4 Tips To Prepare Credit Score Boosts Far Ahead Of Time

Get your debt situation shaped up as soon as you can. Not only will this fiscal fitness program lift your qualifying ratios, it may also boost your credit scores.

Here are some tips:

1. Consolidate bills. One loan consolidation payment of $280 a month will hurt you less than four seperate bill payments of $125 each. However, don't close three accounts and run one up close to its credit limit. Credit scoring doesn't like "high" balances relative to credit limits.

2. Pay down debt. If your installment debt has only 11 or 12 months to go, prepay two or three payments. That pushes those debs off the table and out of sight--under the rules followed by most lenders.

3. Pay off debt. If you can swing it, get rid of as much debt as you can.

4. Avoid new debt. No matter how much you are tempted, do not take on new debt prior to applying for a mortgage. Even if you can easily afford it, wait until after you've closed your mortgage. To build wealth, permanently swear off destructive debt--debt you incur to pay for depreciating assets or wants rather than needs.

These tips especially apply if your ratios push against the lender's guideline total debt limits, if your credit score falls below, say, 680, if you're requesting a low-down-payment loan (a loan-to-value ratio of greater than 80 percent), or if you're trying to qualify for a non-owner-occupied investment property.

A pint-sized debt load will offset any warts in your borrower profile.


from "The Beginner's Guide To Real Estate Investing", 2nd Edition by Gary W. Eldred, PhD

10 Real Estate Investing Secrets Every Investor Should Know

Business success is the result of what you know. In every industry there are key elements—secrets—that if known will help to insure success, but if not known will certainly lead to failure. Real Estate investing is no different. Success begins with knowledge. What are some of the critical lessons that every real estate investor should know? Here are ten of them for starters…

Secret #1 - Use Other People's Knowledge
The first secret is probably the most important of all the others—using other people’s knowledge. There are only two ways to gain knowledge. Either you gain it from other people's mistakes or make the mistakes yourself. If you refuse to learn from other people’s mistakes—you are destined to learn from your own mistakes. The secret is to learn from others and avoid the pain of learning the hard way. Here is the secret—you can jump start your investing success by getting a good mentor and constantly reading and listening to CDs by successful real estate investors.

Secret #2 - Consistency and Quantity of Quality Offers
The second secret is also very important—it is the power of consistently making a lot of quality offers. In order to become a successful real estate investor, it is absolutely necessary to place many offers that, if accepted, will result in great deals. Without offers there can be no good deals and good deals are the basis of success in real estate investing. If you do not ask you will not receive.


Secrets #3-7 - Skills to Develop
Secrets three through seven are the skills that will have to be developed in order to run a successful real estate investing business. These skills are:

•#3 - Finding Good Deals
•#4 - Obtaining the Money to purchase the good deals you find
•#5 - Fixing up the property so that it is marketable
•#6 - Effectively marketing the property
•#7 - Property management
Master each of these skills and real estate investing becomes much easier. However, fail to develop them and you are in for a rough ride.

Secret #8 - Prepare Quality Offers with a Chance of Being Accepted
Secret number eight is that you must prepare quality offers that have a chance of being accepted. These offers must be high enough so that some of them will be successful. But they must be low enough so that, when one is accepted, it will result in a substantial return on your investment of time and money. This can be easily accomplished by using some of the effective software on the market today such as TurboBidder2 or similar real estate analysis software.

Secret #9 - The Ability to Determine True Property Value
The ninth real estate investing secret is that you must be able to determine the true value of property. True value is the amount that the property can be sold for in a reasonable period of time. The quickest way of determining true value is by paying a professional appraiser to work their magic. But that is not necessarily the best way. It doesn’t make sense to be paying an appraiser to look at thirty properties when you only expect to purchase one of those deals. That means that you must find an inexpensive way to determine true value. There are professional realtors who work with investors. These realtors can provide accurate comparable sales (comps) of similar properties. These comps can give you a very good idea of what a property is worth.

#10 - Have a Burning Desire to Succeed
And finally Secret Number 10 is that you need to have a burning desire to become successful. Your attitude and drive can make up for lots of early mistakes and pitfalls that might sink a lesser person. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence”.

I hope this article will help you in your quest to build wealth through real estate investing. For more articles on real estate investor training, visit my website at www.dennisjhenson.com. Also on that site, you may sign up for free reports, articles, and e-books and find free forms, documents, MP3 downloads and much more. Also visit www.turbobidder2.com for a great real estate investing tool.

Thank you,
Dennis J. Henson

Learn other secrets of success like this: 10 Real Estate Investing Secrets.

Real Estate Investing Tips & Insight!

Real Estate Investing is a tough business right now. While the business of buying and holding real estate as a long term investment remains a legitimate and viable strategy for wealth building, profit is no longer guaranteed as it once appeared to be.

With that in mind, the astute real estate investor will consider some specific real estate investment concepts to complement the “tried and true” strategy of long-term buy-and-hold investment houses:



* Virtual Real Estate Investing – the term “virtual real estate investing” has multiple meanings, including the use of the internet to buy and sell property, and the purchase and development of internet websites as a means of generating revenue. With an objective analysis, one can see the conceptual similarity between physical real estate and internet properties including entire websites and even individual pages controlled on larger sites like Facebook, Squidoo and Google Knol. Increasingly, real estate investors are seeing the clear opportunity presented by developing web “properties” into revenue generating assets much like physical rental properties. This trend is on the rise and will continue for the foreseeable future.

* Bulk REO – the prevalence of foreclosures in our economy has put mortgage lenders into a difficult position. With large pools of foreclosed properties on their books, it is no longer efficient for these lenders to sell their foreclosed properties one-by-one through real estate brokers. As such, mortgage lenders are increasingly opting to sell their foreclosures in “packages” to well-funded investors, at steeply discounted prices. Bulk REO investing is a rapidly emerging trend and will continue to be a significant tool for real estate acquisition and disposition until such time as the current foreclosure crisis abates and the foreclosure rate regresses to more normal historical levels.

It’s a different world in the real estate investment business. It would be very, very simple to think that the foreclosure crisis has caused the door of opportunity to be slammed entirely shut. Yet that’s simply not the case. When one observes the state of the real estate market, it is undeniable that fundamentals matter more than ever. For example, the selection of the local real estate market is of greater importance than ever, considering the huge disparity that exists among the thousands of real estate markets across the United States. Additionally, the role of regulatory compliance is greater than ever given the activist nature of the current presidential administration.

Without a doubt, there are very major challenges in today’s real estate investing market. But with some persistence, determination and creativity, there is still plenty of opportunity.