The Essence of Wealth

As I sit here spending valuable relaxation time with my wife’s family in the small fishing village of Mabayo, Morong, Bataan in the Philippines, I find myself thinking on the value of everything and the Essence of Wealth. I am sitting at the kitchen table in a small house that has been Evelyn’s family home for over 30 years. It is not much, simply 20 feet by about 40 feet. Over the last two months we have added a second floor to the house and they are right now in the process of building the walls and adding the roof to the second floor.

Listening to the villagers’ talk they consider that wealth. For someone to add that much room to their house they must have a ton of money. In actuality the total renovation; consisting of adding the second floor with a bathroom and four bedrooms, has cost around $12,000. Nothing fancy, mind you, but we have doubled the living space of the house. Consider doing that anywhere in the US and you would have to add a zero to the price in even the least expensive area of the country.

Well Evelyn’s father, brother, sister-in-law with their two children lives in the house. It will be a treat for them once it is done. There will be air conditioning and running water once the house is finished. The AC is considered a luxury to everyone in the village. The running water is more practical but not a necessity. Until now they bring pails of water into the house from the pump in the yard and then use a pail to flush the toilet, or shower or wash the dishes. The conditions are primitive by western standards, but normal here. You get use to it. I lived in Japan for almost three years with only drop toilets and cold running water. In actuality there are more people in the world who live like this than there are those that have running water and flush toilets.

The point that I am trying to make is that real estate is the foundation that all true wealth springs. We were visiting with relatives and found that squatters had taken over some of their property. The matriarch of the family was ill and unable to fight the encroachers. By the time that she had recovered the squatters had built a shack and was claiming ownership. The local politicians were more interested in having the added votes than in seeing justice done so our aunt has lost land that has been in the family for over one hundred years. Property rights are not guaranteed in many countries. We take them for granted in the US.

We have looked at investing in some condos in the Manila area and have two facts that are making us think twice; the above mentioned Property Rights and the ability to use leverage in the form of a mortgage to buy the properties. The Government is constantly besieged by problems. I have been in the country in 1986 when the first People’s power revolution ousted Marcos. I was also here in 2001 when People’s Power II installed the current President. Ever since the coup, there has been massive demonstrations and political unrest. Not a good indicator for the security of property rights.

Then add the fact that you can mortgage a property but you cannot have possession of the property until it is paid off in full. What does this mean? In truth too many things to ever cover in a short article but while I was sitting in a Manila Steak House with my nephew last Thursday evening we came to realize how good we have it in the US. John’s mother-in-law purchased one of those condos that I had mentioned earlier. Paying cash for the unit was easy for her because her family is well off. So for them to come up with $250,000 US to buy a condo in Manila was nothing. But for the majority of people in the Philippines it is just beyond reach.

In the US if you can come up with 20% of the purchase price you can find a loan to cover the rest. But in a lot of places in the world that is not an option. Even with the Mortgage industry heating up and the Sub-prime melt down causing stocks to decline and the economy to go soft. We still have it made. As an Investor in the US market you have to take inventory of your advantages and run with them.

Most of us didn’t have the money to go and buy 10 or 15 houses to get started. We had to learn to be creative and set goals to achieve what we were determined to do. Not unlike everything in life as a matter of fact. Without knowing where we are going sure makes the path getting there awfully long. I honestly thought I knew what my goals were. But alas, I read the 4 hour work week and now my goals have been turned upside down. I am in the middle of revisiting them as we speak and I can’t imagine a better place to do that when I am so removed from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. As a matter of fact I have to take a 1 hour Jeepney ride to visit the nearest internet café to send this to Jennifer. I will not even check my email as it is such a pain to do from a slow internet connection. I know that Jennifer can reach us in an emergency. I hope everyone takes a minute to rethink their goals and to read the book “4 hour Work Week”. It is worth the time, and if you don’t have the time you really need to get a handle on it because you will go nowhere if you don’t.

I look forward to the next episode of this newsletter as we will be talking about ways to accelerate your investing.

Just in Case You Missed Last Week...Here Are Our Renegade Real Estate Warrior Winners!

Congratulations to our Overall Winner: GERALD ROMINE

Also, congratulations to our winners of each industry category...

Motivation Warrior of the Year - Bill Twyford
Wholesaling Warrior of the Year - Charles Petty
Rehab Warrior of the Year - Pete Youngs
Subject To Warrior of the Year - Terry Wygal
Short Sale / Foreclosure Warrior of the Year - Mark Klee and Caryn McKinney
Asset Protection Warrior of the Year - Darius Barazadeh
Marketing Strategies Warrior of the Year - Dave Zahala
House Finding Warrior of the Year - Reggie Brooks
Business Tool Warrior of the Year - Gerald Romine
Creative Financing Warrior of the Year - Edwin Kelly
Investing Strategies Warrior of the Year - Dave Whisnat

You can check out the final scoreboard by clicking here.

Thanks to everyone, presenters, hosts and attendees. I know that all of you were able to learn a lot of really good information from the speakers. I would say that my favorite were Dave Zahala talking about using Radio and TV to get leads, Mark Klee and Caryn McKinney and their presentation on buying houses post Bankruptcy. There were many others that I was impressed with and learned a lot from. But Hey, I can only have a couple of favorites, right?

As a parting thought on the Renegade Real Estate Warriors webinar series is that it was an ambitious undertaking. There were too many presentations, too many technical issues and frankly too many things happening back to back. We all live and learn any time we test something. I guess this is what Thomas Edison meant by trying many things because some were bound to fail. Or in this case be too much info in too short a time.

But thank you for sticking in there with us. I know that I speak for Karen, Terry, Russell and myself when we thank you all for being there with us for the last couple of busy months.

Now it is time to take what you have learned from these webinars and apply it too your business. Go take some action...

Renegade Real Estate Warrior Update: And We Have Our Winners!

Congratulations to our winners of each category. And our Overall Winner is: {Name}

You can check out the final scoreboard by clicking here.

Thanks to everyone, presenters, hosts and attendees. I know that all of you were able to learn a lot of really good information from the speakers. I would say that my favorite were Dave Zahala talking about using Radio and TV to get leads, Mark Klee and Caryn McKinney and their presentation on buying houses post Bankruptcy. There were many others that I was impressed with and learned a lot from. But Hey, I can only have a couple of favorites, right?

As a parting thought on the Renegade Real Estate Warriors webinar series is that it was an ambitious undertaking. There were too many presentations, too many technical issues and frankly too many things happening back to back. We all live and learn any time we test something. I guess this is what Thomas Edison meant by trying many things because some were bound to fail. Or in this case be too much info in too short a time.

But thank you for sticking in there with us. I know that I speak for Karen, Terry, Russell and myself when we thank you all for being there with us for the last couple of busy months.

Now it is time to take what you have learned from these webinars and apply it too your business. Go take some action…

Choosing the Right Target Market

When investors approach me about where they should look for houses they are looking for me to tell them a general rule of thumb in distance from their house. I remember when I first decided to become a real estate investor I was looking for the same answer. I read Robert Kiyosaki’s book Rich Dad Poor Dad and was looking for the magic bullet. He said to look for properties that were within an easy drive from your house when starting. You know 30 – 60 minutes or less than 30 miles.

That made my decision even tougher because there were so many different types of areas in that range. I could go to one of the highest valued neighborhoods in the country or go somewhere where I could buy drugs easier that finding a house. That really didn’t help narrow down my choices at all.

I have since gone to many different boot camps by many educators and each one said something similar. Others at least specified demographics as well as geographic areas. That helped somewhat, but really not enough. It was still a large area with nothing that was really helping me choose the best area to farm.

I dug in my heals and decided to do my home work. First based upon the type of investing I was doing I knew that I needed motivated sellers, someone who would sell me their house creatively. That narrowed it down somewhat. I knew that I wanted to be able to sell my house quickly once I was ready so I new that it would have to be in that sweet spot of price. I new that I would have to buy it for less that median price and so that helped me choose an area had a preponderance of houses in that price range.

I know that I didn’t want to do a major renovation so I knew that I wanted pretty neighborhoods with newer houses rather than a house that was 50 years old and badly outdated. I wanted people who were more inclined to me motivated to sell creatively so I decided to target people who were behind in payments or about to be behind. I knew that with the sub-prime meltdown the people who had mortgages that had adjustable rates were more likely to be in need of selling their house quickly.

So with all of this information I at least had a likely prospect in mind. In next week’s eNewsletter I will go farther in depth about how I choose where I buy houses in the tough Seattle market.

Wrapping Up the Renegade Real Estate Warrior Contest!

Well it has been over two months of back to back real estate education from some of the top experts from around the country. I know that I have learned a lot about many different things during the course of these last 70+ days to put into practice in my real estate business.
I would like to thank you for sticking with us during this process. As you know something on this scale has never been tried before in this industry. The speakers were fantastic sports to try out this new concept and I honestly believe that you the listener benefited from their hard work. Every one of the presentations had something to put into your business and help you with one thing or another.

I would also like to take this moment to say thanks to you for putting up with the technical issues that we had as well as the fact that some of you had a tough time listening to the replays online. For all of that I apologize. As you may know when you put something technical like this on, you have to target the most common denominator: Windows over a slow broadband connection. This is especially tricky with video over the Internet. We have tried to alleviate most of the issues and have packaged these up in DVD format for those of you who could not get to them online. If you have not ordered one before you can find out more information about this by clicking here

There were also some last minute schedule changes when a speaker was unable to attend or had a conflict and could not fit it into their schedule after all. As you know some of our speakers are comfortable with the Webinar technology and others were not. We felt that it was important for you to be able to get there information even though they decided not to hold a webinar.
We are close to winding down from this contest only one and a half more weeks left. We still have some great speakers to come including the hosts of this contest. I hope that you have voted for your favorites. The scores are being tallied up to this point and a up to-date scoreboard will be available towards the end of the week. As always Renegade Replays at www.RenegadeReplays.com is the hub of this contest. You can always check back on this website for updates and links to replays. The scoreboard will be available at this site.