Learn this week’s Best Ever guest’s best ever books, real estate deals, ways to give back and biggest mistakes
Best Ever Book – The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller
Best Ever Deal Himanshu has Done – Wholesale Deal Bought at 40% Market Value
“I think [my best deal was when I] bought a townhome from a wholesaler. I paid almost 40% of the [market] value.”
“I had hardly anything to do on it. They were looking to close quick and I was able to move pretty quick on that [because I could pay] in cash.”
“I paid around $45,000 [and sold it] for $110,000.”
Biggest Mistake Himanshu Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Not Looking at HOA Documents before Purchasing a Condo as a Rental
“Condominiums are managed and run by the homeowner’s association, so you can run into a lot of issues if you’re investing in a [condo building] that has a very small number of units. The homeowner’s association is too picky about things. In my case, I invested in a property in the Naperville area (suburb of Chicago), which is a condo that we bought in 2013. It was a nice property.”
“When we bought it, I bought it through the auction process and we tried to rent it out, but we were told we couldn’t rent it out.”
“Later on, last year … I reached out to the association because they were allowing other people to rent, so I asked, ‘can I rent it out?’ and they said yes. It was a verbal communication that happened and once I rented it out and once the tenant moved in, they came back with all these written letter saying, ‘you cannot rent it out. The rentals are only allowed for 1 or 2 units in the property,’ which were rented already at the time.”
“This time, because I was in a dire situation because the tenant had already moved in, what I did is I went out and looked at the association documents. Fortunately, I found that they had not registered all the amendments with the county, so they did not have the right to stop me from leasing it out. I had to hire an attorney and then we were able to address that and they had to let me lease it out.”
“The lesson learned is look at the association documents and see what is there. Don’t take it at face value of whatever the associations says because many times, these associations, I think, are on a power trip. They really do not follow the rules themselves, but they expect everybody else to follow them. I would have been better off if I had looked into this situation before because I could have leased it out a long time back and I wouldn’t have been holding it unnecessarily.”
Best Ever Book – The Yes-I-can Guide to Mastering Real Estate by Mark Bruce Rosin
Best Ever Deal Michael has Done – Ground Lease with Meijer
“Doing a ground lease with Meijer. It took 8 years to put together, but it worked out great for the community. It was actually Meijer’s first ground lease ever. They had typically bought their own property in the past before that.”
“All in, it was probably somewhere in the $18 million range and the property is probably a $42 million dollar property now if it was sold.”
Click here to learn how Michael did this deal!
Best Ever Way Michael Likes to Give Back – Real Estate for Ministries
“I’m compelled by my faith in Christ to do things for other people. I utilize the talents I received from God by doing real estate for several ministries, one of which is Chicago Hope Academy in the city. All of their students are below average income levels and they’ve put together strategies for flipping houses to generate cash for the high school. I serve on their real estate board and hook them up with banks to give them lines of credit. Last year, I think they actually … raised $650,000 for the high school by flipping houses.”
Biggest Mistake Michael Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Investing in a Corrupted Town
“On the single-family fix-and-flips, we had a property that was in a bad town, and this is one of my biggest [pieces of] advice, [which] is always check what type of town it is, because if the town’s corrupt and the town has high taxes and the town has all kinds of problems, no matter how good of a deal it seems, just run away from it with your hair on fire.”
“The deal that we had was a single-family. We also got out front of the contractors. He said he was doing the work and we didn’t check on it. I paid him because he was my partner’s brother. We ended up losing $40,000 on that deal, but like I say, the town also sunk us too.”
Best Ever Book – Centennial by James Michener
Best Ever Deal Jeremy has Done – Owner-Financing Rental
“I have a rental property that is an owner carry. I got the owners to take a second [mortgage] on it to cover a little bit of the mortgage and fix up. That has now [been] rented for 3 years to a group that will take care of everything, and more than likely, that group will be in the home for a long time.”
“It’s one of my kids college funds.”
Best Ever Book – Wheelbarrow Profits by Gino Barbaro
Best Ever Deal Jeremy has Done – 10-Year Process to Buy a 11-unit
“The deal I just did. What happened there was it was a property I’ve been trying to buy for 10 years. I’ve been bugging this trust department at this bank. Sure enough, out of the blue, the guy called me in September and says, ‘hey still want to buy this property?’ It was an 11-unit. I said sure, let’s do it.”
“That one had a couple warts on it – needed a foundation and some tuck pointing – but so far, it’s turning out to be an incredible deal.”
Best Ever Way Jeremy Likes to Give Back – BiggerPockets and Blogging
“I go onto BiggerPockets and go into the forums and give advice there, as well as I’m toying with this new blog and just basically throwing it out there – my journey as a real estate investor and offering tips to people.”
Biggest Mistake Jeremy Has Made So Far In Real Estate – Not Having Two Lenders
“I’ve made so many [mistakes], it’s amazing.”
“I was doing this deal and the deal almost went south because the bank got cold feet. What I would advise people to do is whenever you’re looking at a deal, always have two lenders in the pipeline competing on that deal.”
“When I almost lost that deal, it would have been the first deal I ever lost. It would have ruined my reputation in this town by not being able to follow through on a deal.”
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