Real estate agent pleads guilty in fraud scheme – AZCentral.com

Real estate agent pleads guilty in fraud scheme – AZCentral.com
Thursday that a Phoenix real estate agent has pleaded guilty for her role in a fraud scheme home sales that Swallows-Feagins was involved in went into foreclosure including her own residence. The home was sold to a straw buyer and Swallows

Get paid to market your Real Estate Business

Year after year, agent after agent throws thousands of dollars away on direct mail postcards that get 3% return at best. Many have thought, “There has to be a better way!”
They are right! There is a better way! How would you like to get paid for your marketing?

Year after year, agent after agent throws thousands of dollars away on direct mail postcards that get 3% return at best. Many have thought, “There has to be a better way!”
They are right! There is a better way! How would you like to get paid for your marketing?

Parks and Recreation in most cities offer classes in just about everything you can possibly imagine, from photography to quilting, Kung Fu to cooking. Publicity for the classes is taken care of by the city and costs the instructor nothing. The instructor charges a fee for the class usually around $30 per student for anywhere from 4-10 hours of instruction. And can usually receive $2,000 – $3,000 a year for holding classes just once a week.

What better way to market your business? The city pays for the marketing and you get paid to teach people about buying a house. Hold classes on how to buy a house, what to do to improve the value of their house, how to shop for a mortgage, home improvements etc.

You become an expert in the eyes of your students, trust is built and everyone coming to your class is interested in real estate, they are thinking of buying or selling their home.

The trick is think of helping others not selling something. If you make blatant efforts to sell real estate you students will pick up on that immediately! Don’t do it! It does more harm than good. But if your class actually helps first time home buyers understand their options, and the choices they need to make, you will find that they will come to you when they are ready to buy. You have become an expert in their eyes and they trust you to help them through the process of selling or buying their home.

Many real estate agencies hold such classes for people but they have to pay to market the class and many people feel that they will be trapped in a nightmarish hard ball sales presentation like those offered by time shares so they don’t sign up. Rule # 1 for classes

Don’t turn it into a sales pitch! Keep it informational.

There should be 3 elements to the class

1) A topic that deals with a specific problem your target market might deal with.

Examples first time buyers financing, home improvements that increase the value of your property, building VS buying, factors to consider when buying rural properties, how to save money on taxes, maintenance and other home owner expenses. Think about the problems that face your clients and then create a class that meets their needs.

2) Solutions to the problems that don’t include buying a house from you or listing their property with you. Remember, this is not a sales pitch, it is a class. Once you build up trust the money part will naturally follow if your students believe you know what you’re talking about. People do business with those they trust, you have hours to build up their in you.

3) Make the class interesting and fun. Plan your class well and practice often, have friends critique you before you teach. Make it interactive.. give students plenty of time to participate in the learning process. DON”T JUST LECTURE! Be energetic and cheerful no one likes a boring class. Be brief, get to the point, don’t meander around the topic. Have a simple outline for each class printed and have lots of white space on the paper so students can write notes. Don’t write out everything for them, if they write it down they are more likely to remember.

Better, much better than throwing away thousands on direct mail, and you reach people who are interested in real estate, you build relationships with your students and instantly become an expert in their eyes, you get paid, you get referrals. At the end of the class have a little party, snacks and soda or juice and pass out your business card.

Other places to teach….entrepreneaur classes, city college, at home related expos (seminars or workshops), in your office, libraries, and SBA classes. have fun marketing!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Real Estate Investors Turn Back on Thousands of Dollars!

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Those new to real estate investing often fail to take action because they don’t have much cash. The truth is that the very best investors got their start when they had little or no money.

When you start at the bottom you have to work harder and smarter. You have to make every penny count… and in doing so you learn how to put together the most profitable deals.

Right now one of the very best ways for newbies to get started is to buy property by taking over the payments of an existing loan. It’s called buying “subject to” existing financing.

The new investor can generate income to make the mortgage payments by quickly leasing the property. Lease payments often will cover the mortgage payments.

Here’s something most investors overlook when buying “sub2″ and why they lose around $1,000 each time they do a deal.

We often buy properties “subject to” the underlying mortgage. That simply means we give the motivated seller a little money (if he is really motivated no cash is needed) and take over the payments of the loan that’s already in place.

We have title to the property, but the seller’s name stays on the mortgage loan.

This a popular way of buying property from motivated sellers. It allows the investor to buy many properties with very little cash. It also places a severe responsibility on the investor to stay current with the mortgage payments. You must be a good landlord and keep the rent payments rolling in.

Here’s where most investors fail to pick up that one thousand dollar that is just waiting to be claimed.

When the investor sells that property they often are not aware that they can get a check from the original lender for the cash that has accumulated in the loan’s impound account.

That is the money collected monthly by the lender to pay the taxes and insurance. It often adds up to around a grand or more and it’s easy to get if you know what you’re doing.

When you buy a property “subject to” the underlying mortgage, always get all the owners of the property to sign a Limited Power of Attorney giving you control of anything having to do with the property in the future. That way you don’t need their cooperation later, when they’ve left the area and can’t found.

Finally, after you’ve held the property while it appreciated in value, you are ready to sell and cash out.

When you have found a buyer and you are arranging the close, send the lender a request that any balance in the impound account be sent to you or your company. Always send along copies of the Powers of Attorney so the lender knows you have the authority to make the request.

Sometimes they will honor your request and sometimes they won’t.

More importantly, instruct the escrow officer or attorney handling the closing of your sale to ask for the impounds. They will give the pay off instructions to the lender and the lender usually will follow those instructions without question.

On a recent deal we received a check from a lender for the impounds in the amount of $1,357.00. Yeah!.. Happy dance!

Was there a catch? The check from the lender for the impound funds was made payable to the two original sellers whose names were on the loan. It looked like this…

Pay To The Order Of: John J. Seller, Paris W. Seller c/o The Author’s Investment Corp.

Was that trouble? No! Remember we had a separate Power of Attorney for each of these individuals. We took the check and the POAs to our bank. We explained the situation and here’s what the bank officer had us do…

On the back of the check, we signed the name of each seller. After those signatures we wrote:

By_________________ (and signed our own name).

Then we signed our company name and again (By______) and then we signed our own name and position in the company.

That was it! An easy way to pocket $1,357.00 that too many investors leave on the table.

Now YOU will never walk away from that extra thousand or so dollars!

About the Author

Mark Walters is an Investor and manager of the Real Estate Investor Base Camp at http://www.CashFlowInstitute.com