All those creative real estate seminars, home study courses sitting on your shelf, and countless hours of studying the lessons at CashFlowDepot.com won't do you any good until you put the training in to ACTION!
To help you flex your creative real estate brain, and learn to come up with a variety of solutions to any real estate problem, I started the BRAINSTORMING section in the Forum at CashFlowDepot.com
Each Friday I will post a real estate situation. Your job is come up with a solution to buy and an exit strategy. There is NO RIGHT ANSWER.
Just like any real estate deal, the correct solution is the one that works best for the seller's needs and yours.
The most important aspect of using brainstorming is to get as much participation as possible. To that end, the objective is to try to find as many solutions to what mightseem to be an unsolvable problem as possible from as many points of view aspossible.
Every one is encouraged to role-play to create as many multiple feasible solutions aspossible. Bear in mind that the only nonproductive idea is the one that Is not expressed. Ideas generate new ideas, so the more the merrier. Nobody will be required to defend his or her idea. What we want is as many ideas as possible of every kind as they occur to you.
The key to brainstorming is to avoid judgment as to whether an idea is feasible or not until all possible potential solutions have been extracted.
During the time that any idea is being presented, members will avoid commenting on it either favorably or unfavorably. Instead, when you think an idea will work, either on the class problem, or on any other situation you have encountered, or might encounter, jot it down in the BRAINSTORMING Forum.
This encourages otherwise reticent people to advance their ideas. Ideas can later be critiquedto see if any of them will solve a problem or increase a benefit in order to complete a transaction.
One way to proceed in the creative idea sorting process is to use what Warren Harding called a”T-Bar”. This is a variation on the old Ben Franklin approach in which the various advantages and disadvantages of any decision are arrayed sideby side on a piece of paper and discussed thoroughly to see how well any would work.
As objections are raised, advantages and disadvantages can be compared,and the proposed transaction adjusted accordingly.
It is important to consider the needs and objectives of the seller as well as a buyer. Focus is on “What's in it for me?” “What's in it for them?
Ask yourself “why” either party would enter into a transaction with a solution that might be proposed, and how well it meets their needs.
See the first situation below. Post your solutions in the forum at CashFlowDepot.com or in the comment section below.
SELLER IS STUCK ON PRICE
How would you solve this problem?
The house was vacant. All boarded up. Standing forlorn waiting for a buyer. The courthouse records revealed that the seller, who lived across the country in a distant State, had bought the property at a foreclosure sale for $23,500 a few years before. He'd sold it once for $63,000 on a contract, but, after neglecting the property, the buyer had defaulted on the loan, and the seller had gotten it back.
Now, in its dilapidated condition, the house was only worth about $52,000, but he wanted to sell it for the same $63,000 he'd try to sell it at that price. It stood there unwanted and unlisted. I decided to make a telephone call to the owner. I discovered two things. One of them was that the disabled unemployed owner was going to retire on Social Security in 10 years. He wanted a minimum of $500 per month in the interim to tide himself over. And he had a real emotional fixation on getting $63,000 for the house.
What offer (s) would you propose to this seller? What would your exit strategy be?
