Hoop Dreams Lottery Ticket Real Estate Sales
Author: Brett D Furnissbr
Source: ezinearticles.combr
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Sure your home will sell. Besides (wink, wink), do you really want some dirty tenant destroying your house and using the would-be rent money to up fit their new meth lab? (Aggressive Charlotte Realtor pushing for a sale only listing agreement)
Everything became pretty clear at that moment. Being a rock star looked like a great job. (Singer Tom Petty reminiscing about meeting Elvis Presley as an 11-year old)
Hoop Dreams was a documentary based on two Chicago high school students, William Gates and Arthur Agee, who had dreams of playing in the National Basketball Association. They both went to a top Indiana private high school that NBA great Isaiah Thomas had attended, practiced all of the time, and did well in the all-star camps. Their friends told them they were great, school mates looked up to them, and they just knew the NBA was in their futures.
Of course, neither of them made it to the NBA; its not a surprise. I think weve heard this story a million times. A kid puts all his eggs in the sports basket and is left with no future when it doesnt pan out. This has fostered the NCAAs student-athlete model (kids are students first, athletes second); Im sure youve seen the ubiquitous commercials where student-athletes are filmed saying, I was a NCAA athlete, but upon graduation, Ill be going pro in something else. Then it shoots to this early twenty-something teaching tuba to kids or putting on a real estate firm pin (well, maybe not yet, but give the National Association of Realtors time).
I mean, lets be real. Id rather be a NBA player than, lets say, a residential property manager in Charlotte. Wouldnt you? Lets see... You get to be a physical specimen (as you basically work out for a living), have adoring fans follow you from town to town, make millions of dollars, decorate your mansion(s) as tackily as you want, and drive a different sports car every day of the month. We could probably make this arrangement work, right? So why wouldnt we encourage all kids growing up to be a NBA (or WNBA) players? Weve seen the Whatever Your Mind Can Conceive, You Can Achieve! banners hanging in our middle school classrooms. Didnt we conceive this? Then it should have happened for us, right?
Well, real life took over. We grew up to be five feet six inches tall. Our vertical leaps are barely clearing the jump ropes. Were getting winded walking to the mailbox. Were not even the best basketball player in our own families; Moms set shot is just impossible to guard!
I see a similar misguided scenario coming from the mouths of Realtors. Sure, you can sell your house. Let me just list it For Sale for you. Im sure it wont take that long. Oh really? What about the eight other houses in your subdivision for sale that include two in foreclosure selling for $80K less than yours? Buyers will be lining up to purchase your listing? Why? Its because I buried a miniature statue of Saint DefinitelySellQuickly in your front yard for luck. It always works.
The odds of selling some of the houses that are listed on the market are not far off from the odds of making the NBA. Yet I commonly see vacant houses for sale sit on the market for over a year. I wonder who is going to buy them when they are not even priced in the ballpark of the other homes for sale. Yes, miracles do happen; Im not sure thats a business plan, though. And, if it is, why not aim higher and try the NBA thing?
Yes, some sellers will insist on putting their house up for sale only and eating the monthly costs. Im not talking about the clients who have cash to burn. But I am talking about the Realtors who are not educating and offering their sellers other options to sell such as rent-to-own, lease options, and seller financing. Sellers need to know about these! These options create opportunities for tenant-buyers which, in turn, give us a fluid market to transact real estate for the sellers (when banks arent lending). Its good for everyone!
Tenants are risky. I would never rent-to-sell my own house! I agree- selling outright is better!! But that can be said of a lot of things in life. Marrying a billionaire supermodel would have been a better option than marrying your spouse. Taking a part-time job making $10M a year would have been a better option than your current gig. Watching the Super Bowl in the commissioners luxury box last year would have been a better option than going to your buddy, Phils, place (with stale pretzels, a cracked 20-inch television screen, and his whining wife). The point Im trying to make is that the best options are not always the ones that are realistically available.
Unless you are stapling a winning lottery ticket to the clients copy of the listing agreement, make sure the rent-to-own and lease conversations happen in this economy. Making the NBA is hard, especially when Mom is beating you up in the driveway!
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pBrett Furniss is the President Owner of BDF Realty, Charlottes Most Innovative Property Management Investment Company (a target=_new href=http://www.BDFRealty.com rel=nofollowhttp://www.BDFRealty.com/a). He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this challenging real estate market./pbr
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(Real Estate) Investing With the Stars
Author: Brett D Furnissbr
Source: ezinearticles.combr
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What do I look like to you? A moron? Dont answer that... But seriously, my real estate investment properties are illiquid and have declined in value. You still say I should double down? (Charlotte Real Estate Investor)
Buy straw hats in the winter... (Russell Sage, Wall Street Financier)
Buying (and selling) at the right time is the heart of many popular Wall Street mantras on how to become wealthy:
Buy low, sell high
Buy when you see blood in the streets
Buy when everyone else is selling. And vice-versa.
Of course, dummy! Everyone knows that. Thats not the hard part; the hard part is to know when that low time to buy is. If we only knew that, then this life would be so much easier. But is it really that difficult?
The people who have made great wealth in this country are like poker players. Poker is a game of waiting and then seizing the right opportunities when they present themselves. And when the opportunities come, good poker players bet heavily on them. Its not complete luck; they know that certain hands have greater odds of winning.
Lets look at 2 examples of billionaires playing poker:
Michael Bloomberg (Billionaire and current Mayor of New York City): After 9/11, the stock market tanked as investor fears abounded. I remember seeing the front page of the New York Post in the fall of 2001 where Mike urged his constituents to buy stocks after the Dow dropped below 7,000; he certainly was! He basically said that people ask him for investment advice all the time (because hes a billionaire) and that was the best advice he could give them.
Warren Buffet (needs no introduction): Buffett experts will tell you that if took away Warrens 20 biggest investment deals, his overall returns would be flat! He started his investment company in 1956; thats a big deal every 3 years on average. That shows he does not have supernatural ability to pick stocks right all the time; rather he took really big bets (and was right) on a few great opportunities.
So how do you identify a great opportunity to invest in? Bloomberg will tell you that when the stock market is heavily discounted due to temporary events, you buy. The American stock market will recover, it always does. Buffett will tell you that if you see a good companys stock trading at a steep discount, you buy. Good companies work through tough times and reward shareholders.
Can you think of anything else that is heavily discounted due to temporary events? Yes, this is when we get to the topic of real estate- good guess! The temporary events are the mortgage meltdown, banks not lending, and the rising unemployment rate. A lot of people need to sell and are ready to let great real estate go at bargain basement prices.
As Will Rogers famously said, Buy land, they aint making any more of it. So, if the stock market always will come back, it makes sense that real estate should rebound even more convincingly. Companies can always issue more stock, but great pieces of real estate cant be replicated. And at these prices during the holidays, Wal-Mart has got nothing on the Multiple Listing Service this year!
So are you urging your clients to buy investment real estate? Are you buying any yourself? Buffett waits years so he can cherry pick an opportunity like this. Do you really think that the real estate market will continue to stay down?
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pIts time to a target=_new href=http://www.bdfrealty.com/investors.html rel=nofollowInvest in Real Estate/a with the Stars instead of waiting to buy it from the Stars when they sell!/ppBrett Furniss is the President Owner of BDF Realty, Charlottes Most Innovative Property Management Investment Company. He is the author of the FREE E-Manual entitled How to Rent-To-Sell Your Own Home which details how to get the most potential buyers to your home in this difficult real estate market./pbr
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