I am totally dropping the ball with some people, and I need to get back on track quick. I have to post this as a way to keep myself accountable (and hopefully track my progress in the future).

I have to returns LOTS of calls. Just a few days until total freedom, and RE clients are starting to bombard me. It’s a good thing to have too many leads. It’s a bad thing when you can’t respond to them all in a timely fashion. That’s what’s making me a slacker. I have several leads to followup on, as well as a few active deals I’m working on. I have one seller who I haven’t called in a week. I’m pretty sure he’s going to be upset with me when I call him today. It ’s my fault so I’ll suck it up.

Also, I know I’ve said this before, but I need a constant reminder to stay on the path of 4HWW. The goal of my entrepreneurial ventures is to setup passive income streams. Yes, wholesaling,  real estate agency and mobile notary services will bring cash every once in a while. But, I need to focus on the passive income streams so I can have more time for my life NOW. So I need to stay focused on: sub2 investing for rentals, and the vending  business. I don’t really want to venture into anything else right now. These two businesses are like low-hanging fruit to me. I get it, and it comes naturally to me. I have no desire to learn any new skills to start a new business. Maybe that makes me a slacker too. But I’ll be slacker with passive income.

One thing I forgot to mention about my sub2 investing: I’m also going to focus on acquiring multi-family properties. It dawned on me last week that there could be shortsale MF properties on the MLS, both active and expired. So I started researching, and low and behold, there are plenty. I’ll start sending letters to the expired MF shortsales to try to acquire them via sub2. Nothing like a desperate seller to work with. The goal is cashflow. So as long as they’re in rentable condition (or fairly close to rentable condition), and the payment is low enough, I will buy them and rent them out.

Hasta luego!

bulk vending business · passive income streams · proper followup with clients · real estate investing

First I’ll start with the good news: two more of my Facebook friends want me to sell their homes. This is awesome, since it cost me NOTHING to get these new clients, and they are highly motivated to sell. My slogan (“When you need to sell, just call Raquel”), is starting to catch on. I only want people that NEED to sell, because those that just WANT to sell aren’t serious enough, and are harder to close. I also got another call from a senior center that wants vending machines. I think it’s the same person I’ve been playing phone tag with, so it should be good.

Bad news: I still haven’t found a buyer for my shortsale flip. I received an offer yesterday, but it’ from an FHA buyer. It’s  good offer, but I need to talk to the agent today to try to figure out a solution. I really need to get this closed like pronto.

Crazy news: I got an email from one of the conveyancer’s in my RE brokerage, saying that “due to a court order”, she and most of the other staff were being let go. This was a surprise to me, since, I was not aware of any legal action going on within the company. Reading that a court is ordering someone in my company to do something raises all the red flags. So I called her, and she says: Oh, didn’t you hear? The partnership is breaking up! (that was verbatim) WTF?!? Didn’t I hear? Like it’s community gossip or something. I’m getting a little nervous, and annoyed since I just received my business card order. When I told my best friend what happened, she said: that’s God pushing you to hurry up and get your broker license already. And she’s 100% right. I need to get off my ass already. Since I have a shiny new netbook I can take anywhere, I no longer have any excuse for not getting the online courses done. God help me.

real estate agent · real estate investing · ups and downs of entrepreneurship · vending business

I’ve decided to give the sub2 property back to the owner. More details to follow…

landlording · real estate investing · sub2

I may be shooting myself in the foot by posting this but… I am working towards leaving my job. Real estate investing is fun, and it brings nice paydays when I actually have a closing. But the fact is, it’s hard for me to create a reliable income from real estate investment. I’m not interested in being a landlord, so wholesaling is what I’ll be doing.

That said, I need to create other income streams to be able to step away from the job. I’m slowly building my vending business to have a reliable passive income. But in the meantime, I’ve grown weary of the job, and I want and need to do something else. So, I’ve decided to go back to my old-school methods like RentACoder! Actually, the name of the site has now changed to vWorker (that should be a clue as to how long it’s been since I checked in). I bid on three jobs so far, and just got one of my bids accepted today! So I’m very excited. I’m  ExpertRating certified in English/Spanish translation, so I expect to have more bids accepted for those job categories. The best thing about doing virtual work is that I can potentially work from anywhere as long as I have a laptop and Internet connection.

So here’s my overview of how my business ventures will make my life nicer: real estate investment for fun and to payoff debt, vending business for passive income, virtual work to pay the bills in the meantime (and be able to travel anywhere while doing so). The pieces are finally fitting together! Now to make it happen

Updates:

Real estate investing – I met with a seller who received one of my letters yesterday. I’d only inquired about one house, but it turns out he has four that he needs to sell to avoid foreclosure. I’m only interested in three of the homes right now. I got one contract signed last night, and the other two he needed to take home to get signed by his wife who is also on title. While were sitting in my car signing docs (the Dunkin’ Donuts closed just as we got there), I casually ask him: so… do you know of anyone else that has a property they need to sell? He says: oh yeah, I’m the pastor at my church, and we need to sell a big, empty commercial building that we’ve owned for years” Yeah baby, I’ll be all over that one as well. I haven’t wholesaled a commercial property yet, but I will certainly learn how to do so now I also have a potential end-buyer for my recently approved shortsale, but he’s kind of dicking around. I’ll put the property on the MLS by this weekend if I don’t have a signed contract and deposit by Saturday.

Vending – I’ve slacked off and forgot to return calls of people who responded to my email. I will put those calls on my to-do list to be completed by Friday. I broke down the double-head I still have at home to a single, and I’ll be ordering an additional stand and gumball wheel set this week. I’m sticking with my gumballs only plan.

Virtual freelancing – Got my first job accepted today, and it’s due in 48 hours. Actually, this isn’t the first job I won at vWorker, but since I closed my old account a long time ago, I had to open a new one and create a new profile. So, this is the first job for the new profile, hehe. Maybe I can use this as an excuse to finally get a Macbook, hmmm…

That’s it for now. Thanks for checking in!

financial independence · passive income · real estate investing · vending · Virtual freelancing

My marketing is generating so many leads, that I may have to start creating a post for each business category. Let’s start with a mid-year recap:

January 2010: I started the year off with three businesses: real estate (agency/investing), mobile notary public services, and a designer fragrance online store. Then I added a fashion accessories biz.

July 2010: I’ve retired the designer fragrance and fashion accessories businesses. Real estate and vending and now my top priorities, with notary services running a close second.

I’ve gotten on the habit of a regular lead-generation plan for both my real estate and vending business. And now I get so many calls and emails, I don’t have time to return them all. The only time I have to return calls is during my lunchbreak (I still have a J-O-B), and when I get home from work after 5pm. I’d like to call people early in the morning, but I think 8:30am phone calls might be a bit too much. Then again, some might see me as a go-getter. I guess I’ll have to test that theory and see

For real estate, I’ve been marketing heavily to people facing foreclosure, and the response rate has been good. My recent batch of 78 letters yielded 10 phone calls. That’s a 12% response rate, much better than the supposed “average” response rate of 2%. I’m attributing that to the fact that I only use hand-addressed envelopes and stamps for postage. I know it takes longer, but I believe people open it because it looks like it’s coming from someone they know. All the other mailings I’ve done using labels or printed envelopes got me ZERO response. So I’m sticking with what works. The next step to this will be hiring an assistant to do it every week.

For the vending business, I’ve decided to focus on non-profit groups instead of for-profit locations. My hunch is that since they always need money anyway, they’ll like getting a monthly payout from the machine. I did a test by sending emails to some senior centers in my area. Out of 11 emails sent, two responded that they wanted a machine (that’s an 18% response rate, in case you’re wondering). I placed my first machine at a bar, which I’m due to service for the first time this coming week. It’s a double-head, which I’m going to break down to a single. After reading all the discussions on the Vendiscuss forum, I’ve decided to sell gumballs only. They’re the most profitable, and the easiest item to obtain. I’ll check my results after a month, and if it’s not where I want to be, then I’ll consider incorporating candy. My goal is build my passive business stream and keep it as simple as possible.

One thing I like about this process is that I keep coming to the same “realizations” over and over again. Stay consistent with lead generation, and always keep the goal in mind.

candy bulk vending · lead generation · marketing · real estate investing

Sooo, less than one month into being a landlord with a sub2 property, my gut feeling about not wanting to be a landlord has been confirmed. The tenant is great, but the property is already starting to get on my nerves. The water heater broke about two days after the tenant moved in, and I haven’t been able to get ANYONE to come fix it. I’ve called several contractors, who all reschedule or just don’t show. Even Roto-Rooter rescheduled, but at least I didn’t have to remind them to call me back. I’m not sure what upsets me more: that my tenant and her child haven’t had hot water for almost a week, or the fact that contractors are so freaking unreliable! Hopefully this water heater just needs to be fixed and not replaced. I also need to replace a rear basement door, as well as the front screen door, and have an electrician check why the ceiling fans aren’t working (since there were working last time I checked almost a month ag0). So yeah, landlording is not for me. I will continue with the shortsale of this property, and sell it with the tenant occupant in place. I think that at 35K property with a tenant paying $875/month will be an awesome deal. I should’ve just stuck to my gut and flipped this without getting into sub2. Oh well.

During my Memphis trip, I got the brilliant idea of starting a newsstand business at Greyhound bus stations. Well, they’ve shut me down. I contacted the person in charge, several times, and Greyhound just isn’t interested in having ANY vendors at their bus stations. So while it seemed promising, I’m not going to press the issue. Maybe they’ll change their minds in the future. In the meantime, I need to get crackin’ on other businesses, which leads me to…

I am finally starting a vending business! About two years ago, I’d read an ebook on how to startup a vending business, it had good information on pitfalls to watch out for, how to shop for machines,  etc. But I never followed up.  Then I started looking at starting an ATM business, but that requires way too much capital (more than what I have anyway), and there’s a safety issue with transporting large sums of cash by myself (a big NO-NO). Now that I’m serious about developing a passive income stream, I decided to get on the ball. I reread the book, and decided to start a bulk candy vending business. I found a NEW double-head candy machine on craigslist for $100, but I was able to talk to the seller down to $70. The machine still had the plastic wraps on it. This machine typically sells for about $200 brand new. He’d purchased it almost seven years ago to start a business himself, but never did. I tested the machine with quarters to make sure it worked, and loaded that baby into my car. Now I just need to buy candy at BJs and place it at a location. I made a post on Facebook asking my friends if they or anyone they knew wanted a machine at their place of business, and one of my real estate clients responded that her dad needs one in his detail shop. So I’ll call her today to make the arrangements. I want to have it placed by this weekend. Here’s the pic of the candy machine taken with my Blackberry:

I have two other shortsale deals that are progressing. The big one looks like it may close in the next month or so. The other one (a duplex), is just starting, and I hope to close on that by August.

I’m also going to change real estate brokerages again. This will (hopefully) be my last switch before I finally get my broker’s license. I’m taking one of my broker licensing courses online right now, with about seven classes to go. I’m sooo ready to be a broker already. There’s nothing like having total control over your money.

That’s all the updates I have for now.

passive income business · real estate investing · vending business

It’s only Wednesday and I’ve already been dealt two blows in the real estate arena. The first is a wholesale deal for which I’d already found an end-buyer. The seller of this deal has decided not to sell, and wants to move back into her home. This was especially painful because it was such a pain-in-the-ass to get this deal signed! When I called the buyer’s agent to give her the bad news, I was sooo happy I got her voicemail. She hasn’t even bothered to call me back, she only emailed me asking for the release form. That was sucky.

The second blow is the short-sale flip I’ve been working on since February. After months of asking for an interior BPO, and Saxon Mortgage adamantly telling me that I had to do the interior BPO myself because they don’t, I was informed yesterday by a new customer service rep that they actually do interior BPOs “all the time”. This means that I now have to wait another three business days for their BPO vendor to call me to get access to the property. So I wasted another two weeks and hours of my time taking photos and creating a BPO – FOR NOTHING!!! They better hope to God that the value comes in at the purchase price or less, because I’m going to give them even more hell during the negotation. Bastards.

The good news is that I got another shortsale property under contract last night. This is a duplex in West Philly. Now the more I get into this shortsale/wholesaling thing, the more I’m thinking that maybe I should be a landlord after all. I’ve been resisting it, because I’ve seen the problems that my landlord clients have endured. But, I just don’t see any other way to create cashflow without having to own a business. I like wholesaling, and I’ll probably do it forever, but I see now that I really can’t rely on wholesaling for regular income. I have to at least try being a landlord to see if I have the stomach for it.

Speaking of which… I have a renter for a shortsale property that I was going to wholesale. So I’m going to purchase it subject-to instead, and see how I like being a landlord. I’ll get the monthly payments lowered through loan modification, and use the deposits from the renter for the upfront payment to the mortgage company. So the only money I’ll spend will be for the deed and LLC formation. This should be fun, and I’ll do a better job of documenting the process on this blog.

Gotta get back to work now, so thanks for visiting!

real estate investing · short sales · wholesaling