It’s so easy to “think for your seller” and assume that he won’t be interested in what you can do for him—especially when that seller has already told you that what works for him is something completely different. If you ask for what you need, he may very well say “
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One of the most important aspects to a marketing campaign is to create a solid mail piece for your business: one that sellers will actually respond to.

Here are the key things to remember when you want to create effective messages:

1. Don’t just explain what you do or what you’re offering;  “touch” your prospective seller with “the dream”, or “the solution” to their problem. You’ll want to touch the basic emotions and the needs of your seller within the body of your letter, whether that is fear, relief, greed, pride, or vanity.
2. Keep it simple. The grammar doesn’t necessarily have to be perfect. You want to reach this person at their comfort level. Keep your letter relaxed, personal and conversational.
3. Use simple language; don’t fill your letter with big words or technical words or “industry jargon” that your seller or your customer might not understand.
4. Don’t make your letter hard on the prospect’s eyes: use paragraphs so that there is a specific break between thoughts and so that the letter just flows better and is more pleasing to the eye.
5. Even though this is
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