2 Brother's Journey to Real Estate Freedom

Newbie Seeking.......Investor Right

2008-02-21T02:01:00.005-05:00

My quest to become a 'lifeonaire' through REI has had many ups and downs. I've moved forward and backwards. I've learned alot so far and I truly believe that nothing stands in my way of becoming successful in this business.

In all the real estate related things I've read and been introduced to over the past year or so, there is usually one consistent theme. That is, that everyone wants a buck. I mean I understand that everyone has a plate to fill and that a dollar in their pocket puts them closer to that.

I guess what bothers me most is that it's so difficult to find that investor who isn't looking for that dollar out of my pocket. If you've got a good product then by all means sell away, but my email gets filled up everyday with some random Rickey telling me how I can make a million. I've purchased some great materials and I'm sure there is more good stuff to be seen. It feels like alot of 'investors' who just couldn't hack it actually investing, move into selling some product or service to the next crop of newbies. Tim and I have really been fortunate in what we've invested our money in. One site I haven't been let down by is Steve Cook's, flippinghomes.com. I get no money from them, but I have no reservations in giving my full support to anything he puts out.

Meanwhile, we will continue looking for an investor who wants to give back what they've been fortunate enough to learn to some newbies, just because they love this game of real estate. Does it exist? Stay tuned

TV EZ

2008-02-19T17:45:00.004-05:00

So one week has passed and I've got zippy to show for it. I made a few phone calls, but if I'm completely honest with myself I just haven't had the passion this week. I don't know why. Granted most of the time was filled with work related activities, but I had time and didn't even have the desire to move towards something involving REI.

It sucks. It sucks a fat one. I know we can do this, but it's not 'TV Easy'. Isn't everything REI related on TV made to appear so simple a goat could do it? Screw those guys.

I'm cooking dinner for my wife now. I think after we eat I'm going to revist my 2008 goals list and put together my to-do list for this week. I'm going to make up my inspirational thought that I will repeat every morning and every night. I've read and know this is an important step, but there is procrastination towards it. No reason, but fear I guess.

Almost 2 months gone in 08, are you holding yourself accountable for you goals?

A quick break

2008-02-11T00:37:00.000-05:00

I had today off and I have tomorrow off. Then Tuesday it's back to the grind for 4 more days. That's a quick turnaround and doesn't leave much room for REI. Tim picked up a free printer that we located on REIplace.com. I'll tell more of it later.

I ran 3 miles today and it felt great. It was tough going, the winds were super strong today and cold. At times it was like I was standing still even though I was trying to run. The wind just kept me at a snail's pace.

Hmmmmm what else in my life gives me that same feeling of trying move forward while seemingly standing still?

I'll add more tomorrow....or actually later today.

Baby Steps

2008-02-05T23:24:00.000-05:00

I realized today that it's sometimes easier to focus on the little baby steps you need to take when reaching for goals. I keep having these visions of the difficulty in becoming a full time real estate investor. Wondering how I will ever reach a point of financial freedom where REI is my only main income source. It really clogs your brain and thoughts to think in such far and distant terms.

I focused on the steps Tim and I made yesterday and today instead. I spoke to two investors who are definitely 'big-time'. One I think I could really learn and gain a lot from. He would be great mentor if I could have him work with us. We also met with a seller today overcoming additional fears. It wasn't a slam dunk Steve Cook deal, but it's these baby steps which will help us reach that Real Estate Freedom. That paradise in the sky.

In the same time frame, we were presented with obstacles which if allowed could slow our building momentum considerably. We need to focus on the positive and keep the Law of Attraction in mind.

All that worry and it's just NBD

2008-02-04T23:16:00.001-05:00

I will try to convey the great sense of accomplishment I feel from today's work. We overcame fears and moved ahead towards our goal of becoming lifeonaires.

Sounds simple right?...Make a phone call to network in your field. It's a different matter when you are essentially self teaching yourself a skill like Real Estate Investing. Picking up the phone there is this since of overwhelming self-doubt that creeps in. You know what's nice?...having a brother encouraging you to make the calls. We cold called buyers and sellers of properties and rentals in our farm area today. We made a few good contacts, but what we also accomplished was speaking to 2 sellers who we have a decent chance of being able to buy their house.

It can be so unnerving to make that call, but just like 99.9% of everything else in life it's really just NBD....No Big Deal. My mom likes to say NBD alot. It's kind of her answer and response to alot that life throws at her.

What have you been procrastinating on that really is NBD? Do you need some encouragement? Post your comment and maybe Tim or I can give you that extra needed push to start your RE engine up.

Remember NBD.

Where we've been

2008-02-03T23:44:00.001-05:00

A quick update of what we've done since my first stab at blogging:

completed a buisness plan
finished compiling our master list of every property in our beginning farm area
ordered 'we buy houses' bandit signs
ordered 'we buy houses' business cards
completed our final edit for our direct mail letter
made 500 copies of direct mail letter
addressed 5 envelopes for each address from our farm area that we rated a '5' or below based on a visual drive by
met with a realtor team and gave our vision/biz plan
mailed approx 400 letters to our farm area
got 3 calls from those 400....1 week into it....that's less than 1%
met and decided upon our 2008 goals
continued to post to craigslist.....usually daily
made decision to turn off the tv for certain weeks....working up to 100% no tv...so hard
made a seller's questionarre to reference when leads call in

Wow, kind of sobering. I knew that from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Tim and I slacked off, but when I listed what we've accomplished I hoped it would be more impressive. I looked back over our Weekly To-Do list and the same repeating goals come up again and again. Tim and I realized that one of our big mistakes during the holidays was to let go of our focus on meeting weekly. The effect was that our focus diminished and we allowed other non-productive tasks to creep in.

Making this list tonight has helped me see what procratination results in. We're meeting tomorrow and we have ambitious plans. I'm glad I put this list together tonight, it should have a motivating effect on my day tomorrow.

One of the things we have realized that has kept us focused is putting together a Weekly To-Do list. We do it in a simple Word document format. It's posted on our joint Gmail account. That way we both have access and we can add notes and see what one another has done. It's great when you have a busy day at work and have no time for RE to look online and see what your partner accomplished.

Here's an example of a past list, you can see we both comment (me in red and Tim in blue) and cross stuff off that we complete..........

October 22-28

Timmy:

1. Create Sample Ad for Newspaper Why "create", why not "do" I say create because I am going to run them past you first before we publish.
2. ~~Create Sample Ad for Craigs List~~ Why "create", why not "do"
3. Work on Motivated Sellers Worksheet- List of Questions to Ask
4. ~~Need to switch Bank Account #'s with Ed so we can transfer funds~~
5. ~~Only TV watched is The Office and Skins' game on Sunday.~~I didn't tell you of my goal of no tv, so that you would adopt the same goal. I hope if you choose to do this it was because you felt you could benefit from it. I told you about it because of the underlying principals that I'm applying to my lifestyle. This is personally one of my time wasters. Much like checking the forum can be sometimes for me...but that's next weeks goal. If you wanna watch girls gone wild commericals I hope you do and don't hate your 'pard-ner' because you think he doesn't want you to. The main reason I did this was I have a lot to accomplish this week, I am not necessarly going to do this every week, but i really need to accomplish this as a goal this week if i want to get all in need done this week, and it is easier for me because i have TIVo.
6.Listen to the comps webinar once it is posted.
7.~~Meet w/Eddie and review Bill Guerra's Sellers Book & do practice calls / discuss 2 investor meetings Tim attended~~

Eddie:

1.~~Post Ad to Craigslist~~ BIG Tim Dog did this, posting one on Friday and one on Saturday. Now we just need to keep this up
2.Complete painting master bedroom/walk-in closet/vanity room
3.~~No TV--if completed then on Sunday reward will be watching Redskins game~~ Booyah done and done and done.
4.Assist Tim in completing Sellers Worksheet
5.Practice 3 more times a 'sellers' call...both with Heather and Tim
6.Ask Heather to re-work our direct mail letter and post results
7.~~Apply my new technique of "customer interaction"~~ had a great case using both older and "new" techniques--must continue
8.~~Cut grass~~ wow what fun...can't wait for RE riches and outsourcing
9.Listen to the comps webinar once it is posted.
10.~~Meet w/Timmy and review Bill Guerra's Sellers Book & do practice calls / discuss 2 investor meetings Tim attended~~
11.~~Find cheapest envelopes and begin addressing them. Discuss with Timmy possiblity of paying Beth to address some.~~ Figure out how many we can do in an hour and then offer to Beth as every for ex 20 you do we'll pay you $?/hr. Maybe a good way for her to earn extra $. Also can put the double stamps on them. I like this idea, and I am sure extra money she would love.

Additionally, we both have Gmail calendars which we share with each other. This allows us to see each other's work schedules and easily choose days when we can meet next. We both have a calendar that shows a 'What Ed did' or 'What Tim did' for that day. If you haven't become hooked on Gmail and all it's accessories, you have no idea what you're missing.

Writing my accomplishments for all to read has a strange feeling. It really does help keep you focused and driven. I feel a rush of energy to go out and continue to work for that first deal.

Maybe there is something to this blogging thing afterall......

Renewal

2008-01-29T00:56:00.000-05:00

I'm back and with a vengence. I've got a ton to update. Tim and I have accomplished alot, but we're still shy of our first deal. I've got lots to share and look forward to giving some insight to obstacles we've overcome and lessons we've learned.
Stay tuned over the next few weeks and watch this blog on a life line come roaring back to life.

Stay focused,

Ed

Mo' Money

2007-10-30T00:14:00.000-04:00

I sat down to complete a task this evening that I have been putting off for sometime. Paying my bills. Every month I wait until they pile up and then I have to spend an hour or so knocking them down. It's depressing and usually puts me in a bad mood. The catch though is that 99% of the time we have money to cover all the bills. I postpone this task so frequently that you would think we're in the hole. By no means are we living high on the hog, but for our 2 person middle class family were doing relatively fine.
We eat where we choose. Usually out, because of our crisscrossed schedules. She's working and I'm at home or I'm working and she's sleeping. It's an excuse I know, but the fact remains that we eat what we choose.
We both have vehicles a step or two above a beater. An Accord and an Xterra aren't anything to complain about. Man I need new brakes.
I've always been a saver, but I have learned that life isn't forever and you cannot take anything with you. My wife has graciously imparted this knowledge on me. It has helped me to learn to enjoy what we have instead of focusing on what we don't.
I think that's an important statement.
I read a post on Flippinghomes.com today describing a father's day he spent chaperoning his daughter's field trip. He put aside his real estate desires and dreams for the day and lived in the moment with his daughter. I struggle putting my real estate ambitions and financial goals on the back burner when I take a me or us day. I can do it, however I feel guilty like I could have spent the day being more productive. The hell with that. I'm going to focus on letting go. I need a mental picture to help me remember. It'll be me on a Caribbean beach on a lounge chair looking out to the ocean, past my sand covered feed....like the Corona beer commercials.
Why put of what I can do now?
Pay the bills as they come in and let go when I need to.

A week of Vacation & Work

2007-10-20T20:32:00.000-04:00

So I just returned from a week of vacation. I forced myself to "forget" all things related to real estate for my 7 days of bliss. I read a great book that I would recommend and encourage all to put on your to-do list. The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss. Wow! Solid material. Tim delivers idea after idea to lessen your workload. I know I'll be referring back to this book many times as our journey continues. I hope we're building our business responsibly now, so that we can experience the type of life Steve Cook (flippinghomes.com) speaks so passionately about. I also continued to read "Think and Grow Rich", by Napoleon Hill. This book is like a college textbook and I've been reading it for some time now. The 4HWW book was a quicker read, partly since it was written in today's grammar, versus Hill's book which was published in 1960.

While I was gone, Tim (of the brother status) was hard at work. He told me he listened to the first day of the boot camp cds and continues to be blown away and continually motivated. He finished our goal of listing all the properties in our small (1000 properties) farm area. We did it on the cheap by creating a spreadsheet and cutting & pasting from Maryland's Tax Property website SDAT (http://sdatcert3.resiusa.org/rp_rewrite/). We now have a complete list of all the properties in our farm area. We have also driven the area and given each property a rating on a 1-10 scale. Vacants get a 0. Our plan is to then do a letter mailing to those properties with a rating of 5 or below and any properties that listed as non-principal residences. Hopefully it should be simple using mail merge techniques.

We've got our letter fine tuned after submitting to the Flippinghomes.com website. We'll mail to each property 7 times and hope for some responses. Additionally, he attended our/his first RE investment club meeting. I'll let him write about his experience, but a quick preview......lots of hype, little material.

In preparation for our mailing campaign, we are also making it our goal to listen to the Saturday workshop session put on by JP of flippinghomes.com a few months ago. It was the session with Bill Guerra on The Art of Prescreening Motivated Sellers 101. It was one of the solid deals put out by the fh.com website and included 3 or 4 hours of interview/audio and Bill's ebook, "How to talk with Sellers". Tim and I are meeting Monday night and we're gonna be discussing what we learned and do some practice calls.

Tomorrow and Monday I'll be reading & studying in between painting my butt off. I've got my upstairs project underway and I promised my wife it will be done before the year ends in an even number. 72 days to go. I shall get this project done. We've been living in the downstairs of our 1400 square foot home since March. Man I'm slow. Granted I completely rehabbed our upstairs, but it's been one heck of a project. I look forward to using proceeds of RE investing to rehab our downstairs. I'm done with hammers and nails for a while...hopefully.

So that's what we've done since my last post.

What have you done to come closer to your Real Estate Dreams?

Ed

Onward & Upward

2007-10-08T23:19:00.000-04:00

I realized today that writing in the past tense is a much more difficult thing than I had anticipated. In recognition of this, my posts will focus more on what is currently taking place in our Real Estate Freedom.

Once I have some spare cash lying around maybe I'll hire a writer to compose my biography. Not that my head has swelled like a watermelon and I think I'm New York Times Bestseller material, but I would like to preserve what I have contributed to my family history.

Where am I? About April of 2007, I attended a FlippingHomes.com boot camp. What an experience. I walked in there with my hand firmly gripping my wallet. It wasn't until about day 3 that I had actually allowed myself to relax. I was soaking in so much info I was floored. The teacher, Steve Cook, turned out to be exactly what I hoped for. I had been hooked to his website like a worm on a hook for the previous year.

Now I got to experience 5 straight days with the founder and creator of this amazing site. Honesty, trustworthy, helpful, friendly, reverent....he was a living, breathing Boy Scout. Being an Eagle Scout myself, I was impressed. I had completely lucked out in choosing and deciding upon a great educational beginning for my Real Estate career. I'll go into more of my experience in a future post.

Since my boot camp has been over for over 5 months...What's been accomplished? It was said that Steve's boot camp's have a much higher rate of success than any other camp. I will definitely be adding to that percentage. My attending of the camp was in the middle of my transition to a new position at work. Have I mentioned that I love my job? I know I'm in the minority, but I have a fun and exciting job that doesn't require much from me when I leave and come home. So in dealing with my new position, I made a decision to postpone my real estate journey. I also had a full remodel of my upstairs in progress. New floors, doors, paint, walk in closet, vanity room, and a complete remodel of the bathroom. No small undertaking. What the hell was I thinking? I have a habit of biting off big bites. I once drove myself to the hospital because I had a bolus aka huge chunk of chicken stuck in my throat. I could breathe, but it was stuck like when you have to drink some fluid to push down bread if you eat it too fast. No amount of drinking would dislodge it. What a mess.

So September 2007, I decided it had been postponed long enough. In the meantime, my little brother, Tim had gained an equal interest. I purposely only gave him direction to find his own path, but we both ended up choosing Real Estate. We are equal partners. 50/50. We've been great friends since childhood and I know the strain this could put on our relationship. We've had many chats on our partnership and a future post will talk about our decision to work together.

Starting in Real Estate is a lot like starting a small business. We meet weekly and both have goals that we each set individually and collectively. Today I signed a contract for a UPS mail box service. $128.00 for six months. The advantage is a street address versus a PO BOX from the ol' USPS. We've set up a Gmail account. It gives us both access to contracts, educational material we collect, spreadsheets, emails, goal lists, and much more. It's working great we can both sign on from home or work and it's fun seeing completed goal that we've each done while the other is busy working at their respective 9-5 jobs. We've also chosen a small farm area. In all it should have about 1000-1500 homes. It's a solid 3-5 on Steve's neighborhood scale. Our immediate goal is to utilize the state property database to compile our own direct mail list. We've essentially compiled every property in this zip code. Then 'driving for dollars', we are giving each house a numerical rating 0 is vacant and 10 is a gem. We'll market to the 5's and below. Sending a letter to them once a month for 7 months. This is our first step. Concurrently, we are moving towards MLS offers.

We've ordered business cards and Tim is going to attend our/his first investment club meeting on Oct 20th. My 9-5 requires I work that day. I'll definitely be attending the next one. We're holding off on the LLC formation til our first deal or so. No need to waste time on that now. We've got a business plan in the works, but it's currently on the back burner. We talk almost everyday, but at least every other. We meet once a week. Our NUMBER ONE GOAL is to close a deal by 01-31-2008. 4 months. We've got lots of work to get done.

We will succeed. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. No excuses. We aren't trying, we're doing.

A Lil' Background

2007-10-02T01:08:00.000-04:00

Why does someone choose real estate investing? For me it's both a passion and a creative outlet. I love taking something old and making it new. My dad has always been a builder. He build a huge two story addition to our home. Sheds, dog houses, and bunkbeds were also built. He's an electrician by trade and a jack of all the others. Around 2003-04, I was bit hard by the real estate bug. More like a real estate alligator. I've been hooked ever since. I read about 5 books on investing when my interest first began. The one book that cleaned the dirt and grime from my eyes however was "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". Man I wish someone had given me this book when I was 10. It was such an alternative way of thinking. I was raised to work hard and you will be recognized and rewarded. I've always praised myself for my strong work ethic. My whole family is this way. My mom moves 100 miles a minute when she's working, it's draining at times. But, my parents have given me my work ethic. I thank them for raising me to be a good servant and for teaching me the value of what's important in life. If I can emulate a quarter of what they have created I will be a lucky and successful man. I believe I am making them proud with the path I am currently on. I have a good career, a strong marriage, and a balanced life.
In reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, my eyes were opened. I've learned to evaluate my life worth, not my net worth. I know I cannot take money or material things with me when I die. I can leave behind a legacy and memories to those I interacted with. Real Estate Investing is my vehicle to help me in what I seek. My current jay-oh-bee has a finite number of dollars I can earn yearly. If I want more money it's there by way of overtime. For that I'm very fortunate. However, when evalutating my life worth, overtime only gets in the way. It's a liability, not an asset. I chose Real Estate Investing because I'm passionate towards it. It is a great fit for who I am. I don't need to change my personality or retrain myself to be successful. I need to focus and perservere and I know it will happen. My life worth will fill the mountains of the earth. I will succeed.

Introduction

2007-09-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

A quick intro to who we are and where we are headed. We are two brothers who are in the beginning of our journey towards Real Estate freedom. Ed is 29 and Tim is 24. We live in MD just outside of DC. We both are in the early stages of setting up our business. We desire to produce an income from real estate which will lift our financial restraints.
We hope to document our path for both our recollection, as well as to provide some education to our readers. While it won't be step by step account of what needs to be done to be successful in real estate, it will hopefully provide insight to the struggles we'll face. Also growing to become a source of encouragement and guidance to others with similar dreams.