Tammy's journey to refinement and FREEDOM. GREAT THINGS ARE HERE!

Look out! Here we come!!! Be blessed and get ready for the ride!

I love that fact that you guys are keeping it in the family partnering up and making it happen in both you guys life. I love it and pray for big success.

I also do understand about turning your website programs over to someone that can handle it...I just turned over my booking I spend more time trying to figure out quick books and not time doing other things that drive my business. She is new and offered me 3 mths for FREE can you believe that she is in my networking circle. But she is great!

Be blessed in all you do. I think one thing is for certain, Put God first in your life and good things will happen. I am preaching to myself! lol..

I'm hoping that one was meant to be!

I took another course at the success academy last night and today. A review of some stuff I knew and several things I didn't! Making an updated calculation sheet for investment properties! This should help when choosing which properies to invest in should we choose a multiplex.

Had another realtor call me off the ad I posted in Craigslist, seems like he will be the one! Although when I talked to him I had a brain fart and couldn't think of a word I wanted to say while on the phone with him, I must have sounded so stupid!

I gave the other realtor a list of 20 properties to make an offer on and haven't heard anything from him for a week. I'm calling him today to see what is going on, and if he's not interested, moving on.

The next thing I'm working on is cousin's property sold or getting some more rent. His property manager really messed him up. He had a valid contract for $1200 a month and the property manager convinced him to override the rental contract and reduce the rent to $1000/month. My cousin thought it was temporary, and was only for Oct - Jan. Well, come to find out the property manager made it permanent for the rest of the contract. He will not be out of the listing and property management contract with that property manager until 8/31. I read over all the documents and there was no reason that the rent had to be reduced; but the property manager and her broker convinced my cousin if he didn't agree to the reduction, he'd probably go months on end without a tenant. Keep in mind, this tenant had already signed a year contract from Aug 09 to aug 10 for the $1200.

Anyhow, he's taking a $500/month loss and whenever the tenants clog the drain with their hair, he's footing the bill for it! I've gave him a lot info, and helped him to set off some of his expenses with some tax info and telling him about talking to his bank about forbearance. Once he's out of contract with his realtor (and his tenant's contract), I already have several buyers and lease to owns lined up to look at the property. But, due to it being under contract, I can't pursue until the contract is up at the end of August. Its frustrating because he's been so under represented and he's paying 10% every month for this 'service'. When I looked at the documents I couldn't believe how they worded it to make out like he couldn't get a tenant for months! He's right near Moody AFB! Having another property near a military base, I know better! Having property near a military base is a goldmine in disguise. Of course, the agent is marketing in local newspapers and not utilizing the many resources out there to market to military members. My cousin did NOT read his documents thoroughly and put his trust fully in his property manager to manage his house.

I will keep updated on that!

I wanted to separate this entry. I purchased a system to help me find private money lenders. SAAWWWWEEEETT system! It has some drawbacks that I've found, but for the most part, it has such awesome potential! I have so many private lenders in my area to pursue, its PHENOMENAL! I'm on my way UP!

I would fire the property manager..And if the agent misrepresented him in any way, they can be sued. If that is the case and shady dealings are going on, Fiduciary Trust is broken and is a violation. Look up the term. Got a call from a Realtor today that is willing to look up people in pre-foreclosure and making some calls. I told her I was willing, if I can find the right properties to close as many as possible. And would give her 500 for every deal I close.

is not going well! Can't find an escrow company to do assignment or that even knows what a land trust is. Thought I'd found that perfect agent, but he won't do an offer with the trustee vesting! He's also telling me about all these great deals and then can't give me the address until I sign a buyers contract with him saying I pay a fee of $595 per transaction (at first he sent me one of 3% of sales price!!!!!) as the buyer, and if I assign it I have to get my buyer to sign a new one. Crazy. What's going to stop my buyer from going directly to him (he's also an investor), not to mention how in the heck do I tell my buyers, oh yeah, you need to also pay my agent an extra $595 fee. He won't work it so that I give him the fee eeither. Called the academy on it, they said don't sign it, and they get paid from the sellers (of course, I knew this, but thought I'd ask if this is something common for investors). And I understand his point; he's been duped a couple of times where investors went straight to the listing and bought direct from the listing agents. And I told him I'd pay him a % of my profits or try to work it out another way. FINALLY BUDGED (UPDATED); says his broker requires it, but now will allow me to pay the fee and add it to my assigning fee. Then he says the deals are already under contract. Feels like he's ghost ad ing them to me. *sigh*

I finished listening to Think and Grow Rich, am going to listen to it again, but in the interim I ran across a boxed real estate program that goes for what I though would be a cool couple of hundred dollars new at a garage sale. Bought the whole lot for $20. Now, I read KimmyJ's post about land trusts months ago, but just looking at one of the folders caught my eye, all about land trusts. How to do them myself, all the forms to do it, all the instructions on how to do it, and an 8 CD audio version... In the car it went!

AMAZING INFORMATION! I'm going to be changing vesting on EVERYTHING I own, including my cars! Such amazingly valuable information, I got a gold mine at that garage sale! And, I have 14 other courses that were included with it, all with CDS! (which I didn't know at the time because I didn't really look over them all that well, just opened one and perused it briefly.) The guy speaking on land trusts is Louis Brown, looked it up online, this is the exact program I bought(http://www.streetsmartinvestor.com/). FOR $20... the WHOLE system. $20... System sells for .....

$9500 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

***FELL ON FLOOR***

and just in case you missed it $9500.00 NINETY FIVE HUNDRED, Nine Thousand five hundred dollars

Ok, so his son bought this course a few years ago and he lost interest. MAN! I feel like I just did my first deal.

Well, my first website is almost complete... actually, not the first one I started working on, but one of the more important ones I believe. www.InvestmentsBackedByRealEstate.com. That's my son and older daughter when they were little and playing on the computer (who are now 10 and 11) on the home page. ) Check it out and please leave me some feedback.

I'm going to start really marketing that site next week. The second one is almost complete at www.ZionFreeHomeownerVideos.com. This is my automation site, to help bring in some deals and find buyers while I ... have kids crawling on me, screaming, or showing me a pretty flower, or cleaning up after the kids, or doing the filing, paying the bills, scolding the kids, cleaning up after the kids, organize (an ongoing task), potty train, teach, telling my 3 year old, no it is NOT ok to go outside naked, clean up the entire dresser drawers she went through and dumped on the floor while I decided to try to go check email, scratching kids backs, telling my 1 year old its not ok to pull the kitties tail and he doesn't like that, go crazy, pull my hair out.... you know, the normal daily stuff (that my husband tells me is doing nothing all day), where its difficult to squeeze the real estate prospecting into.

The other 2 I bought through quicken and vistaprint and the darn things keep having errors and I've about given up on them. Then there are 3 others I'm working on too. I know with my constraints of always having kids climb on me, my best bet at marketing to people is through websites and then talking to them only after they're well screened.

Working with Kevin still on finding a deal in KY to do a JV with. LOTS to choose from and all great potential to generate $$$! {:-) I smell the deal. We're going to put in several offers next week, that's my goal. Ones on auction (as are several more)

I know it's been a ride so far, ups and downs, but when we take off, it will be phenomenal! You are such a Godsend to me, your kids are cool! $$$ money cometh! Believe that, but it's not just about $ It's about helping others, when you do that, great things will only happen! Be blessed and keep on pushing!

you are doing such an awesome job! way to work around all the challenges.

Kevin, we'll find the right one, with all the ones your finding, there's bound to be that one waiting for us.

Appreciate your encouragement Linda.

So, this agent I'm talking with is opening up more to my suggestions and telling me about how he started and his endeavors. I'm still hesitant to sign that document just yet. I want to make sure he'll work for me though, and not set the terms of what I can and can't do. I think my next order with him will be to give him these 30 listings I want to make lowball offers on.

The last agent I did that with decided it was too much work and never got back to me. These are a list of properties in an area I'm looking for one for a guy that is not really in my target area, and the guy hasn't given me POF yet. This guy still insists he needs my buyers POF before he'll do offers though, and they must be from a reputable bank, so I don't think I'll get too far with this agent, we'll see.

He wants with all offers FICO/Prequal or bank statement or other POF, and EMD of $500-1000. So, I'm not too thrilled. He says he'll submit with lower EMD but I'll be blackballed for it. I think I'm gonna send him to this site because he's got potential. I'll keep finding out more before I sign.

i was able to pull up your website with the videos, but not the other one. what you have looks great. the agent you are talking about makes me very uncomfortable. i know i'm a brand new realtor, but i would be very careful of making any kind of commitment to just one agent. as a buyer, you should be able to work with as many agents as you want. an investor friend in my REI club has an agent he has worked with for a few years now and is very pleased with her. but, he is getting so busy that eventually she won't be able to keep up and he may add me to his team. if you have to be exclusive with one agent, you can't do that. my agency charges a transaction fee of $195.00, but any higher than that is outrageous. i think i would find someone else. i'm very picky who i work with but i do my best to be fair too. makes me wonder if he doesn't have enough business and is trying to make you pay for that???

Tammy I know I am new but I agree with Linda that is a steep price and to want to be exclusive what if he does not produce and what is the time frame. And if so then he better do whatever legally you need him to do.

But regardless of that you are doing some great stuff and I love that g-sale find yeah you!!!!!!!I recently listen to "The Richest Man in Babylon" OMg Outrageous, I have not listen to "think and Grow rich" that will be next downloading it to the IPod....if I can get it back from my teenager...I bought me a Itouch just to listen to books and pod cast well everytime I look for it she has it and it is filled with her stuff......I tell you nothing is mine around here. Oh my sidebar....Silly me!

Well anyway Tammy you are blazing the REI trail.

to contact that realtor back.

And, I'm starting to make offers on the properties for my friends who are buying their first home. The best option for them is to buy it in a trust, so I'll get my first experience using a trust. Most of the homes they're interested in are short sales, and well, we all know that only 1 in 15 short sales close, so we're going to do multiple offers. If one goes, that's all we'll need.

Now, on this one I plan to only make the minimum 1K to qualify as a deal through the success academy and have to figure out how to do the paperwork so I can get the 1K directly from him. He's doing a ton of construction work for me because he's a general contractor and that's how I'm getting my 1K, so I'm not sure how to make that all legal to count for my first deal. Its the experience I'll get out of it that's important.

Also working on my cousin's house in GA. Prior to contacting me, the property manager sent him a letter to renew his lease for $1300 (still losing $200/month) and he accepted a few days ago as he is letting his property manager/realtor go. So, he really wants to sell so I'm going to suggest we talk to his renter about a lease to own. We'll see how it goes.

I used a marketing fee contract between the buyer and the seller(seller paid)pretty much the same as a bird dog fee. Sent in the contcrat with property information and a copy of the check and that counted with PMI. Maybe you could do that some how.

Michael Mangham
MD Home Acquisitions LLC

Well, the worst thing that could happen for my business thusfar has happened. My hard drive on my main business computer is failing. I've done so many documents, notes, legal forms, advertising, website banners, etc that have taken my time over the last couple of months. I just found out my backup drive hasn't been working for a couple of months. I'm going to lose everything. I can still turn on the computer, but it has to be in safe mode. I'm using my personal Mac right now, but unfortunately, NONE of my business stuff is on the Mac. *SIGH* or my email. I am seriously bummed out right now. I have such limited time as it is but the thought that I might have to redo everything has me almost catatonic.

I am so bummed. I run my business off the computer, so for now I am working to fix it. It won't even let me run a defrag or chkdsk. I've tried everything I know to fix it to no avail for over 3 days now and I'm getting nowhere. And, I can't get it to recognize by backup drive to save all my files and work.

I know this seems like a silly thing to pray for, but PLEASE pray that everything backs up. This, just as I'm working on 3 deals, 1 with Kevin, 1 with my cousin and 1 with a good friend. I feel so helpless. Any techies out there have a magic trick? I need to mirror my harddrive before it completely dies; is there a nonexpensive way to do it? I'm hoping there is.

And, today was the release of SIMS2, and I totally missed out on it. *sigh* I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Have you tried system restore? If not go to start and look around for system restore. Once it is restored (hopefully) go get a zip drive and then have your computer looked at. Hope this helps!

Lea

Ok, did you try to go to a restore point? will it let you clear you cashe out? call me if you want too and I will try and walk you through some things. Is it saying your memory is full? I'm here for you partner.. Don't let it get you down, I have access to that site with the SIMS2 so we are set on that.. Dean has got something in the works for us, it was on his video today. Stay focused and stay positive. I am here for you. Kevin

I feel so silly, but I actually had NEVER created a restore point so I couldn't use that option! You bet I did now! But, I ran every diagnostic out there, and The BIOS one analyzing my hard disk said 'replace hard drive'. So ,I'm still trying to do some fixes to see if I can't get rid of any bad sectors. This computer is only 2 years old, the hard drive shouldn't be gone yet.

Whoever prayed, THANK YOU! I got ALL my files back up (on the external hard drive AND the internet... ) I thank GOD for this small favor! I couldn't be more grateful than I am right now! A seemingly small and insignificant blessing, but not taken for granted! That's for sure!

Thanks for letting us know you got your files back - yippee!! Whew! I think most of us have had that sinking feeling when we turn on our computer and it has issues. You just reminded me to put everything on a flash drive at least once a week. Thanks! Will do that today.

Lea

Hey, you don't need to create a restore point, the computer does that anyway. It should ask you to restore to an earlier time, if not, there should be a calendar, drop down box that you could select from. ??? I need to come there and fix it for you lol , LOL ... be blessed.

my system restore is here: start/control panel/systems/system restore is then one of the tabs. hope that helps some.

Now that says a lot. When I bought the computer, I requested that it have XP, because I've had my XP on my old computer forever and it never caused me too much problems. Vista... is, well Vista. It doesn't create its own storepoints and I didn't make one prior, so I don't have one. I've narrowed it down to hard drive failure the though through my BIOS, and I've tried everything to repair the hard disk, and nothing is working, so its a new harddrive for me. I have to mirror my existing drive contents onto it and then make the new hard drive the main hard drive.

Thanks for all the help, the hard drive can't really be restored. Back in the day there was disk doctor. I need to try to look it up (my computers been crashing every 10 - 15 minutes, that's why I've only been around sparsely. It'll get fixed though, and I'll come back with a vengeance!

Because all of a sudden I can not send emails due to sending to many. I only send about 10 a day from my accounts. My computer has not been able to complete a full virus scan since 5/5. I'm thinking about all the passwords I have out there that are vulnerable. This is overwhelming and scary. All my financial information is at stake. I hope I have better news tomorrow!

I hope you have better news tomorrow too!!

I know that sounds like something that people just say....but, sister He is right there with you and He will take care of every obstacle that satan is trying to put in your way.......His word says that He will make every crucked path straight and this is one of them.

I'm still working on the computer, but I bought a mini laptop for the kids and am going to take over their computer and get all my business files over to it. They were really excited about getting the mini, so its a win/win and about the same price it would be to have someone look at it, and/or replace the hard drive and/or replace the motherboard.

There are some fishy things going on with it, because every now and then in the BIOS (this is before opening windows if someone isn't familiar) it PASSES the hard drive test after failing it and saying 'REPLACE HARD DRIVE'. This suggests that there could be a problem with the motherboard as well.

I took a week trying to fix it, and the minis aren't too expensive, so I've moved on, and spending time setting everything up. But, had to come to the DG site to catch up,

PS Kevin, I'll call tomorrow. Cell wasn't charged, and because its a new cell I don't have a car charger! I'm keeping my lips zipped and praying

with limited computer access. I'm in the process of transferring everything over. Then, I do a darn Windows update on the computer. BAMMMM! Blue screen error, dumps info and then shuts down repeatedly. SO, I go to my restore point and it won't restore from the one I made. Had to go to one the computer generated. And start nearly over again. Boy, I hate Windows now more than EVER! If it weren't for all my files being in Word, Excel, Access and Publisher, I'd RUN as fast as I could from anything remotely related to Windows. I best make a list of everything I've done to keep me on track because my discouragement is an an all time high.

Looked up the emails with the following software and added it:
-Quicken 2010 Rental Property Manager
(and their Willmaker Plus and Business Legal Forms Plus)---did these twice
-Turbo Tax Business (awaiting response on email to get state download part again for free)
-Turbo Tax Personal (got response back and access to my state program again)
-Registry Mechanic (twice)
-Set up my tempermental Lexmark Printer (had to try 12, yes 12 times before it would work..... THEN after the restore, did it over again)
-Added my antivirus software
-Added MS OFfice Enterprise (TWICE)
-Configured all my personal and business email accounts to Outlook
-Order Online backup storage because I'm having trouble with the external backup drive being connected to the newer computer.
-Emailing backup company because they did not increase the size of my storage after I paid
-Called a couple of places to get quotes on fixing the computer. (It was indeed cheaper to buy the mini laptop for my kids)
-Am reading how to transfer all my outlook settings including all the rules I'd created to automatically file all the incoming mail.
-Constantly trying to run more backup on the old computer as it crashes. I have a fan running under it and have managed to keep it going for over 2 hours at a time sometimes. (A miracle in of itself)
-Sent an email about getting the software for the backup drive to work on the newer computer.
-ReRan several more diagnostic tests on the original laptop
-Redid my signature.
-Sent an email to MS Windows about not being able to do an update and having to do a restore every time I try.
-Send an email because I bought the online backup under my business and had the free trial stuff going to my personal and it won't let me change the backup plan to the business one. *grumble*

REAL ESTATE RELATED:
-Have talked to Kevin a few times about the house we have an offer in on.
-Posted here a few times and read a few posts.
-Talked to 2 more agents (NO GO)
-Read a couple of pages in my private money course, but haven't done too much computer related.

Pretty limited.

SIGH.. it sucks to lose so much time from setting up the REI business. Thank the Lord for this site and Kevin and our offer (which WILL be accepted... thinking positive). I think that and coming here is the only thing keeping me motivated right now, because I'm so FED up dealing with computer issues!

one step at a time, be patient, persist, and in the end it will pay off, still no word from the agent, called and spoke with him he said banks sometimes take 2-3 business days, you know, what I don't understand is, if you owe them money, they will hound you like no one's business, when you put an offer in, you are on there time. Stay focused! I'm just a call away for help.

In case you don't know, that means private money lender. I'm so excited, I have my first PML asking me to present my company and projects to them. I'm scared but prepared! I'm not a very good presenter. This could open up a WHOLE world of opportunities. I've been preparing for this moment, but I feel like a deer in headlights. Yikes!

I'm slowly getting back up to speed with the computers. My external hard drive, which only gets turned on when I connect it for a backup is acting up and not reading correctly. So, I'm backing up online. At 1G a day and 120 GB its going to take forever. So, I'm doing it the hard way. USB card. And the largest I have is a 4GB. But, I don't want to lose my files, so its worth it.

Happy investing everyone! IT is CERTAIN I will succeed!