Special Price on Broker Classes at CES

SPECIAL ½ PRICE OFFER ON
BROKER PRE-LICENSE CLASSES!

If you sign up and pay for a broker pre-license class now through the end of December, you can attend either our December, 2009 or February, 2010 broker pre-license class for ½ price. Call us for details as well as requirements to obtain your broker's license. Offer applies to Kansas City, St. Louis or Wichita classes.

Must have 2 years experience as an agent.

More Info


MAREI Next Meeting: Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors meets on the 2nd Tuesday of the month for their vendor hall, networking, and education. Check out the current meeting on this month’s calendar.  December 8th, at the Fox & the Hound

Lowes for Pros

If you are a realtor, you may or may not know about this link:  http://www.lowesrealtorbenefits.com/

This is set up for National Association of REALTORS®, through their REALTOR® Benefits Program, but it seems that just about anyone can actually use the service.

Benefits

• send free, personalized direct mail and e-mail with special Lowe’s coupons to your buyers and sellers
• gives you a 5% discount on Lowe’s gift cards purchased online
• plus free videos, web banners, and Monthly Newsletters.

This is a great tool for investors to send their buyers and tenants coupons to use in their new homes and make you and your company look very professional.
MAREI Next Meeting: Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors meets on the 2nd Tuesday of the month for their vendor hall, networking, and education. Check out the current meeting on this month’s calendar.

Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors and Harvesters Community Food Network

Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors (MAREI) is supporting Harvesters – The Community Food Network, and will sponsor a fund drive from Monday, Nov. 30 through Wednesday, Dec. 23.

Members and friends are encouraged to participate in the drive to help Harvesters’ network feed those in need throughout Kansas City metro area by donating at their local grocery store or going to the Harvester’s web site to donate at http://marei.harvesters.org/


It is hard to believe that in Kansas City and across the country that people are going hungry. But the reality is that there ARE people who are hungry every day in Kansas City. Harvesters and their agencies provide assistance to nearly 60,000 people every week. And half of those are children and the elderly.

A contribution from Nov. 30 – Dec. 23 means much needed help, and hope, will be available to those who need it. And while you can donate items at the local grocery, Harvesters can do a lot more with cash. At the store you can spend $1 and buy maybe up to 3 food items. But $1 donated to Harvester’s combined with the companies they work with can provide five meals. So donating the $1 is much more cost effective than 3 cans of beans.

What’s in it for you? The good feeling of helping out a family in need. And remember, it could be you, your parent, your child or grandchild that needs help tomorrow. And it may be that you help one or more of tenants in your rentals put food on the table so they have the funds to pay for utilities or rent.

Don’t have an extra $1 to donate, then check out their web site to find out how you or your organization can donate time and labor.

For more information about Harvesters, visit http://marei.harvesters.org/.

MAREI Member Resources: Visit for real estate investor articles, real estate investor events, real estate investor properties, investor continuing education, free bonuses, general meeting archives, Kansas City area info, Real Estate Investor Message Board, Newsletter Archives, and more.

National Property Database

National Association of Realtors - NAR recently announced that their Second Century Initiatives include the creation of REALTORS Property ResourceTM (RPR), an online real estate library/archive that will provide real estate professionals with data on every property in the United States.

This will provide access to a national database of property info and provide real estate professionals with the best access to real property information needced to serve their customers.

Database to include: 

• public record information,
• details of prior transactions,
• MLS-provided information,
• zoning information,
• transfer tax information,
• and other relevant information.

More on Realtor.org

Press Release

REALTORS Property Resource™ Fact Sheet

NAR CEO Dale Stinton's Webcast

MAREI Next Meeting: Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors meets on the 2nd Tuesday of the month for their vendor hall, networking, and education. Check out the current meeting on this month’s calendar.

News From Washington for Real Estate Investors

From HUD:  120 day period of restraint for the enforcement of the new RESPA Rules

11.13.09 - HUD has announced it will have a have a period of restraint for 120 days in the enforcement of the new RESPA Rules.  Rule includes:  mandatory Good Faith Estimate and the HUD-1.

HUD Press Release

HUD RESPA FAQs

FHA Removes the Requirement for 2nd Appraisals

11.14.09 - Federal Housing Administration (FHA)  It was announced at the annual National Association of Realtors (NAR) convention in San Diego that FHA will soon remove the 2nd appraisal requirement on some types of loans.  In a letter released from FHA (Mortgage Letter 2009-48) it oulined elimination of the 2nd appraisal on:   loans exceeding $417,00, having an LTV  =/> 95%, secured by properties located in declinging makets.  Requirment retained if property is being sold between 91 days and 180 days after acquistion by the seller, so rehabbers and flippers, you can sell to FHA buyers if you have owned for 90 days, but house will need 2 appraisals.

Mortgagee Letter 2009-48: Second Appraisal Reporting Requirements


Mortgagee Letter 2009-08: Limits on Cash-Out Refinances

Mortgagee Letter 2008-09: Second Appraisal Requirements/Limits on Cash-Out Refinances

Mortgagee Letter 2006-14: Property Flipping Prohibition Amendment


MAREI Member Resources: Visit for real estate investor articles, real estate investor events, real estate investor properties, investor continuing education, free bonuses, general meeting archives, Kansas City area info, Real Estate Investor Message Board, Newsletter Archives, and more.

Holiday Networking Party for Kansas City Real Estate Professionals

Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors or MAREI, in the Kansas City metro area is announcing its December monthly meeting. This will be a purely networking event for real estate investors in the Kansas City metro. This event will take place on Tuesday December 8th from 5:30 pm to 8:00 pm at the Fox and Hound pub at 103rd and Metcalf in Overland Park.


This event will focus on bringing together our members and their guests to discuss the current trends in real estate, services available to investors and landlords, deals, and to ask questions. This meeting is open to all real estate investors, landlords, wholesale investors, Realtors, rehabbers, lenders, mortgage bankers, contractors, insurance providers, staging professionals and more. Experienced investors as well as new investors and people just getting their feet wet in the industry.

Be sure to practice up on your 15 second pitch or elevator speech. Fill your pockets with business cards. And bring a few dollar for a drink and an appetizer. No fee to enter or to join in, open to the general public. Please RSVP on our web site at www.MAREInet.com.



MAREI meets monthly to provide motivation, networking opportunities, and up-to-date education for people who want to buy their own home or investment property in today's real estate economy. Each month, a nationally known real estate investment speaker or local specialist is featured. Real estate professionals, investors, landlords, realtors, contractors, wholesalers, rehabbers, and the general public are invited to attend our monthly meetings for educational and networking opportunities. For more information, please call (816) 523-4400 or visit www.MAREInet.com for more information



About MAREI



MAREI is one of the largest real estate investors & apartment owners & landlord association in the Kansas City Metro area and its mission is to provide educational and networking opportunities as well as business-to-business opportunities for entrepreneurs in the real estate investment community. We're firmly committed to promoting a sound understanding of ethical real estate investing principles and to help further develop our members' investing abilities.

Real Estate Investing - Getting Started

After purchasing your own home, many turn to the idea of owning another or several other homes as a money investment.  As everyone and their brother realizes that real estate and the housing market it way low, many might be a little scared to jump in the investment arena.  However, if with a little education and due diligence, right now is an excellent time to invest in real estate.

Interest rates remain low and have dropped some in the past year.  The number of foreclosur ehomes on the market are going up, which makes the number of deals that are easy to find out about and purchase has lowered the average home prices.  So if you are thiking about jumping into investing in real estate, consider the following.

Financing.

As you invest in real estate, one of the biggest components to profiting is to make sure that you have the property financing ready to go.  Unlike a store where you buy inventory, mark it up and sell it, real estate has a few more components.  first you need to decide if you want to rent the home for a little income now while the tenants pay off your mortgage so you have a nice free and clear investment home at retirment.  Or do you want to flip it for a profit now.  If you are going to flip, and you know you have a great deal that you WILL be able to resell, you may consider using your own cash, a more costly hard money loan, or private lender.  If you are going to hold, you will want to be able to secure a long term, fixed rate loan from a traditional lender, a private individual, or maybe even from the seller.

Get help.

You can't be an expert at everything.  By all means do what you have the knowledge, the talent, and the time for.  But you may find that you can pay someone to fix the toliet and get it done in less than an hour or you could learn how to do it yourself, buy several different parts with several trips to the hardware store, and have it all fixed and working in 3 days.  So if it is not something you know how to do, ask for help, get referrals, and check out prices to make sure you are not paying too much.

Learn your market

Market trends are very important.  If you are going to fix up a house, you need to know what is renting or selling in your area, or you could waste you rmoney on somethign that is no longer in.  Just yesterday we learned that oak is out while dark wood is in, brick is out while tile is in, vanity cabinets are out where furniture look is in.

Manage your Real Estate Investments as a Business

Do not treat it as a hobby or things will end up cosing you more money and time than it should.  Real Estate Investing is a business, so treat it like one.

Education

You have many choices in educating yourself on real estate investing.  These choices range from free online events, to books in the $20 range, events from your local real estate association in the $30 to $100 range, home study courses between $500 and $1000, and then bootcamps from $1000 to $10,000 and even more.  I strongly recommend checking out your local real estate association and accessing all the training they have available before you start spending the big bucks.  Get an idea of what it is you want to do, get focus, do some research and find out what training is recommended by fellow investors at the association, and do some online research before you break out the credit card to shell out $10,000 for training.

You will find a complete list of real estate investment associations from across the country online at http://www.nationalreia.com/.  And in the Kansas City Metro area, we highly recommend Mid-America Association of Real Estate Investors (http://www.mareinet.com/)  Membership in MAREI is just $99 a year and you will reap $1000x in educational materials, networking, and money saving benefits.

MAREI Library

Members of MAREI have access to our library online.  It is jam packed with:

• Past Newsletters
• Articles
• Forms
• Contracts
• E-Books

For a brief overview of topics and Highlights of items in the library, click here.

Incorporation

Do you need to incorporate your business for 2010?

You should always consult with an attorney and your CPA when doing any type of new incorporation.  But if you are bound and determined to do it yourself, MAREI member's can access a do it yourself incorporation kit.  Log into the member's area at http://www.mareinet.com/ and visit the library under asset protection.

I need a mentor . . .

We get request quite often from people looking for a mentor or a coach to help them get started in real estate.  We have looked at starting a mentoring program ourselves, but just can't quite figure out how to add it into our busy schedule. 

But then I look at all the gurus out there who have a mentor program.  For just $5,000 more, or $8,000 more or $10,000 more you to can become a part of a guru's mentoring program.  Now I have never been a student in a mentoring program, but I have been unwittingly conned into being a student in one of these very expensive mentor/coaching programs.

You see they come to town and do the free pitch at the hotel, sell you something small and get you to come to a week end event, sell you something bigger that includes a bootcamp, and then they rope you into the mentor program - these are usually people like Robert Allen, Russ Whitney, Robert Kyosaki.  Now I am not saying these things are bad, but just wanted to share some observations on how the coaching program seems to work from my side.

The student gives my office and I am assuming a bunch of different types of people a call.  It goes something like "I have a coach coming to town next wednesday and he/she has asked me to contact a few realtors/ mortgage people/ title companies/ etc and set up a time for us to meet.  I am building my power team and I wanted to find out more about how you would fit on my team.  Could we come in on Thursday about 2 pm.  I will need about an hour of your time."

Then the student and the coach and about 4 to 6 other students show up in my office.  All have their list of questions, who do you recommend, how do you do this, how do you do that.  It seems to me that I am doing the teaching and the coach is getting paid the big bucks.  So we don't take meetings with these students anymore.  I have yet to have a single one (and we have had a lot of these groups of coaching students through) to actually buy anything. 

No I take that back.  We had a coaching student who actually took action before the coaching week and bought a house from us in advance of the coaching.  The house cost about the same as the cost of the coaching and I know he learned a lot, I don't know if he ever rehabbed and tenanted the house, but he did get a lot of Kansas City connections through us.

So I wanted to give you some options on getting some mentoring for free, or at least for a more economical price that what the gurus want to charge you.

1) Join your local REIA Group:  Kansas City - rest of the Nation
2) If they have a quick start program or a fast start program, go through them asap.
3) Take advantage of all the teleconferences, webinars, workshops, etc
4) Figure out to a small degree what it is you want to do:  wholesale, rehab, landlord
5)  Buy a training program and / or attend a bootcamp (Always try to buy through the local REIA, they can usually get you the best price and free bonuses)
6) Utilize the messasge boards offered by the local REIA and or the Guru whose program you purchased.- and ask questions.  More on message boards in future posts.
7) Get in the game and get your hands dirty!

Expand and Extend the Homebuyer Tax Credit

This is from the Realtor Action Center from National Association of Realtors

Thank you for your continued support to Expand and Extend the Homebuyer Tax Credit.


We need to ask for your help one more time. Please make a quick call to your Senator's office to ask for cloture on the Unemployment Insurance Extension bill that contains the tax credit provision. This cloture vote is scheduled for Monday evening. Sixty Senators must vote yes so that a vote can be scheduled on the tax credit.

Count me in. I am ready to make my call*.

It is easy. Just enter your phone number to be connected to your Senator's office. You will receive a phone call immediately and it will have some handy talking points on what to say before connecting you to their office.*

The vote is on Monday at 5 PM. So if you make the call this weekend, leave a voicemail with the provided talking points. Otherwise, save this email and make the call first thing on Monday morning in order to speak to a member of the Senator's staff.

This call is important. The tax credit will not get voted on unless we can get past this critical legislative procedure. All you need to say once you are connected:

• I am a constituent and a REALTOR®.   (or I am a constiuent and a Real Estate Professional)
• Thank you for helping to ensure the ongoing recovery of the housing market.
• As a member of the National Association of REALTORS®, I appreciate your support to expand and extend the tax credit.   (or as a member of the National Real Estate Investors Association (or your REIA group), I appreciate your support to expand and extend the tax credit.)

The $8000 first-time homebuyer tax credit will end soon. The housing market is stabilizing and improving, but the housing market crisis won't end this year. We can't wait until late in the year to see what happens. Please call NOW and tell your Senators to help get the tax credit to a vote*.

*Standard text messaging fees and rates apply