Success from Your first flip

EA
Success from Your
first flip...
P
eople who have been in the Flipping business may call
me a newbie, and rightly so. However, over the years I
have acquired the knowledge and skills that allow me
to exploit my talents so I can be successful doing the task or
job at hand.
To be successful doing a flip let me first provide a
shopping list of what the basic needs are, and in this case
for a foreclosure.
Networking, Knowledge
Mentors, Monies, Teamwork
Financials
Network, Network, Network!
Don’t underestimate the need to network with any and
everyone you come in contact with. Always have on hand
a promotional item to hand out. Be it a business card, pen
or something else that is appropriate.
Knowledge
There is no magic pill to being successful. Before purchasing a book look at the first publication date and the
most recent revision. Times have changed and a book
dealing with time sensitive subject matter by definition is
time sensitive. How to get financing written pre-2007 will
be archaic.
During a “buying foreclosures” seminar that I attended a
list of books was presented that for me was a good starting
point for learning about the business. Since that time I have
purchased and read a number of books about Foreclosures
and Real Estate investing. If you are inclined to read
I suggest doing a search on the web for book reviews.
Afterwards if you do look for books online I suggest that
you use Advanced search options and Do experiment
with it. My experience has shown that if I just do a search
of books for the word Foreclosure I will get back many
thousands of hits!!!!! To reduce the number of hits your
most important search criteria beyond that of the subject
matter will be the Publication Date. Currently, my initial
searches look for a publication date after December 2007.
Mentor
If you don’t have one you should be looking around in
hopes to find someone or somebody. If you do not have the
knowledge and do not network then a Mentor can be your
next best thing.
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Early in 2008 I spoke with Armando Montelongo in
hopes that he would be a mentor for me. Unfortunately,
he is just too busy with his TV show and promoting his
eBooks and would not be available when I need some
advice. Regardless, I am very fortunate to have a fantastic
mentor who is in the business of real estate investing and
very successful at it for many, many years. Just how much
can my mentor help me? To give you an idea, for my first
flip I drove him to the house that I wanted to purchase. We
stopped outside and he immediately auto dialed a number
and said give me information on a property at . The 2nd
thing said was, look at splitting the property. Now, there
is a real savvy businessman and one who knows what and
how to get information. Oh, yes he did get the information
on the property during the phone call. No call back later
for him.
EA
Written By Pete Milano
Monies
You have to finance somehow and someway. The book
Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur mentions this
topic briefing and was all that I needed to understand what
I had to do.
Teamwork
Baseball. The shortstop comes over and plays in the
3rd basemans area. A ball is hit to the shortstop area and
keeps rolling and rolling and rolling into the outfield. That
is NOT teamwork. I am very fortunate to have someone
working with me on projects. He has the knowledge, drive
and desire to handle the logistics of getting a house flipped
and I do other things. Just like you see on the TV house
flipping shows, My partner is the guy on site as the GC
running the job and making the decisions. What do I do?
Well, for one thing I need to have another house for him to
flip when he completes this one.
You cant do it alone and consistently be successful. Build
a team of qualified, trustworthy and reliable people.
Financials
At a minimum get professional help during your early
stages of starting your business. Can you answer this
question? What is a Chart of Accounts and do you know
how and why you would want to modify it? If your answer
is What is a Chart? then you definitely need help and
possibly for a long time. Be prepared to spend some money
in this area. Me, I purchased the Quickbooks version for
contractors.
ExecutiveAgent Magazine
ExecutiveAgent Magazine
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