Real Estate Solutions | Alex Pardo Blog | www.alex-pardo.com | Real Estate Rockstar

Hey – First let me say Happy 4th of July (and don’t drink while operating fire works – that usually turns out bad

While we live in the greatest country in the world, let’s not bury our heads in the sand like an ostrich! Check out this short 5 minute video that my mentor sent me a few days. It explains why we are headed for an “Economic Armageddon”!

No need to panic, you only need to be prepared and make sure your financial future is secure!

I can help you get there, so stick with me.

Comment below and let us know what you think of this video and what you are doing to prepare for Armageddon!
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Wow. There is a lot of uproar in the housing market right now. I don’t know if you follow politics very closely (I don’t most of them are (insert not so nice word here), but my real estate investor friends who do are really worked up – I mean really – thanks to our Secretary of the Treasury’s recent comments on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the role of the government in the housing market (Washington Post, 03.01.11).

I, however, am feeling pretty damn good. I have my opinions on these things, but as a real estate investor, I’m keeping calm. Want to know my secret to staying cool as a cucumber and just crushing the deals as they come in? Well, first let me tell you what’s going on, and then I’ll tell you why I’m not concerned.

More and more officials in the federal government are coming out and saying that the government being involved in the housing market is a bad thing. Why does that matter? Because it means that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-entities that buy mortgages from banks so that the banks can make more loans, might disappear. That could mean trouble for people who sell and build houses because it will mean that fewer banks can make loans.

So why am I not worried? Well, remember, I’m a wholesaler. That means I sell for cash EVERYTIME. Cash is King my friend. You like King’s right? Click here to have cash buyers rain down on you. My buyers don’t need loans. And even other real estate investors who are not wholesalers don’t really have to worry that much because nearly every real estate investor I know is a master of creative financing, which means getting loans in unconventional ways so that you do not have to deal with the banks. So really, as a real estate investor, if banks stop making loans, your skills will be more in demand than ever before.

Just my 2.5 cents. What do you think? Comment below or I will throw Cucumbers at your head!

Last week, I saw something interesting on my Facebook page. One of my FB friends had posted that he would pay $2,500 to whoever brought him a buyer for a great home that he is trying to sell in Orlando. Now, offering to pay a referral fee for a buyer is not uncommon, but what I liked about this guy was how hard he was working at making things happen for himself. He was not just waiting around for things to work out for him; he was taking action in every way possible to reach the people who could make this deal happen for him. He was thinking outside the box and doing everything possible to reach the people he needed to do the deal.

When you are working in real estate, it can be tempting to think that as long as you are following all the “rules” or instructions for doing a particular type of deal, then you are doing everything possible. However, just following the rules is not always enough – particularly if you want to really reach the upper limits of your potential for success. You must always work to think outside of the box and make sure you are doing everything possible to increase your chances for success.

Here are three ways to improve your “out-of-the-box” thinking and make sure that you are always living up to your full real estate investing potential:

• Always ask: Is this enough?

  In some cases, you may be doing enough to make your deals happen. And if that is the case, then it’s okay to answer this question with “Yes!” But if your deals are not happening fast enough, then maybe there is a way to expand your reach.

• Make offers

  Many people believe that they should work one deal at a time. However, if you ask me, you should be making as many offers as possible because not all of them are going to work out. The more offers you are making, the more successful deals you will soon be doing.

  Note: We send 15 offers a day!!!

• Sell in as many ways as you are comfortable

  I know some real estate investors who only will sell to end-buyers with conventional financing. And that’s fine, if it works for them. However, in today’s market, most real estate investors are finding that the more ways that they are able to provide opportunities for people to buy homes effectively, the better. So if you are good with lease-options, for example, then do not neglect to make these types of creative buying opportunities available.

Do not be afraid to push your limits in real estate investing. Making sure that you have the most opportunities for success possible is integral if you truly want to maximize your potential.

Share with us below how you have “pushed the limits” and been thinking “outside of the box”.

If you have been watching the news lately (<—– shoot yourself – just kidding), then you probably have noticed that politics are dominating the media lately – and everyone has an opinion on one lady in particular: Sarah Palin. Now, before you groan, moan and close this blog post, wait one second – this is not a post about politics. However, it is a post about just how important it is to make sure that your investment properties – and your own residence for that matter – have clear title before you buy them.

Here’s what happened:

Sarah Palin (former vice-presidential nominee and Tea Party activist), purchased a house from an investor. The property is in Scottsdale, Arizona. Palin bought the company through an investment firm. The firm purchased the property from a real estate investor who had bought the property as a short sale a year earlier. Sometime earlier in the property’s history – before Palin, her investment company or the investor who bought the property at short sale ever became involved – the house was involved in a foreclosure that was associated with two fraudulent, robo-signer signatures. Now, the legitimacy of the chain of title is in question and it’s unclear just exactly who all might have rights to that property.

Now, what does this have to do with politics? Absolutely nothing. It’s a pitfall that can affect anyone who is involved in buying – and selling – foreclosures. And with more and more lenders coming under fire for robo-signing in their foreclosure departments, you really have to be careful that you have purchased a property with clear title and good title insurance.

So, what can you do to help insure that properties you are buying and selling do not end up tangled in this robo-signer mess?

(Make sure you are a VIP Inner Circle member where we cover everything you need to know

Well, you can’t be sure. There was a lot of “sketchy” stuff going on and it hasn’t all come to light yet. However, you can protect yourself by:

1.    Making sure that you have done your due diligence;

2.    Making sure that your contract protects you in the event that a problem arises (have a real estate attorney construct the language for you so that you are effectively “written out” once you assign the contract); and

3. Buying title insurance! If they won’t insure it, then you shouldn’t buy it. I don’t care how good a deal it is. If the title company is scared, then you should be too.

Robo-signers and foreclosure fraudsters should not make you afraid to buy and sell foreclosures. However, you do need to make sure that your interests are protected in order to do it safely and profitably.

Any “horror stories” with title that you can share with us so we can learn from your experience…?

If you follow real estate news at all, then you probably have a pretty good idea that some markets are just better than others.

Let’s face it: some markets like D.C. are skyrocketing in value and hugely in demand, while others just cannot get a toehold on a recovery. If you live in the D.C. area, you will actually hear people complaining about how the house up the street never went on the market because the realtor “saved” it for one of her clients, or you may hear renters eagerly describing the joys of homeownership and a mortgage rather than discussing “playing it safe” and saving up while renting. On the other hand, throughout the rest of the country, the converse conversations are dominant.

So what to do? Do you think that you have to move to an area like Washington D.C. in order to do real estate deals? If you do, then put that thought away right now. You can literally make your own market in any area of the country thanks to an increasingly active population that many people overlook: real estate investors.

As a real estate investor myself, I can tell you without a doubt that if the deal is good enough, then there is an investor who will “bite” on that deal and take it off your hands. That is why markets like Phoenix, which is right up there with Vegas when it comes to being “hardest hit” in the recent recession, are going gangbusters right now with housing sales volumes climbing even while everyone is talking about how we might be looking at a double dip in the market. It is because prices in Phoenix – and in other allegedly “dead” markets – have gotten so low that investors cannot resist.

TIP: In order to create your own mini-market in your area, you just have to identify what investors are buying and then target those deals so that you can be reasonably sure of selling in a short period of time. Once you know what deals to look for – you can usually get a good idea just by networking with investors and asking them what they are buying! – then you start building your mini real estate empire right in your own backyard by targeting properties that meet investor criteria, marketing them to the very investors who asked for them and taking your own cut out of the middle.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t do real estate in a certain area. You can have a little booming market anywhere as long as you are selling the right stuff!

What market are you succeeding in? Any thoughts, comment below…

Every morning I wake up, look at my sexy self in the mirror and ask myself, “Who am I?”, and 4 words always come out of my mouth:

“I am a CHAMPION!”

Are you a champion?

Watch this 3-minute video and let it move you to greatness!

“No one will DENY me…”

“No one will DEFY me…”

“And no one will tell me who and what I am, and can be…”

“BELIEF will change my world. It has moved continents, it has moved countries, it has put man on the moon, AND IT WILL CARRY ME THROUGH THIS BATTLE…”

Comment below and let me know what you think of this video. Oh and to join a Inner Circle group of Champions, CLICK HERE

As a real estate investor, you have to make your peace with the fact that most of your prospective deals will not ultimately turn into cash. That is why we are always drumming it into your head – “make offers, get leads, make offers, get leads” – on and on and on. You may get tired of hearing it, but volume is the key to your success. (Oh, and by the way, automation of the volume-producing process is a great thing too, and we have a lot of training on that as well!) But for today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about something that I see happen in a lot of my newer real estate student: the absolutely dead-set will-not-budge determination not to walk. And it’s killing their businesses and even the rest of their lives. It’s got to stop! And I’m here to stop it, so let’s get started.

When you are doing a deal – particularly if it is one of your first deals – you will be very emotionally invested in the success of that deal. You may even feel that your personal credibility as a real estate investor is at stake. Well, knock that mindset right out of your head. That’s right – knock it out. If you have to bang your head against a wall a few times to do it, go right ahead. This is that important! (Okay, don’t hurt yourself…) As a real estate investor, the only way to make deals work is to identify when they will not work and be able to walk away. Otherwise, you will spend all your time trying to make impossible deals work and you will not have time to make the possible ones make you a profit. So accept that not everything will be successful.

Next, be on the lookout for pseudo-motivated sellers. They say they want to sell, but they also want to fight with you about everything. It is natural and normal for motivated sellers to be skittish and a little nervous – after all, they are under a lot of pressure – but if they are downright belligerent and intractable, then there is not much point in chasing them around because they are never actually going to sign on the line. These people will drain your money and take your attention away from the deals that actually are viable.

Finally, don’t force a deal. That means that you need to evaluate your profits carefully. Some real estate investors are dead set on doing every deal, even if they only make a tiny profit. You need to identify how much money needs to be in a deal to make it worth your while. If the deal is not going to produce that profit margin, then you have to be willing to walk. If you are not, you will spend all your time trying to make deals work that no investor in their right mind would buy. You may feel like you are helping people, but ultimately if you cannot sell their house then you are only helping them and yourself waste time and money.

This was a pretty harsh lesson. I know that. But it is so important that new real estate investors understand what makes a deal a deal – and how to walk away from the “deals” that are really just pitfalls and dead ends.

Do you agree? Comment below and let me know your thoughts

When you think of wholesaling, it’s pretty likely that you think of fast money, exciting flips and beat-up, broken-down houses making you wealthy. And that is great, because that is a lot of what wholesaling is all about! However, I’m noticing that as the housing market continues to present, well, a bit of a challenge, a lot of the “gurus” out there are busy telling their students that you just can’t wholesale in today’s market. Now, there are a lot of reasons that this is not true, but I do think that this misconception runs deeper than just a “fear” of the current economy. It is the result of an oversimplification of the wholesaling process.

So let’s rewind for a minute and review how wholesaling works:

You find a property that is owned by a motivated seller. A motivated seller is anyone who is willing, for whatever reason, to take less than the market value of the property. That seller can be motivated by the threat of foreclosure, but it’s more likely that your best motivated sellers may just be sick of owning the property, a burned out landlord or have inherited property that they never really wanted in the first place. So once you find that motivated seller, you get the property under contract at a bargain price, then sell that contract to another buyer – also at a bargain price – and you get the money “in the middle,” so to speak. Simple, right? Yes!

Well, that is the simplest way to wholesale houses, but what many people do not realize is that you can wholesale just about anything as long as there is some reason that it will be attractive.

***For example, say that you find a seller who does not have much equity, but will seller-finance the home to someone with sub-par credit who can’t get a traditional mortgage. Well, that is a pretty good deal if you are in the market for a house and can’t get a loan. In fact, that opens up the world of retail buyers to you (and we love the prices that they pay!).***

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So what is the lesson here? Just as in any other area of real estate, you can really benefit from flexibility and creativity. Do not let your preconceived notions about wholesaling prevent you from making the most of today’s real estate market.
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Leave a comment and share how you have been flexible and creative (or just let me know what you think

No Arms, No Legs, No Worries…

No matter what obstacles and challenges you are faced with in life, just know that you can overcome anything if you have the right attitude, mindset, belief in yourself, and faith in God!

Watch this short 4 minute video and it can alter your perspective on life and what you CAN accomplish.

Oh, and always remember… “It’s a LIE to think you are not good enough, and it’s a LIE to think that you are not worth anything” — Nick Vujicic

Drop a comment and let me know what you thought of the video and if this inspires you to TAKE ACTION and believe in yourself that you can DO ANYTHING!

Hey what’s up! Alex Pardo here. Just a quick note for you today about a great and totally easy, stress-free way to get yourself
going on those days that seem to start out, well, a little slow.

I had one of those days myself this morning. I got up early and got right to work after a short jog but man, I could not shake it up.
I just couldn’t get focused. I was feeling so sluggish and so tired that I about just crawled back into bed. Instead, however, I
followed this simple series of steps to get my head back in the game:

1. I took a step back – literally
 I put my laptop down and shut my phone. I removed myself from their presence by walking outside of my house and taking some deep, calming breaths. I gave myself permission to slow down a minute and enjoy the day.

2. I focused on what is important today. 
I had been excited when I woke up it because it was Monday. I had had a great weekend but I was ready to work! Because I failed to focus my excitement, I was sort of all over the place when I got to work. I stared out at the ocean and calmly established the two main things I needed to get done and thought about a timeline and mindset that would help me do them.

pumps you up and gets you motivated – assuming you are playing the right song. My favorite song is all about getting pumped and getting what you want out of life. It’s got a strong beat and clear message. I love it, and I play it every time I’m struggling with staying motivated.

This morning, it was just what I needed to get my mind back in the game.

Now, I’m not saying that music will always make up for a lack of sleep, but a good playlist can really help you start out your day right. I know several people who take their morning jog with an awesome “wake up” soundtrack and they are some of the most productive people I know. So if you are looking for a simple way to tame your savage “morning blahs,” then use these three easy steps and get started crushing it!

What “Routines” do you do when you are not ‘feeling it’? Comment below and you will be blessed!!!