Or rather, we’ll teach you what we know from our personal experience, and other investors in the Network will teach you from theirs. And we’ll all learn together. That’s what this Network is all about!
Get inspired! Free real estate seminar next Saturday, November 14th, 9:30am to around 3pm at the Iron Skillet Restaurant, Petro Plaza, Highway 315 in Dupont, PA. Pre-register by leaving a message at (570) 798-7051. I wrote about our seminar in detail in last week’s blog post. Check it out here: http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/moving-forward-to-success-come-with-us
My husband, Steve Franco, wanted to start a real estate investors association for entreprenuers, because there wasn’t one in this area. Fellow local entrepreneurs Matt Whitney and Beau Cotes were instrumental in helping him getting Investors Network NEPA off the ground. Matt specializes in flipping houses and reselling them as rent-to-own properties. Beau is a finance guy. Raphael Norat is an investor from New Jersey interested in buying and holding rental properties in NEPA, and also flipping houses for retail sale here and in Jersey. Sherri Silvestre is a Bird Dog and Wholesaler. They've all contributed to the Network. New people are joining every week. There’s a diverse amount of experience in the room. Some have no experience at all, and are just coming out of curiosity. That’s fine. Welcome!
You should come to an Investors Network NEPA meeting if:
*You want to flip houses like they do on all those A&E reality shows. This is why most people come, and the main reason Steve wanted to start the network. There was no meeting for people who wanted to flip houses in NEPA. He had to travel to the Lehigh Valley or New Jersey to network with like-minded entrepreneurs. Those meetings were worth the trip – you learn so much more from talking to real people who have successfully flipped a real house than from those highly edited TV shows. You also meet people who can help you find the money to do the flip – private lenders, not banks, are the primary source of flipping funds. You’ll get good referrals for contractors, real estate agents, title companies and everything else you need to build your team. You’ll also learn about some alternative exit strategies if a property doesn’t sell like you thought it would.
*You want to buy and hold rental properties, and manage those properties yourself. In which case you should go back and read all the archives in this blog, because that is precisely what my husband and I started out doing. We are only now beginning to move away from managing our own properties, because we have too many of them and the work of management is preventing us from doing other things in the real estate arena. It’s been a long hard road but I’d do it all again in a heartbeat. I still believe rentals are the surest way to build long-term wealth as well as immediate monthly income, and that is the path to financial freedom. I wrote a 9-part series on how we began our business as rental property owners. Start with part 1 here: http://thisgingerjustsnapped.weebly.com/blog/how-it-all-began-part-1
If your properties are in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area you should also attend Jim Yarwood’s monthly Wyoming Valley Real Estate Investors Association meeting. They meet the last Tuesday of the month, 7:30pm at Wyoming Valley Church in the Dolphin Plaza on Highway 315 in Wilkes-Barre, just past the Woodlands on the way to Pittston. You’ll meet several people in that meeting who are successfully managing a slew of their own properties, as well as the casual landlord who may have one or two places to rent out.
*You want to own rental property, but don’t want to manage it. In fact, you don’t want to even know it exists, except once a month when your property manager sends you (hopefully) a large check with your profits. You’re going to need to put together a team of trusted people to make this happen for you. The best way to do that is by networking. We come together to find solutions. And if you read this blog, you know my husband and I are still looking for this solution ourselves! We’ll let you know what’s worked for us, and what hasn’t.
*You want to invest in real estate, but you have no desire to flip a house or be a landlord. You just want to make money. You can make 8 to 15% on your money by backing someone else’s investment with a private money loan. You can make much more if you actually take title to the flip, although your risk increases. Come to the seminar Saturday – Beau Cotes is the financial genius in our group and he’ll be talking about this first thing in the morning session at 9:30am. “Lazy Money” is money that’s sitting in a low-yield savings account earning diddly over squat. If you are lucky enough to have a problem like that, real estate investing may be a great solution! And it gets you in the game without getting your hands dirty.
*You have no money, iffy credit, are in a bad financial situation and think real estate may be the answer you’re looking for. The best thing about groups like Investors Network NEPA is they raise your mindset. Suddenly you see possibilities when all you saw before was poverty, debt and a dead-end job. You start thinking like an entrepreneur. The gurus all say you are the sum of the 5 people you spend most of your time with. If you’re spending all of your time with people who are in crappy financial straits, then… I’m not saying dump your friends! There’s more to life and relationships than money, that’s for sure. What I’m saying is if you don’t like where you are right now, start also hanging around with people who are living something closer to the life you want. You can start off as a Bird Dog, sniffing out motivated sellers of properties that more experienced investors will pay you a couple hundred bucks for. We’ll teach you how to do that. You can try your hand at Wholesaling – being that investor who puts the deal together, matching up a motivated seller with an investment buyer. That pays a couple thousand dollars, depending on the deal. A lot of people start off this way when they have no money. It’s a good way to get in the game and get some experience, make some connections. Then when they’ve earned enough money to improve their financial situation, and there’s some left over, they move on to flipping houses and/or buying rentals.
Check out our cool new website to connect real estate entrepreneurs and investors in Northeastern Pennsylvania: www.investorsnetworkNEPA.com We’re also on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/investorsnetworknepa/
The website is so new, it’s not completely finished. We’re looking for feedback on ways to make it better. Its purpose is to create an online community for real estate entrepreneurs specific to NEPA. You can post properties for sale or for rent. You can connect with others on social media and message boards. We want to build up a resource where our group can go if they need a good contractor, handyman, attorney, title agent, realtor – kind of an Angie’s List for our needs.
The new website will be the main topic of our meeting Wednesday night, how we can all use this connection tool to make our lives and our deals easier. Amazing things happen when real estate entrepreneurs band together in the name of profit. There’s an unspoken rule – if I make money, everyone who helped me makes money, too. There really is enough to go around. It’s a culture of abundance!
*Investors Network NEPA regular meeting: Wednesday, November 11th at 7pm at the Iron Skillet Restaurant, Petro Plaza, Highway 315 in Dupont, PA.
*Free real estate seminar next Saturday, November 14th, 9:30am to around 3pm, same location. Pre-register by leaving a message at (570) 798-7051.
www.investorsnetworkNEPA.com