Foreclosure Web Profits

A few years ago, I wrote a post about how to get more value out of LinkedIn, but I really haven’t given enough love to the site since them…  And I have an idea for how to change that.  Starting this week, I’m going to start writing one recommendation each week.

I’m starting this “recommendation” project with Kris Berg because she’s one of my favorite people in the world of real estate…  (Plus she doesn’t have many recommendations on LinkedIn which is a true shame!   If you know and like her, you should stop reading this post and head over to her profile and write a recommendation for her as well!)

Why commit to writing a weekly recommendations?

I have two purposes:

1. It’s fun.  I really do enjoy the process of complementing folks who I’ve enjoyed working with and wish I did more of it.
2. I want to play more with LinkedIn as a sphere building tool, but don’t want to dedicate a ton of time to the project.  I’m guessing I can knock out a solid recommendation in less than 20 minutes a week.

With that said, there’s so much more to LinkedIn these days with groups, Q&A, job opportunities, etc. that I’m sure there’s much more I *could* be doing.     If you have a more effective way to use LinkedIn, please share!  ;)

I’ve been working with the NAR team to put together a WordPress event at NARdiGras, and couldn’t be more excited that we’re ready to start announcing details!

In a nutshell, we’ve broken the half-day event into two tracks — one for beginners and one for more advanced WordPress users — and the folks we’ve agreed to present are some of the most knowledgeable WordPress people in real estate.  All the sessions will be be on the morning of Monday, November 8th.

Below is a summery of the schedule, although this page on the NARdiGras site will quickly become the definitive source of all session information soon!

Track 1: An Introduction to WordPress

• 9 to 10am: Getting Started, by yours truly
• 10:15 to 11:15: Leveraging Plugins and Themes, by Reggie and Nicole Nicolay
• 11:30 to 12:30: Community Building Strategies, by Dale Chumbley

Track 2: Maximizing WordPress

• 9 to 10am: Customizing WordPress by Kelley Koehler
• 10:15 to 11:15: Integrating Real Estate Tools by Steve Zehngut
• 11:30 to 12:30: Improving Conversations Through Optimized Landing Pages by Gahlord Dewald

The idea is that if you’re relatively new to WordPress (and even if you don’t have a wordpress site yet!), you should be able to leave the first track with enough knowledge to feel comfortable setting up a site and have an idea for what a successful website marketing strategy would look like.

For those who are comfortable blogging, Todd Carpenter is going to be hosting the Maximizing WordPress track. With Kelley, Steve and Gahlord as presenters, you’re sure to get tons of tools and strategies to take your online marketing to the next level.

I couldn’t be more excited to be heading to New Orleans again and look forward to seeing you there!

It’s Not Your Fault the Government Caused This Real Estate Disaster… But you can make a fortune from it when you know what to do. Please Read on…

St Louis Mo July 12, 2010- With bank owned real estate becoming an unnerving standard in the US economy, many investors have responded by trying to capitalize on obvious potential, but unfortunately running into unexpected obstacles either from a lack of real estate market knowledge or perhaps from being misinformed by the hundreds of questionable infomercials promising millions to new investors.  Mark Bradley, professional commercial and residential real estate investor, begins his new ‘buy bulk REO properties’ campaign describing what events lead up to his discovery of the profit potential in bulk REO real estate, and how he can help other investors easily find significant profit in bulk REO properties themselves.

According to Realty track, the figures below describe the current real estate market:

• 1 in every 399 housing units went into foreclosure May 2010
• 322,920 new foreclosures filed.
• California, 72,030 foreclosures.
• 2,075,563 Foreclosed Homes Nationwide.

44,623 foreclosure sales may 2010These figures indicate that, on average, 278,297 bank owned properties currently remain unsold, and over 300,000 new listings will be added to the bank inventory of REO properties each month.  Bradley, a commercial and residential real estate investor, comments that on his company website, he has posted videos describing his experience of being introduced to the market, and how he has finally found a way investors can take advantage of the back log of bank owned REO properties.

To uplift the economy, banks must rid of the excess unpaid mortgages from foreclosures quickly, and have resorted to market-bottom prices, which ideally promise opportunity to real estate investors.  The problem investors commonly ran into was an unresponsive market unwilling to purchase the REO properties the investors sunk time and money into.

Bradley explains that four years ago, due to mounting tax pressure and suffering from burn out after divesting many real estate properties, running multiple companies, managing 20 to 30 employees within each company, and finding no time for his four children, he chose to downsize from the corporate world to a home office after seeing many TV and Internet ads promising fortunes to those who invested in short sales and foreclosures.  As a current real estate professional, he thought that the real estate market decline potentially meant profit and more time with his high school-aged children.

Bradley, like many in his shoes said, “If they can make a million dollars with foreclosures I can too!”

With college tuitions looming, and a college fund already depleted to the point where money needed to be acquired immediately, Bradley invested in dozens of short sale books, foreclosure courses, and attended expensive seminars from the most popular foreclosure gurus.  Two months into consuming all of the informational resources Bradley found available, the market faced the worst downturn.

Bradley started with a few investment deals buying REO properties.  “Buying short sales and foreclosures was a lot of work.  Emphasize lots!” says Bradley.

On top of the work required, Bradley opposed capitalizing on homeowners experiencing distress and devastation.  Even though real estate investors were providing assistance when buying REO real estate, being under financial strain with his own children’s tuitions, Bradley sympathized with the fear and frustrations these homeowners experienced.  Bradley found himself befriending homeowners and becoming a counselor figure.  Unfortunately, he found that counselors didn’t get the property deals.

After experiencing the same frustration that many new investors do trying to find the best deals, Bradley grew wary of investing in another property should the market drop another 20%, and he found hesitation in the government’s actions in mortgage intervention.  He feared that President Obama would outlaw mortgage interest deduction for homeowners.  Suddenly Bradley faced three college tuition deadlines.  He had to do something quickly, and he still believed that investing in bank owned real estate had the financial potential he imagined from the beginning.

After already having spent tens of thousands of dollars on short sale seminars, courses, and book, Bradley faced financial despair.  The short sale guru’s had failed to mention that the millions promised to him “could take up to one year of more to do just one short sale deal and that’s if the planet’s are inline,” says Bradley.
Bradley took an entire new approach instead of focusing on time consuming short sale deals.
In the next press release, Bradley describes how he broke down the time consuming short sale business into a 5 steps. If you fail to complete any of these 5 steps it is impossible to make any money in short sales.

For more information, go to http://www.ultimatebulkreo.com/ and get the four video series on how to make $997,323 in equity on one deal with Bulk REO Investing and the 34-page, Top Secret Bulk REO Insider Secrets Profit Guide.

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I know I’m a bit biased because the Inman team has been good to me, but I really love the Real Estate Connect events.  So much fun!  And a day after hosting the WordPress Workshop I’m just now coming down off the high.

Here’s a few of the photos I took of the session!   So much fun!

The entire workshop was recorded and I’m pretty sure will be available to Inman News subscribers in the near future…  Such an awesome group of presenters.  Thanks to all!

Here was the workshop schedule along with links to learn more about the various speakers:

Feels like it’s been “WordPress-all-day, Every-day” lately! One of the things I’m most excited about is hosting the WordPress WorkShop at Real Estate Connect in a few weeks!

The Inman team did a fantastic job lining up speakers (Check ‘em out: Chris Pearson, Peter Ricci, Reggie Nicolay, Justin LaJoie, Chad Parizman,Todd Carpenter, Niall Kennedy, and Jane Wells! Wow! )… and it made me realize how much I needed to play with WordPress again!

The result: I completely new 4realz.net!

Just some of the things I wanted to accomplish with this new theme include:

• Really wanted a much cleaner look that didn’t feel overwhelming.   It’s not in my personality to get too simple, but I knew I could do a much better job!
• I wanted to play with the concept of a WordPress child theme… so I started with Twenty Ten as my “base” so I’d have built in access to some of the more interesting new features!
• I thought I would focus the homepage on a few key areas that drive the most of my business… i.e. my speaking and consulting.

The result is that after more than a few hours, everything is “working” well enough to write this post (although I’m far from done with what I plan to do!).

Some of the changes I made:

• The homepage is now a “static” page that uses the Smooth Slider plugin to highlight “featured posts”.  I figure these are probably more relevant to someone who is new to my site.
• I added a bit about myself to the homepage and filled out a bunch more on a page I call My Story.  This is the part of the page I’m least “sure” of, but I think I like it and I’ll just have to look at the stats to see if others who land on 4realz find it interesting to learn a bit more about me… and the story itself is far from “complete”. I’m hoping to add some more photos and details over the next few days, weeks, and years!  :)
• I changed with the operation of the default “header” graphic on the theme. By default, there is no header graphic!  However, it’s really easy for me to use the “set featured image” to add one, although the only place I’ve done that so far is on my speakers page.
• I added a few things to the footer that I thought people might find interesting… like the Google Voice “call me” button, a twitter feed of @tyr mentions and my latest blog posts.

While I like I’m at a spot where the current theme is an improvement over the last, there are still a few things I’m hoping to do in the near future:

• Revising the page on Agent Marketing Tools to better reflect my current approach… and in particular, my thoughts on the Agent Business Cycle.
• Add more header graphics to specific pages
• Improve how I track conversions on the page… I’ve worked with more than a few clients to use Google Analytics to track conversions, but I’ve never done much beyond adding the GA code to 4realz.  I’m going to change that and play a bit more going forward!
• (not 100% sure about this one)… I’m thinking of using the new MU-style hosting that’s available with the standard WordPress to host some of the “other” wordpress sites that are currently on my server.  I’m not sure I want to take the time, but Boone Georges sure does make the multisite option look tempting.

In terms of what I learned by hacking away at a WordPress theme…   I was super-impressed with just how easy the entire process was… and, in particular, how easy it was to build a child theme off of twenty ten.  The WordPress team has done an awesome job with the child theme functionality!

If you made it this far in the post, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the new theme!  :)