With the huge interest in Cash Flowing Rentals in Kansas City from investors nationwide, I thought it would be interesting to compare it to another rental market I have been seeing promoted on many blogs and websites as a cash flowing market.

I have also included info about the area from which many of our investors come from.

This information is according to Yahoo Real Estate neighborhood profiles.

Kansas City Detroit Los Angeles

Population 450,375 916,952 3,834,340

Population Growth 1.9% -3% 3.5%

Population Density 1424 6265 8388

(residents per sq mile)

Median Age 36 33 34

Medium Income $43,574 $32,426 $42,529

Median Home Age 42 yrs 57 yrs 34 yrs

Median Home Value $146,400 $32,426 $606,375

Ownership % 51.45% 46.05% 36.4%

Rental % 37.04% 38.54% 60.36%

High School Grad 82.9% 69.6% 66%

Unemployment Rate 7.8% 17.7% 7.8%

Returns of 20%-40%, stable economy, availability of affordable housing and an average price of $57,500 for Postive Cash Flowing Properties makes Kansas City a FANTASTIC market to invest in.

Kansas City Investment Properties & Cash Flowing Rentals

Missouri Real Estate Exchange

11333 Hickman Mills Drive

Kansas City, Mo. 64134

Office(816) 761-9400

Fax(816) 761-9401

Toll Free (866) 451-MORE

Email: danreedy@morekc.com

BLOG:  http://activerain.com/blogs/reedy6799

Where should you place your bandit sings and what should you write on them?

First let’s start with what you should write on them and is it better to have them Printed or hand written.

I’ve done both hand written and printed. I think that hand written signs get a better result. Not sure why that is but my thought is people think your not a big company and wont take advantage of them. Try them both and come to your own conclusion.

Now what to put on your sign, its really simply WE BUY HOUSES xxx-xxx-xxxx . That’s all you have to put on there the phone will ring off the hook with all different kinds of situations. People don’t have time to read a book on a bandit signs. Now there is one other phrase I like if your doing Subject To or sandwich Lease option. Which with the economy the way it is right now be careful. For those deals I put

We Buy Homes Little Or No Equity xxx-xxx-xxxx that will make the phones ring too.

Now where to place your signs. The best places for them are at the end of the on ramps or off ramps to major highways. There is a ton of traffic there and they are waiting on the light to turn. Other good places are at stop lights in town make sure you put them on all four corners off the street. You can also staple your signs to the telephone poles or use roofing nails and hammer them on the pole. Your signs will last longer on the poles.

Also make sure were ever you put your signs there is good visibility, you want to make sure that everone can see them.

Make sure to place them on Friday night or early Friday morning around 4:00 am. That’s when I do it. That way you have all weekend for your signs to be seen before the bandit police pull them on you ( city code enforcement ). Most of the time you will get a week out of them. To make bandit signs work you have to put a lot out I’m talking 20-30 a week. I know that sounds like a lot but trust me its worth it.

Good luck till next time.

Sean Marmoy

MOKSRealEstate.com

Bandit Signs are the cheapest and most effective way to market for a beginner by far. Bandit signs, that’s right bandit signs all those plastic corrugated signs you see out there, get it. I prefer hand written to printed signs. I’ve tried them both and the hand written ones are cheaper and work the same or better. You can look for a local place that sells them, 18 x 24 signs work best, get the blank ones. Also make sure what you get stands out too. I always cut then in half. Keep it simple, just put WE BUY HOUSES and your phone #, you really don’t need to put all that other stuff on them. Make sure you use a large permanent black marker. Make sure your words fill the whole sign to make best use of it. Print on both sides unless you are going to put them on telephone pools. You will get all different kinds of calls with different problems with their homes.

Although if you still want to get printed signs or you don’t have a local place here are a couple sites you can get them from. Need signs? Placement of signs is important too. You want to put them in high traffic areas. Like at merger intersections you want to put one on each side of the road. Put them on telephone poles high up so they won’t be pulled down. If you have a subdivision you are targeting make sure you are putting signs at all ingoing and outgoing entrances to the subdivision.
You must be willing to put at least 200 signs a month out to be successful. This shouldn’t cost you no more then 175-225 a month.

Good luck and don’t give up,

Sean Marmoy
MOKSRealEstate.com

There are plenty of ways to find the owners of that little jewel you just found.  We will go over the ones I use the most in this blog.  The first thing you want to do is ask the neighbors around the house.  Tell them you’re an investor in the area and hand them your business card then ask them if they know who owns the house, if they know where the owners live now or have their phone number.  If they seem hesitant tell them your going to ask everyone on the block and the first one that gives you the info will give 20 dollars.

The next thing I do is go to my county web site.  Go to your tax assessor’s site on the county web site.  There you can put in the address and the property will come up.  From there you can find out the property owners name and where the taxes are being sent to.  This is also a good place to find out additional information about the property.

At this point you can either go to the address were the taxes are being sent to and talk with the owner.  See if you can get their phone number from the white pages.

You could put them on your post card list and start sending them post cards.  I make sure to send them 4 post cards in 6 weeks.

If you can’t get their info from the county web site you can send a post card with (Address service requested) on the post card. If none of that works you can go to www.HomeInfoMax.com and for about 20 bucks you can get their info.  Although I would recommend you exhaust all other avenues first.

Good Luck,

Sean Marmoy
MOKSRealEstate.com

There are lot of different ways to do this. I will go over a simple proven method in this blog. You can experiment and let us know what works best for you.

First, what is driving for dollars?  The term diving for dollars came from driving around the area you want to invest in. Another term would be farming the area you are investing in. I prefer to call it driving for dollars.

Things that you will need to do the job.
1.    A mapsco or key map book of your area you can go to http://www.mapsco.com
2.    Note book yellow high lighter
3.    A friend or partner preferable
4.    Digital Camera
5.    Business cards

Ok now that we have all of our material we can get started. You need to pick out 8 to 10 blocks that you want to work in.  Mark it out on your map and choose a starting point. Now take your note book and on the right side and draw a line down the paper about an inch before the side of the paper. In this area you will put a (V for vacant D for distressed R for rental and F for fore sale buy owner) we will get into what all this is for later. Now the reason I like to bring a partner or friend is to write all the info down while you drive and you don’t have to break your neck looking at both sides of the street. The camera is to take a pic of the front of the house to put in to your file so when you  get a hold of the home owner you can look at the pic to give you a better visual of what your talking about.  Business cards are to leave at the vacant properties the owners do come around from time to time.

Now start driving down the street. Make sure you high light all the streets you drive down so you don’t end up back tracking. You are looking for properties that are vacant. How do you tell if they are vacant, if there’s tall grass, gas meter missing , a lot of mail in the mail box , news papers pilled up in the drive way , electric meter missing. These are just a few of the things you can look for. At this point you can take a picture of the front and put your business card in the door. Write the address down and put a V next to it. You might also knock on the two houses next to the house and see if they now were the owner is. You could tell them the first person that can give me the info on the owners and it leads to me buying the property you will give them 250.00 dollars. You are also looking for distressed properties these are properties that have a lot of junk in the yard maybe gutters hanging off property that isn’t taken care of. These properties could be motivated sellers.  You could send them a post card or letter. Which I’ll be going over in another blog.  The properties that have a rental sign in the yards are a hidden gold mind that people over look.. These are sellers and buyers, call the land lords, and ask them if they are in the market to buy or sell. This can help you build your buyers list which we will cover in another blog.  Last but not least the FSBO these properties can be used in a couple ways, you can ask if they will do owner finance in which you could take the property over through owner finance. Or you can match a buyer and seller together and charge a marketing fee.

Make sure you highlight your area you have driven and put your V D R F in the edge of the page to determine which property is what.

Good Luck,

Sean Marmoy
MOKSRealEstate.com

Starting a real estate business can really take a toll on you especially trying to do it part-time with a full-time job and maintaining a family. But if it’s your dream to own a real estate business or buy real estate make sure that you focus on your long-term goal. Don’t get frustrated with the ups and downs, it’s business. Take your time and always try to reinvest capital back into it. The end result may not come 1 year from now, 2 years or even 3. Remember this…BE PATIENT. Take your time with it and make wise decisions based on logic not emotion. Also remember that a business runs itself, if you can leave your business and come back and it’s still making more or just as much money as when you left, it’s a true business, if not you’re self employed. Focus on your 5-10 year vision of a TRUE business, seek counsel and stay consistent by practicing discipline. This will bring you closer to financial freedom day by day.

Happy Investing,
God bless you!

ERNESTO TINOCO
MOKSRealEstate.com

Real Estate is a very secure investment. The ability to collateralize real estate gives you a better chance to leverage off other people’s money. Have you ever gone to your rich uncle for money? Maybe you needed to buy books for school, or pay off some debt. Whatever the reason, there is no better cause for lending you money than buying real estate. Think about it…how does a bank make money? You put thousands in their accounts or cd’s and they give you 1-3% annual return on your money, to then turn around and lend that money at a much higher rate. In other words you lend them very cheap money and they turn around and make it expensive by creating demand. Well let’s see…if I invest $30,000 of my hard earned cash in a cd at 3% for a year I can make a whopping (drum roll)… $900 bucks?! Sorry but your rich uncle is much better off with what YOU have to offer.

Take this for instance: You ask your rich uncle to lend you that same 30,000 to buy and fix up a house, as well as pay any fees involved in the transaction. And then with a well thought out exit strategy you can pay him back in 3-6months (yes it’s possible)…at 10% simple interest. That’s $3,000!!! In max 6 months. Do this twice a year and now you’ve made him $6,000. That’s 20% annual return. Rule of 72 tells us you can double your rich uncles money is 3.6 years. It would literally take you 24 years to do the same at your bank!

Using the right security documents your piece of real estate is collateral in case you don’t pay your uncle back. He just basically cut out the middle man and is making money with his favorite family member!

Remember to always consult an attorney and obtain specialized training before implementing any of the above. It’s not as easy as it sounds, it takes a system and years of knowledge. Not that you have to have all the knowledge about investing using private money. But you do have to surround yourself with those who do.

Till next time,
God Bless!

Ernesto Tinoco
MOKSRealEstate.com

About a year ago I ran into a guy that would go into his county’s Tax Assessors site and search Parcel by Parcel looking for Non-Owner Occupants.  Then he would setup a route and drive directly to these properties.  This may have saved him a little gas but was very time consuming.  So I got to thinking, what if we could automate this search.  I went home and did some experimenting with “Auto-it” (a program I just happened to be using at my J-O-B).  In no time I had figured out a script that would go parcel by parcel and compare the Owner’s name/address to the parcel address.  If they did not match it was marked as Non-Owner Occupant and stored in a database.  I ended up optimizing this script enough that it would run the whole county overnight and have loaded my database with all of the pertinent information for the Non-Owner Occupants.  This list will be much larger than you can imagine.

First thing to do with this list is to contact the Owners of multiple properties and find out if they are interested in your services.  Next find those with just a property or two and setup a route to view these properties.  So its time to start driving for dollars while being a little more targeted.  Don’t forget to continue to watch for additional vacant houses (tax records are not always up to date).  Now you should have a nice long list to start calling on or to take to your investors.  If you are a bit more patient you can also send them a postcard.  They may keep it for when they are ready to sell or pass it along to a friend that is ready to sell.

In this instance I used Autoit, which runs on the screen and does not allow you to do other things while it is working.  This is why I set it up to run overnight.  I have seen programs written it Perl that retrieve email addresses from web sites while working in the background, and they seem to be faster.  Unfortunately I have not worked with Perl, but now have a reason to start learning it.  If you have questions on getting either method to work feel free to email me and I will do my best to help or point you in the right direction.  There are also several Rent-A-Coder sites out there where you can get an experienced programmer to write it for you.  If you are experienced enough with scripts to write this on your own let me know and I will send you one of my current scripts.  Since every county has its own website you will probably need to tweak your script to work in another county.

Driving for Dollars – This is probably the most popular method.  This simply means that you find a target neighborhood and drive street by street looking for vacant houses.  While driving look for missing utility meters, tall grass, no curtains, excess newspapers in the yard, undisturbed leaves/snow, anything that shouts no one has been here.  While time consuming you will most likely find sellers that can easily be motivated.

Networking – Simply talk to everyone you run into whether it be a cashier, waitress or the guy next to you at the pump and make sure you leave them with a business card.  Business cards are very inexpensive, so give them out like candy.  You should never stop networking.  You may not see immediate results here, but you never know when a simple conversation will lead to a potential deal.

Ads and Signs – Whether you place an ad in the local paper, a free listing site on the Internet or on a bandit sign keep it simple.  A simple “We Buy Houses” works that’s why so many people use it.

After you have your list of vacant properties it is time to start locating the owners.  The easiest place to start is the county tax assessor’s web site.  This site usually contains lots of useful information about the property (i.e. # of bedrooms and bathrooms, lot size, zoning, current tax information).  Since a lot of counties are not completely up to date this is just a starting place.  We have a county near where I live that until recently their site said upfront that the data was 2 years old.  Another place to check is with neighbors.  Some locators will even offer cash if the neighbor has the owners contact information and it leads to a deal.

 Remember, this is a numbers game.  The more time you spend and the more houses you look at will result in more deals.  Don’t be discouraged if you don’t find a great deal the first week or even month.  The more you get your name and number out there, the more deals will start finding you.

There are many ways to find Investors and Bird Dogs but they all boil down to Networking.  A good place to start is letting those around you know you are interested in real estate.  You would be surprised with who just happens to have a friend or relative that is already involved in one way or another.  A lot of times WHO you know is just as important as what you know.  Here is a list of some more great ways to make contacts.

• REI Groups     -     These monthly meetings usually include everyone from first time investors to seasoned investors.
• We Buy Houses Ads     -    These signs are all over the place and the ads are in most papers.  Both property locators and Investors use this method to find houses as well as contacts.
• People working on vacant houses     -     Whether these people are investors or not they usually know one or more investors.  Leave them a way to contact you and ask them to pass it along.
• Craigslist or other listing sites     -     You can use these sites to contact people who have listed or you can create a listing telling about yourself and what you are looking for.

Once you find your investor(s) or bird dog(s) you should have a casual meeting and talk expectations.  Remember the bird dog is taking minimal risk but finding potentially great deals for the investor.  So compensation should be fair, if the fee is to high the investor can find properties another way but if it’s to low the bird dog won’t be as motivated.  Some people will recommend you put together a contract (or find one on the internet) to keep things fair and this may not be a bad idea.  Remember though there is no substitution for trust. An investor with a heart of a teacher and a bird dog with an ambition to learn can make a great team. This investor will make good money off this bird dog and probably gain a new perspective. The bird dog will more than likely become a smart investor while learning the ins and outs with minimal risk.