Category: Main Meetings (8 articles found) - Clear Search

DIG Main Meeting October 16th Review

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Happy Friday Everyone,

Last night we enjoyed a presentation on House Hacking led by Todd Hessbacher, featuring Cindy Wollman, Todd Bently, and me.  Some highlights from the presentations:
-Cindy got her son into real estate by having him arbitrage one of her existing rentals.  She "let" him be the guinea pig for trying out short term renting one of her properties.  He did such a good job with it, she realized this was a fruitful endeavor and began doing it herself on another property.
-We learned that both Todd B and I lack chivalry, charging rent to our not yet wives in our house hacks.
-Each of us was able to live close to, or entirely rent free in houses we have hacked.
-Todd and I definitely, and Cindy may have, entered into real estate investing through house hacking.
-Todd has only house hacked and is amassing quite the fortune doing so.
-Todd's a rocket scientist?
-Todd Hessbacher was able to refrain from busting our stones long enough to allow us to present!
-Cindy has either a ve
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DIG Main Meeting September 18th Review

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Hi Everyone,

We had another interesting meeting last night with a presentation by Robert Mohan on making yourself attractive to bank lenders.  A few tidbits I picked up from his presentation:
  • The ideal mix of things to show up on your credit report
    • 3-5 credit cards (I've subscribed to a no CC lifestyle, but will consider picking some up since listening to his presentation.)
    • one installment loan
    • one mortgage
  • Bump your credit score 25 points in a short amount of time (1-3 months? I forget) by using your credit cards for some small purchases, then paying them down to $1 once every week.  
  • Freeze your credit with the major credit bureaus.  It's free. You can do it online.  After initial set up, it only takes a few minutes to apply a thaw when you actually are applying for credit.
  • Maintain relationships at a variety of banks and visit them in person often, or at least with a phone call if they're out of state.
  • Get a copy of your Consumer Disclosure Report and dispute anyth
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DIG Main Meeting August 21st Review

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Hi Everyone,

I received a lot of positive feedback about the speed networking last night.  This is always a fan favorite and something we may consider doing more than once a year.
My biggest takeaway came from Don Rotanz regarding seller financing.  My question was how to handle a seller who is unfamiliar and, therefore, uncomfortable with the idea of seller financing?  This is something I'm encountering at the moment.  He explained keep the numbers simple.  Use round numbers such as $2500/month for X number of months.
I met a young guy, Kyle Tucker, who has done 5 seller financed deals already in his young career. Killing it!  Gives me motivation to offer that more often.
I talked with another investor (blanking on your name at the moment, sorry!) who completed what I believe was his first deal out in Reading over the past year, sold it, doubled his money, and bought another property with money left over for another one.
Dig volunteer All Star Nadya is getting down and dirty doing a rehab with her own hands right now.  She reminds me of me earlier on in my career--although I was not as handy despite doing some wo
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DIG Main Meeting October 17th Review

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Hi Everyone,

Apologies for the delay on this.  My back was giving me problems on Thursday which restricted me to laying in a recliner most of Thursday, Friday and intermittently over the weekend, bemoaning my existence.  Unfortunately, I only caught a small portion of Thursday's meeting as I could not stay very long.
That said, it was a real treat to get a presentation from both Anil Dham and Dan Harvey, two DIG superstars.  Anil showed us a 9 unit deal he recently completed in Royersfod (I think).  While I didn't catch the whole thing, I did pick up a few things:
1. Some of his decision making on installing one unit in the basement vs. two.
2. A floor paint that is durable and does not seem to get dirty (I need to know what it is specifically)
3. That he left money in the deal--this was important for a couple of reasons to me.  Almost all of my deals have not required me to leave money in the deal.  I buy it with hard or private money, fix it up, rent it out, and refi it, pulling all of my money back out.  Over the past few years, however, this has not been the case for many of my refis.  In talking with many investors, the cash out refis are becoming less frequent.  Creativity on deals moving forward will be more important than ever.  Whether it's utilizing seller financing, or partners with money, we will need to think about mor
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DIG Main Meeting August 15th Review

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Good morning DIG Fam!

Another month, another great meeting.  Last night we had our "speed networking" event where we have specialists in a variety of areas helming tables that guests and members spend about 10 minutes at a piece.  A bell rings, and on to the next table of your choice.
I can't provide a full feedback this month as I was with John and Jim Welsh at the table devoted to partnerships.  That said, it was nice to see the interest people had in our topic and the intelligent questions that were asked.  For those interested, the book we had on display was the BP produced "Real Estate Partnerships" by Tony Robinson and Ashley Kehr.  As what was no surprise to me, the Belles of the Ball were our wholesaling experts, Corey Ruyak and Mark Morey.  They had a full table up until the meeting ended.  It seemed like everyone else's tables were well attended, although I was up against a wall on one side, so my sightline was restricted.  Plust I was too concerned with stuffing my face with hot dogs and pretzels!
As much as I enjoyed our conversations at my table, the only negative was that I didn't get to experience the other experts' contributions and the conversations had at their tables.   Read More...


DIG Main Meeting July 18th Review

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 Hi Everyone,

There are times when I walk away from a meeting upset.  Last night was one of those nights.  The three gentlemen we had last night for our panel of wholesalers are truly superstars.  I walked away pissed at myself.  Pissed that I'm not nearly as good as them.  Pissed that they are doing what I want to be doing much better than me.  On the bright side, I woke up with a renewed vigor to improve my situation today.
Fortunately, I have three excellent sources to reach out to to make those improvements.  While I usually pull out a few pointers of things I learned at a meeting, i'm not going to do that from last night as there was just too much good info.  What I will say that I found most interesting is that all three do what they do in significantly different fashion.  Much like in life in general, there are many different paths to success.
I've seen wholesalers present at numerous RE investment events in the past, but this one I found to be the most eye opening.  It may have to do with my own increased knowledge and experience or the fact that I'm in the middle of working on my own marketing machine right now.  Speaking of which, it was about a year and half ago that I was taught how to set up my marke
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DIG Main Meeting May 15th Review

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Happy Friday!

 

Another monthly meeting, another great experience.  Once again, the power of in person networking presented itself.  

 

  1. Sam Miller, our presenter, has been in real estate a while but only got into land development three years ago.  She got into it and got successful at it by networking.
  2. One of our members reached out to me by phone as I was walking into the meeting.  He ran into a situation I had posted about on the answerline where a business loan has ended up on his personal credit report.  How is this related to in person networking? We first met in person at a DIG meeting a year or two ago and have since met multiple times since then.  I put him in contact with everyone's favorite lender and mortgage expert, Bill Rookstool, who can help him navigate how to handle what happened here as it was beyond my area of expertise.
  3. I met a new member last night, Joe G, who was discussing a deal that had fallen through for him out in western PA because he couldn't get financing as his bank killed the deal.  As he described it to me, the deal made sense financially, so I recommended he speak with Bill Rookstool (two shout outs in one night!) to see if he could make the dea
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DIG Main Meeting April 18th Review

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Hi Everyone,

We had another great meeting last night with a great presenter, Tom Dunkel.  As usual, lots of networking occurred.  I learned a bit about the benefits of condo short term rentals, especially when first starting in the STR world from two different people in separate conversations.  Both of these investors are more experienced and successful than me, so there's got to be something to that.   Thank you, Tom and Marlon.

We learned a little bit about the new book club book, "The Go-Giver."  Contrary to Todd's busting of my stones, I actually do read a good bit, although not fast.  Yes, this book is short and easy to read, but it's also entertaining and teaches very good lessons.

Moving on to Tom Dunkel, last night's speaker about Self Storage.  When any speaker presents, even if you are not interested in the topic for your own specific investing, there are usually golden nuggets to be had.  Now, I was and am interested in self storage, but nevertheless, I pulled a few nuggets that can be applied to any type of investing.

1. Develop a team!  You can go fast by yourself, but you'll go farther with a team.   And more importantly, you will do less work IN your business and more ON your business, which requires less of your time.  This has been a stumbling block for me, personally, but I am working on hiring and developing a team as we speak.

2. An "A" employee/contractor is free.  What?!  Yes.  An awesome worker will make you more money than they cost.

3. Direct market expansion
-reach out to your competition to create a relationship (refer customers) 
-will become sellers someday
**John and JIm, let's start working on this today!

4. Boat and RV storage!  A severely underserved market with even less start up cost than self storage units.

Thanks everyone, for coming out last night.  Big thanks to Tom Dunkel for presenting.  I look forward to listening to my friend, Samantha Miller, present next month about investing in land. 
 

See you next time,
Matt Wahl
DIG President