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 

Guage

Drive Your Investment Business for Performance, Results and Enjoyment

An issue that matters to all real estate investors—whether part-time or full-time—is how to drive your investment business for performance, results and enjoyment. Those three things are critical to success. Let’s start our discussion with the assumption that most of you who are reading this probably are old enough to ...
Chicago: Lessons from the most beat-up housing market in the country

Chicago: Lessons from the most beat-up housing market in the country

For years, our thesis has been that the national downturn and recovery (in blue below) will play out similarly to the mid-1980s downturn in Houston (in orange below) and the early-1990s downturn in Southern California (in green below) because both the job losses and bank/savings and loan destructions were similar ...
Distribution Strategies

Distribution Strategies

Determine the Option That Best Aligns with Your Investment Goals Experienced investors and real estate professionals are aware that real estate can be a cornerstone of their IRAs. Real estate is an asset that adds diversity to account holders’ retirement portfolios. Account holders can find a reprieve from the volatility ...
Funding Options

Funding Options

Self-Directed IRA Investor's Guide to Contributions, Transfers and Rollovers Welcome to the world of self-directed IRAs! Guess what? These powerful investment tools are just like regular IRAs in so many ways (except for investing). Just as with a typical IRA, a self-directed IRA can be funded in three ways: 1 ...
Harbor Master

Harbor Master

SHIRA is Gaining More Attention As an IRA Investing Strategy If you would like to tap into your qualified retirement plan to purchase investment property and avoid all the usual prohibited transactions, the SAFE HARBOR®-Directed IRA™ (SHIRA™) may be the vehicle for you. Lasaii’s OUTSIDE® structure of utilizing IRA money ...
A Bigger Bottom Line

A Bigger Bottom Line

How to Harness the Power of Nonperforming Notes It’s no news to anyone that you can use your self-directed IRA to invest in real estate. Many investors use their IRA accounts to purchase real estate and to make private or hard money loans to other investors, but many forget they ...
Control Your Future

Control Your Future

Self-Directed IRAs Can Lead to Retirement Success—With the Right Guidance Self-directed IRAs are an excellent option for retirement investments. They allow you to fund your retirement using assets you know a lot about, such as real estate. But self-directed IRAs, particularly ones with checkbook capabilities, are not for every investor ...
Keep More of Your Money

Keep More of Your Money

It Pays to Know Your Options in Using Retirement Accounts for Real Estate Investing I’m surprised by the number of full-time real estate investors who rely entirely on the stock market for their retirement portfolio despite driving higher returns by renting, rehabbing or lending. I field questions every day from ...
Case Studies: Success Stories

Case Studies: Success Stories

Self-directed IRAs Can Boost Your Wealth While Positively Impacting Your Community Rex, a real estate investor from Illinois, purchased a foreclosed single-family home in 2013 for $47,000, including some rehab costs. After renting it for a year, he was able to sell it for $69,000. This looks like a profitable, ...
Report: Loan Limits Stifling New Home Sales in California and Arizona

Report: Loan Limits Stifling New Home Sales in California and Arizona

By Adam Artunian John Burns Real Estate Consulting A new report from John Burns Real Estate Consulting says the pool of qualified new home buyers appears to be running thin in California and there are problems also in Arizona. The cause is loan limits by government sponsored enterprises as those ...
Understanding UBIT

Understanding UBIT

How to Avoid Unintended Tax Implications in Your Real Estate IRA Everyone knows that you don’t pay taxes on the growth of assets in an IRA, right? Well, not always. It’s true that the asset growth in the classic investments made in a Traditional IRA—stocks, bonds and mutual funds, for ...
Investing

Applying Leverage

How to Harness the Power of IRA Non-Recourse Loans for Real Estate Investing Investors have always known the power of real estate to enhance their retirement portfolios, but few realize they have the option to leverage self-directed retirement accounts to purchase investment property. Since the creation of the IRA in ...
Following the Rules

Following the Rules

A Real Estate Investor's Guide to Mortgage Regulations It’s a common problem: Many people want to get started in real estate investment or buy more properties, but their biggest store of liquidity is in their IRAs and other retirement accounts. Fortunately for investors in that situation, there’s a simple and ...
What Can Be Held

What Can Be Held

Housing Your Next Real Estate Investment in an IRA I’ve spent most of my career overseeing the construction of multimillion-dollar apartment complexes, single-family dwellings and office property, as well as buying and selling raw land, commercial buildings and so on. Since 2004, the real estate portion of my business holdings ...
Demystifying the Process

Demystifying the Process

Setting Up a Self-Directed IRA is Not As Complicated As You Might Think We are often asked, “How do I go about setting up a self-directed IRA?” Many people think it is a complicated process because the idea is sold on the Internet as “an IRS loophole” or “little-known IRS secret” ...
5 Steps to Get You Started

5 Steps to Get You Started

Building Lasting Wealth for Your Future Technology has changed everything, including how we approach investing. In today's fast-paced world, companies providing financial and retirement services have had to adjust to meet consumer demand. New digital signature capabilities, online platforms and digital portals have provided consumers with on-demand access to their ...
Invest in Yourself

Invest in Yourself

Learn How Individual Retirement Accounts Can Work for Real Estate Investors Most people in America don’t have enough money for retirement. That’s a fact. Many people have retirement accounts, but they are lax with their personal oversight of their own investments. One way to turn the tide is by understanding ...
Start with the Basics

Start with the Basics

What Self-Directed IRAs Are All About As an avid real estate investor, you probably have heard about self-directed IRAs. Self-directed IRAs are one of the most powerful tools available for building wealth on a tax-deferred or tax-free basis. If the volatility in today’s traditional investment markets has wreaked havoc with ...
Shifting into Reverse

Shifting into Reverse

A 'Reverse' 1031 Exchange Requires Financial Strength, No Matter Which Route You Choose In a forward 1031 Exchange, the relinquished property is sold first, followed by the purchase of the replacement property. The proceeds from the sale of the relinquished property go toward the down payment or purchase price of ...
For the Record

For the Record

Using a Scope of Work - Especially a Detailed One - Can Prevent Misinterpretation and Save You Big Money No matter what size project we undertake, we always put together a scope of work. This can be as simple as writing specifications on a legal pad or a multiple-page document ...
What's It Going to Cost?

What’s It Going to Cost?

Understand the Costs Involved in Maintaining a Rental Property When Evaluating Whether to Make That Deal In recent articles, I have discussed the need for “financial literacy” and an understanding of the terms, concepts and fundamentals of cash-flow analysis. We have looked at estimating effective gross income. Now we turn ...
Summer Checklist

Summer Checklist

Get Your Summer Daylight Hours Back and Reduce Liability Risks by Focusing on These Top 10 Property Maintenance Tasks Ahh, summer vacation. The beach, an afternoon nap in the sun and a “little umbrella” drink. Or perhaps a mountain hike, dirt in your laces and a picnic lunch by a ...
To Sell or Not to Sell

To Sell or Not to Sell

| Teresa Bitler | Article | Operations
Carefully Consider Your Situation Before Rushing into a Sale of Your Investment Property You’ve held a property for years, and now, for one reason or another, you’re thinking it might be time to sell. Rushing into a sale, though, can be a costly mistake. Before you stick a “For Sale” ...
ScottSklare_Gray_Web

The Deciding Factors

| Think Realty | Article | Operations
Our Street-Smart Panel Discusses What to Consider When Looking for Maximum ROI in Residential Property Investments Scott Sklare Synergy Real Estate Group Before getting into the specifics of how I decide where to invest for maximum ROI, I would like to take a step back and look at the bigger ...
First Things First

First Things First

With So Many Challenges and Opportunities in Real Estate Investing, Where Do You Start? Very early on, starting out as a part-time real estate investor, I recognized the enormous challenges in the vast ocean of real estate but also the numerous opportunities that exist. It can become overwhelming, and almost ...