Operations

Your operations define your long-term success in real estate investing. Fine-tune your process with: Asset Management | Asset Protection | Deal Analysis | Fundamentals | Growth | Lead Generation | Risk Management

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Operations

Your operations define your long-term success in real estate investing. Fine-tune your process with: Asset Management | Asset Protection | Deal Analysis | Fundamentals | Growth | Lead Generation | Risk Management

Back To: All Topics 

What If?

What If?

1031 Exchange, named after Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, allows a real estate investor to defer (postpone) tax liability when selling one property and buying another. This raises an important question: How much income tax will I owe if I sell this property but do not acquire a ...
Thwarting Break-Ins

Thwarting Break-Ins

When we look at claims information we see that many of the properties subject to break-ins, thefts and vandalism are usually vacant or going through renovations to prepare them for sale or the next tenant. I’m sure it’s truly disappointing to arrive to show a house that was finished only ...
Know Before You Go: A Loan Commitment Checklist

Know Before You Go: A Loan Commitment Checklist

While issues such as interest rates, principal loan amounts, underwriting requirements, etc., generally are included in a loan commitment, many issues are often not addressed until after the prospective borrower has signed the loan commitment, paid the nonrefundable loan commitment fee and funded, in advance, a deposit for expenses related ...
Defeating Defaults

Defeating Defaults

As a specialist in owner financing of residential properties and a teacher to students across the nation, I am often asked about the default rate. Nationally, in 2010, the default rate for subprime loans was about 10 percent, but those likely included options, adjustable-rate mortgages and other variable interest loans ...
5 Strategies For Building Wealth Through Note Buying

5 Strategies For Building Wealth Through Note Buying

"You can make a living brokering notes, but you get wealthy owning notes!” This statement from a pioneer real estate note investor provided one of those “lightbulb” moments for me. Determined to start owning notes, I left a 10-year “job” in the corporate note-buying world to start my own note ...
5 Must Know Fix-and-Flip Tips

5 Must Know Fix-and-Flip Tips

Whether this is your first flip or your 20th flip, there are strategies you can use to help make your business even more successful. Fixing-and-flipping homes can be profitable for real estate investors in a number of different cycles. An important thing to keep in mind when starting out is ...
set of tools in tool box on a wooden background

Five ‘Gotta-Have’ Tools for Real Estate Investors

| Engelo Rumora | Article | Operations
We all love lists, right? And today I’ve got an awesome one for you—five great tools that I know can help you in your real estate investing. Tool No. 1: Think Realty Starting with the obvious: The first one is Think Realty Magazine. You’ve got to subscribe to the Think ...
Office skyscraper

Trends in Real Estate: Urbanization, Changing Office Usage

Certain American cities are seeing prices rise; others are starting to cool. Some broader demographic trends have continued, though—urbanization is on the upswing, and urban office usage patterns are changing. Home Buyers Want Cities No less than Robert Shiller—a 2013 Nobel laureate in economics, professor of economics at Yale University ...
Closeup of a diverse group of people holding up pieces of a jigsaw puzzle

As a Real Estate Investor, Are You a Jack-of-All-Trades or Master-of-One?

As a real estate investor, should you be a jack-of-all-trades or a master-of-one? It’s a very important distinction because it will influence what kind of real estate investments you make. In exploring this subject, probably the best place to start is with something relatively familiar—the concept of diversified investments. You ...
Manager looking at his laptop in despair

Newbies, Don’t Let Sellers Take Advantage of You

I’ve got a gripe, and I think it’s important to share it so that some of the newbies out there don’t get unfairly taken advantage of. It’s driving me nuts that new investor—and even some seasoned, pro investors—are buying deals at terrible prices. I see it happening in Atlanta, where ...
learning about real estate investing

NAR Student Debt/Housing Survey Provides Insight for Investors

Imagine this familiar scenario that so many Millennials face: they spend four years in college working hard to attain the grades they’ll need to get profitable employment once their schooling is complete, but at the same time, they are amassing thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of student loan debt ...
Multiple exposure shot of a business group superimposed over a train track

‘Wantrepreneurs’ Have Ruined the Term ‘Entrepreneur’

| Engelo Rumora | Article | Operations
I have said it many times in my videos and social media posts: the word “entrepreneur” is dead. Or useless, anyway. All the “wantrepreneurs” out there have seen to that. Now you’re probably saying to yourself, how can the word “entrepreneur” be dead? Well, it’s dead because of so many ...
Arrows painted on asphalt. Young man standing hesitating to make a decision.

3 Characteristics That Define the ‘Active’ Investor

When talking about real estate investors, we generally put them into one of two categories: active investors or passive investors. In this post, we’re going to focus on the active, but first, let’s briefly touch on what is meant by “passive.” This could be a HomeVestors franchisee (as I am, ...
Soccer player kick the ball at the penalty

Believe in Success—And it Will Come

This blog post is a little more philosophical than usual, but I really believe in this as a key to reaching success—whether that’s in your real estate investing, or in life in general. What I’m talking about is the “law of attraction,” which is, quite simply: what you think, you ...
Client signing a real estate contract in real estate agency

6 Ways to Grow Your Rental Business Without Breaking the Bank

| Dennis Spivey | Article | Operations
As the U.S. real estate market continues to recover from the financial crisis of the mid 2000s, there has been a noticeable flow of capital moving back into residential investment opportunities. From the fix-and-flip model to the long-term rental/hold strategy, we’ve seen a steady return to real estate as a ...
Piggy bank standing at front door with house interior in the background. Pig is pink in foreground and house is modern style.

Are Housing Prices Slowing?

Property is, in many areas, considered to now be about fully valued; interest rates can seemingly only go up; and the current low rates have been low for so long now that some observers fear a market top. Why are other observers less concerned? Low Interest Rates Fuel Exuberance Abroad ...
House Keys

If This is So Easy, Why Doesn’t Everyone Do It?

“If real estate investing is so great, why doesn’t everyone do it?” is a question that many wannabe or future investors ask themselves. I certainly did. Whether you’re already a full-time investor, a part-time investor or someone just considering whether to become one, it’s a question that you’ll have as ...
35 Best ‘Bad’ Neighborhoods to Buy a Home

35 Best ‘Bad’ Neighborhoods to Buy a Home

Many down-and-out neighborhood housing markets across the country are on the rebound, thanks to a confluence of market forces working in their favor. Tight inventory of homes for sale, combined with a dearth of new homebuilding, is convincing buyers and investors to reconsider buying in what they once might have ...
Labor Force Ahead Will Have Far-Reaching Impact

Labor Force Ahead Will Have Far-Reaching Impact

A surge in retirees (people turning 65) will slow the growth of workers in the United States. In 2000, 2 million people turned 65; 3.5 million did in 2016; and 4.0 million will in 2021. Even with a higher than usual rate of retiree-aged people working, U.S. economic growth will almost certainly remain ...
Not Getting Enough Out of Your Appointments? You May Not Be Putting Enough In

Not Getting Enough Out of Your Appointments? You May Not Be Putting Enough In

I sometimes hear investors fretting that they’re not getting enough out of their investment efforts. Well, perhaps they’re not putting enough in. What I’m specifically talking about is the “buy” appointment, which is where I see many investors getting frustrated the quickest. And that’s unfortunate, because that is the most ...
Looking to Accelerate Your Wealth in Real Estate Investing? Try a ‘Flip-and-Hold’

Looking to Accelerate Your Wealth in Real Estate Investing? Try a ‘Flip-and-Hold’

If you are already in the real estate business, then by now you have encountered the basic issues that first-time investors come across when starting out. You went through sourcing and acquiring the financing you needed to begin your initial investment, found the property or properties that you were interested ...
Business people shaking hands

Real Estate Investment Wholesaling 101: What’s it all about?

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately asking about wholesaling, such as: Why should I wholesale? Is wholesaling real estate worth it? Can I make money in it? Do I have to invest capital? What does it even mean to be a wholesaler? Is it the same as being ...
set of american dollar bills as background

It’s the Learnings that are Key to Your Earnings as a Real Estate Investor

In my 10+ years as a real estate investor—first as a part-time investor and now full-time as a HomeVestors franchisee in Dallas—I have accumulated plenty of earnings in the deals that have been successful for me. But equally as important have been the deals that didn’t go according to plan, ...
5 Things You Need to Know about Investing in Land

5 Things You Need to Know about Investing in Land

Successful land investing, like any type of investing, requires a lot of due diligence. Investing in land often requires travel, since are several things a buyer cannot know about a piece of land before seeing it in person. Google Maps is a great resource, but it is not a substitute ...
Notice of Foreclosure

Foreclosure Filings in First Six Months of 2016 Drop 11 Percent from a Year Ago

RealtyTrac’s Midyear 2016 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report shows a total of 533,813 U.S. properties with foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions or bank repossessions—in the first six months of 2016, down 20 percent from the previous six months and down 11 percent from the first six months of 2015. The report, ...