House Invest

A House of a Different Color: Painting Tips for Your Home
One of the most efficient ways to add value and appeal to your home is by giving it a fresh new coat of paint. When you’re looking for a way to boost the appearance of your home for a potential buyer, repainting is a relatively affordable and easy alternative to expensive remodeling. Follow some of these tips to make sure that you get the desired effect. -Choose Wisely - Choosing the color will be the most important decision you make when you decide to paint a room. Do some research on what colors are currently popular, but be careful not to use anything that’s too “trendy” or your home will look outdated before you know it. Stay away from dark colors - they will make the room look smaller and may make buyers feel uncomfortable. It’s especially important to use light colors in rooms that need to look clean and bright, such as bathrooms and the kitchen. Once you’ve got your idea for a color, paint a few patches on the bare wall and see how the color looks with your lighting and your furnishings. This will help you figure out exactly what shade of color you want before you paint the entire room. If you get your final shade of paint mixed at a hardware store in multiple cans, dump them all into one drum and mix them thoroughly. This will remove any small differences between each can of paint. -Don’t Skimp - You may have chosen to paint as a more affordable way to update your home, but don’t go cheap when it comes to buying your materials. When it comes to painting supplies, you get what you pay for. Make sure that you buy quality paint and quality brushes. It will end up being a better value in the long run because higher-quality paint will take less time and fewer coats to cover an area, and will last longer and look better for years to come. -Prepare - Make sure that the wall is properly prepared by cleaning, scarping and sanding. When you think you’re finished, hold a light bulb near the surface and move it around. Any blemishes and rough spots that you may have missed will cast a shadow. When the wall is clean and smooth, apply a coat of primer. That way you will need less of your expensive paint to get a nice even coat and the job will last longer and look better. -Flat or Gloss - Pay attention to the surfaces that you are painting. Rougher surfaces are best covered by a flat paint, while smooth, clean surfaces look best with a high-gloss finish. Glossy paints resist dirt, moisture and mildew, so try to use them in the bathrooms and kitchens. -Bring it All Together - When you’re all finished, mix some of your wall color with white for a trim that goes beautiful with the rest of the room. Test out the percentage of color to white ratio that you need to get a pleasing color and make sure that you keep the color consistent throughout the room. Color and fresh, new paint is one of the most important elements for making your house look more appealing to a prospective buyer. But you need more than just the paint, you need to make sure that it’s done right to get the most bang for your buck. Follow these tips and you should be well on your way.<p>Lee Cameron is the top <a href="http://www.leecameronrealtor.com/apopka.php" target="_blank">Orlando real estate</a> agent in the Orlando real estate market. Lee has over 13 years of experience in the industry, and can guide you in the process of finding <a href="http://www.leecameronrealtor.com/" target="_blank">properties in Orlando</a>.</p>
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Real Estate Investing and Goal Setting
What is the primary reason for success most people have that seems to elude unsuccessful people? Goal setting is the primary reason for success. Lack of proper planning is the number one reason for failure. Proper goal setting involves setting a business plan in place for your life. Too many people this doesn t sound fun or sounds tedious. In practice though, goal setters have more time freedom, more money, and more success in all areas of their lives than those who don t. Well it s no different with real estate investing. Real Estate Investing must be treated as a business and it requires planning that anyone can do. Much like an airplane pilot who goes through a pre-flight checklist, the real estate investor must go through many steps for every real estate deal. You must market to find the deal, do your research on the property to establish a value, have your contracts ready, make your offer, schedule a closing, have title work done, prepare your financing, get property insurance, etc. The reason the doers make money is because so many people aren t ready to make money. Real estate investing seems like pie in the sky until you put your plan down on paper and it starts to crystallize. The planning process itself should give you renewed energy. Before I daily setup my plan I didn t want to get out of bed each day, but now I get up ready to work on knocking out my plan every day. Set your plan up into baby steps that you can review and knock out every single day. Your daily plan must include marketing to get motivated sellers to contact you. Regardless of the deals you have in the works, if your marketing stops, you will go through long dry spells. Even with consistent marketing you will have periods with few leads and periods where you are just swamped with sellers offering you great deals. Constant daily review of your goals is critical. This is why so many suggest taping your goals on your bathroom mirror so you see it when you wake up and again before you go to bed. You can even buy giant poster sized post it notes that you can write your goals on and stick them on your wall. Reviewing your goals before going to sleep at night causes your brain to dream about your goals and program them into memory. So put your goals down on paper and start putting your real estate investing plan into action.David Neese is a real estate investing author who offers a free course for real estate investors delivered by email, audio and Tele-seminar which you can get for free at:http://www.FreeRealEstateInvestingCourses.com You can find more information about David at http://www.DigitalSuccessCoach.com
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How You Can Use Rehab, Refinance and Cash Out as Long-Term Wealth Building Real Estate Investing
Today we are discussing a somewhat advanced strategy for you to use after you have been in the creative real estate investing business for a while. I call this Rehab, Refinance, and Cash Out . This strategy can lead to true long term wealth and financial independence. This works very well in a buyers market like Memphis where prices have been quite flat for some time. You need to use this to augment your wholesaling for immediate income and retailing for bigger short term profits. Rehab, Refinance and Cash Out is a long term wealth building strategy and will be something you will be glad you did as it is a long term buy and hold strategy, and those are the strategies that lead to true wealth accumulation and financial independence. Let me explain how this works. You find a good middle to low end 3 bedroom home that you are able to buy from an out of state owner or other motivated seller that needs a little work and you buy at 60% of after repaired value. You buy the house using a hard money lender like http://www.pleaseclose.com/memphistrading and do your fix up and have a property management firm manage the property and put a renter in the house. The hard money lender will typically loan you up to 65% of the after repaired value to purchase the house which you use to buy the house and then repair it. Now that the home is repaired you obtain an investor friendly mortgage and cash out by refinancing at 80-90% of after repaired retail value and you should be doing this with properties where this strategy gives you back at least $10,000 at the refinance that you can use in your business any way you need. Do not use this money to live on, use it solely to grow your real estate business. Once you have done this strategy on 10 homes you should be able to keep finding better and better deals because you can close quickly as you have cash in hand to make things happen. More cash equals better deals and more opportunities. By the time you repeat this strategy 20 times you should have at least $200,000 cash plus about $200,000 equity and 20 homes giving you at least $2000 per month positive cash flow whether you decide to work this month or not since you have a property management company handling things for you. With average annual rent increases, within five years that $2,000 a month should grow to $4,000 a month. In 30 years you should have $2 to 3 million plus in paid off real estate. It s a good solid long term strategy to add to your immediate selling from wholesaling, retailing and lease options that the extra $200,000 in cash will help grow tremendously. The rent minus the management fees and all loan and other costs must leave you with positive cash flow or this strategy should be avoided. If you cannot cash out on the property I don t recommend holding it long term as you want to be able to use your best mortgages to cash out. You can purchase using http://www.pleaseclose.com/memphistrading if your Equifax credit score is above 550(which is bad credit) or you have a co-borrower who has an Equifax score over 550. A good investor friendly mortgage company will give you good rates if you are at 660 middle score or above and the very best rates if your middle score is 720 or above. Your first 10 investor mortgages in your name and 10 in your spouses name are the easiest to qualify and get the best deals. After those you really need a good investor mortgage company to work with. Take the time to find the real investor friendly mortgage companies that can help you get loans for 100 properties and not just the first ten and let them have the easy ones and the tougher ones. I do recommend having more than one good lender available though, but stick to the ones that specialize in investor loans. Find out from other investors who the most investor friendly mortgage companies are to use to refinance the repaired home. I do not advocate becoming a landlord as I do not believe this is a valuable usage of your time and energy. I highly recommend asking around and finding a good property management company that will charge you 10% or less to start out with and gradually lower that % as you add more and more properties. I feel this is an advanced strategy as you won t see any cash in your pocket from this strategy for 4-6 months after you find the deal which is a long time to work and not see any pay. If you are wholesaling and making consistent money each month then it shouldn t matter. This strategy will magnify the profits you make in your investing business in ways you might not have imagined. This strategy is a natural progression from wholesaling as you are already helping others find these kinds of deals, now you will be able to get the cash out typical of probably 2 wholesale deals, just paid slower, and at the same time building a nice future nest egg.David offers a free E-course on quick start strategies for getting started in real estate investing that is delivered free via email and tele-clinic at: http://www.FreeRealEstateInvestingCourses.com
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