HUD 9548 Mysteries And The Most Common Mistakes

Often when a real estate broker is selling a HUD home they don’t comprehend there are completely different contracts to fill out. Knowing this is imperative in equipping your buyer with the most efficient contract review process. HUD has specific contracts that are distinctive to your state standard forms.

How Will Your Buyer Be Taking Title? Line Item #2 on the Housing And Urban Development form asks for how your buyer will be holding title. While in the past this often could be left barren until your buyer reconciles, this has changed and the best approach is to analyze this with your buyer prior to submitting your contract and enter in to the agreement how they’ll be holding title. Common ways of holding title can by calling your local title .

Repair Escrows On Line Item #4 This is a commonly misinterpreted area. Most newly licensed brokers think this is the cost of escrow but it has nothing to do with the “cost of escrow” at all. I’ll make it basic. If using FHA financing you’ll need to check the HUDHomeStore website to see if the real estate you are bidding on requires a repair escrow. Repair escrows are necessary when using FHA lending. Any imperative repairs under $5000 require a 203b repair escrow. Any repairs mandated over $5000 are a 203k repair escrow. If you aren’t using Federal Housing Administration lending then the 203b or 203k area doesn’t apply. ONLY if you are using Federal Housing Administration financing do you need to fill this section out. Even if the property has a repair escrow on it and you are using non-FHA financing then you need not worry about this section. Check the box “seller is paying cash or applying for conventional or financing not involving FHA” and proceed.

Earnest Money Procedures on Line Item #12. This line corresponds to the processes and rights HUD to your EMD when your consumer fails to perform. The most misconceived part is that there are two lines on which call for initials and those lines are confusingly close to one another. Time and again, if there are married purchasers on the contract, an agent will have one consumer initial a single line and the other on the following line to the right. Wrong. Confusing for sure. Correct, no! One is a “buyers initials” line and the other is reserved for HUD’s “authorized agent”. Execute both of your buyers initials on the first line set aside for “purchaser”.  Be cautious as this will get your contract rejected if you fail to execute these lines properly.

What are some everyday mistakes you see other newly licensed brokers make?


Hi my name is Len Dietrich. Real estate is changing in to a social media MONSTER and getting started as a real estate agent or becoming a better one has never been more difficult. Find the the best HUD 9548 Contract Tutorial by visiting our site where we will provide a real estate one-stop-shop with reviews, how to outsource real estate tasks and recommendations for the tools you will need to improve your real estate marketing efforts.

Tips To Outsource Real Estate Tasks

With all the real estate tasks an agent is encountering it is important to learn how to outsource these tasks. Many agents are a part of a small real estate office or may be in a small market and therefore have to do every tedious detail for every transaction.  To be honest, most of your time should be devoted to getting listings or meeting with prospective clients and canvassing your area of expertise.  Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to be able to outsource some of the menial office tasks so that you can focus on getting new work?

Outsourcing is a hot topic. So, oftentimes, outsourcing isn’t looked upon in a favorable light.   However, in this current downswing in the real estate market we must learn new ways to lower our overhead and increase our profits. 

There are several websites that offer outsourcing resources.  One of the more popular ones is Elance.  I’ve used this site for well over a year and I have never had a problem with the service.  However, you must be careful who you outsource to.  Another great resource is ODesk.  I have not used their service but they get rave reviews for service.  So for the purpose of this article we will only talk about Elance.

I have found a lot of success outsourcing to the Ukraine.  Other friends of mine, such as Tyrone Shum, have found much success in the Phillipines.  I have, on the other hand had some problems when I outsourced to companies in Pakistan and India.  It may have just been the service provider but, either way, it left a bad taste in my mouth.  They didn’t rip me off or anything but they were really tardy delivering their tasks on time. 

Now, this is going to shock you.  I have paid as little as 3$ an hour for adminstrative office tasks to be performed by a service provider.  it almost seems wrong but the wages that are acceptable in certain areas are far below what they are in the US.  I have 2 girls in the Ukraine that work about 40 hours a week for me.  That is $120 a week or $480 a month.  That basically gives me a full time worker for an entire month for under $500.  Pretty amazing if you ask me.  And, like I said, these providers are more than happy to work those hours for what we consider a minimal amount.  It’s just economies of scale.  I have heard that providers in the Phillipines work for as little as $2 an hour. 

Some of the tasks we outsource are:  returning emails, posting properties to social media sites, tweeting out our new listings, updating Facebook and research. We never outsource financial tasks that may contain a buyers or sellers financial information.  That is just too risky and, honestly, isn’t ethical if you as me.  I would be very upset if I found out my agent was outsourcing their tasks and my financials were traveling across the world and back. 

In the end you really must do your research but good places to start are Elance and ODesk.  Both of these outsource providers are trustworthy.   Plus, any reputable outsource agency keeps a tab on their providers along with encouraging the employers to post rating for each provider as they complete tasks.  And, of  course, never choose anyone with a low score.  It just goes without saying. 
 
The best way to decide is to get a good reference from someone that has used a service provider.  If you don’t know anyone that has outsourced then you can find our contact information in the resource box and we’ll be happy to refer a trustworthy provider that we have used ourself.  Good luck!
Hello. I’m Len Dietrich. If you’d like to learn more about how to successfully outsource real estate tasks visit our site for more information on how to outsource real estate tasks.

Three Most Common Mistakes When Filling Out The HUD 9548 Contract

Often when a agent is selling a hud home they don’t appreciate there are completely different contracts to fill out. When getting started as a real estate agent knowing this is essential in advising your client with the most productive contract review process. HUD has specific contracts that are unique to your state standard forms. Many agents do not realize this.  Often times agents send in their state mandated forms to the listing agent for that property when, in fact, all the bidding for HUD homes is done on line.  After an accepted offer those contracts are executed and then sent to the marketing and management contractor assigned to that listing.  So, this is different all together.  The listing agent doesn’t receive the offers the marketing and management company is in charge of reviewing the contracts once an offer has been accepted. There is no  real estate academy that has tutorials on line or in the classroom for hud deals.

How Will Your Client Be Taking Title? Line Item #2 on the Housing And Urban Development form asks for how your client will be holding title. While in the past this often could be left clear until your buyer decides, this has changed and the best procedure is to analyze this with your buyer before submitting your offer and enter in to the contract how they’ll be holding title. Common ways of holding title can be found by faxing your local title association.

Repair Escrows On Line Item #4 This is a commonly unpopular area. Most realtors expect this is the total cost of escrow but it has nothing to do with the “escrow” at all. I’ll make it simple. If using FHA financing you’ll need to ascertain the HUDHomeStore website to see if the home you are bidding on requires a repair escrow. Repair escrows are called for when using FHA lending. Any repairs mandated under $5000 require a 203b repair escrow. Any repairs called for over $5000 are a 203k repair escrow. If you aren’t using FHA lending then the 203b or 203k area doesn’t apply. ONLY if you are using FHA financial support do you need to fill this section out. Even if the property has a repair escrow on it and you are using non-FHA financing then you need not worry about this section. Check the box “seller is paying cash or applying for conventional or financing not involving FHA” and begin.

Earnest Money Procedures on Line Item #12. This line is relevant to the processes and rights HUD retains to your EMD when your buyer fails to perform. The most misunderstood part is that there are two lines on which authorize initials and those lines are parallel to one another. Usually, if there are matched purchasers on the form an agent will have one client initial one and the other on the following line to the right. Wrong. Confusing for sure. Correct, no. One is a “buyers initials” line and the other is authorized for HUD’s “authorized agent”. Put both of your buyers initials on the first line reserved for “purchaser”.

What are some most frequent mistakes you see other newly licensed agents make when getting started as a real estate agent?
Hi my name is Len Dietrich. Real estate is changing in to a social media MONSTER and getting started as a real estate agent or becoming a better one has never been more difficult. Find the the best HUD 9548 Contract Tutorial by visiting our site where we will provide a real estate one-stop-shop with reviews, how to outsource real estate tasks and recommendations for the tools you will need to improve your real estate marketing efforts.

Texting For Real Estate Agents And How You Can Use It In Marketing Your Properties

Texting For Real Estate Agents And How You Can Use It In Marketing Your Properties

Many have asked; which is better, texting for real estate agents or using a QR code. Both offer distinct advantages and it really depends on what your desired, end result is. Fact is, they are similar but remarkably different in the way they work. We will discuss the benefits of text marketing and how you can implement texting in to your real estate career.

How a real estate agent/broker can use text marketing. Within the dashboard of a text marketing account you configure your text auto-response to send out a text immediately upon someone texting in the keyword you choose. In that text you embed the link to that property. What I did was I created a YouTube channel then created a slide show of the property, uploaded to YouTube then copied the URL in to the auto-responder text. That way when someone text’d “Len1″ to 41242 it automatically sent to them the link to view the property. Pretty handy hey? With QR codes you can’t do that. If a person scans the QR code then they are redirected to the QR code providers site where the profile/information on your property resides. Also, with QR codes you can’t capture the inquirer’s cell phone info.

What service to choose? There are a lot of text messaging services out there. Most are fairly competitive and basically do the same thing as the others. There really is no great difference. The texting service I have used is called Yep Text.

Pricing: Depending on how many texts you want to send each month determines the plan you want to choose. Prices range from $9 a month to $149 a month and there are additional, higher volume packages as well. The $9 a month package allows you 150 texts per month + one yep word and $149 package allows 4000 messages a month + 3 yep words. Additional Yep words can be purchased and added to any package for $8.

Billing: You are only billed for outgoing texts and that rate is about 5.3 cents per text.

What is a keyword for texting? Texting services have a dedicated 5 digit number associated with their service. For example, Yep Text’s designated number is 41242. You don’t own the number, they do. What you would own is what they call the “keyword” or “Yep Word”. Essentially, your Yep word is your keyword. So, let’s say you have a listing on East Broadway. Then you would enter that “yep word” in to the dashboard and see if that keyword is available. If so, then you now own “East Broadway” for the 41242 number.

What keyword do you choose? We’ve all seen something like this before: “text the word Subway to 41242 to receive our weekly specials”. You create your key word and add the word to your website, business cards and, what I did was that I even created a sticker to attach to my signs. I wouldn’t recommend using a specific name or number associated with each property. I would use something like “YourName1″, “YourName2″, etc., for each of your properties and here is why. Once that property sells you want to reassign that Yep word to your next property. And, if your keyword is something like “East Broadway1” and your property is on East Broadway then once you sell that property and reassign the keyword to a property say, on 7th Street, then you’ll be stuck with the sticker on your sign saying “Test East Broadway1” to 41242. That may become confusing to your potential buyers.

Benefits: Text marketing allows you to capture the inquirer’s cell phone number so that you can re-solicit to them a property that meets their criteria at a later date. Much like an email data base, you are creating a “text data base” which is the most important thing in real estate; a list. QR codes, at this point, do not allow you to capture information.

So, the jury is out on this one. Really depends if you want to create a list and re-solicit later or if you want to just offer QR codes so that the customer can gain access to the relevant information for the property.

Find the benefits of texting for real estate agents along with realtor apps for iphone by visiting our site http://www.gettingstartedasarealestateagent.com

Evoice Tips And An EVoice Review-Ringcentral

Are you stuck in the rut of having an office phone, cell phone, a fax line and a cell phone?  Well, the days of  having a home phone are going by the wayside and becoming an extinct dinosaur.  And, not far behind that is the traditional office fax line and office phone. 

When I started in real estate investing I worked for a guy that refused to give up his fax machine.  I would walk in his office and see fax paper all over the place.  He would constantly be looking for a document someone had sent him.  I never got that guy moved in the “the real world” and he is probably still using a 1985 fax machine to this day.

Let’s fact it; we are all on our cell phones these days and rarely are they more than 3-5 feet away from us.  So, why not just combine all of your voice and fax communication in to one device?  It is here and has been for years unless you’ve been hiding under a rock. 

We’ve been using Ringcentral for well over two years now.  Initially, the dashboard was a bit confusing and frustrating.  However, once we over came the initial learning curve we were well on our way.  Their customer service is excellent.  When I have called them I have received an email or return phone call within the hour.

There are a lot of cloud based business phone systems out there but we have only used Ringcentral and have never had a problem with their service.

If you don’t know what e-Voice / Cloud phone systems are then you definitely need to check RC out.  There are many features with RC but the one that I like the best is that they send an email every time someone calls and also when someone leaves a message.  So, you get two notifications via email when some calls.  Good to have when often times some buyers are hesitant to leave a message.  We’ve picked up a couple extra sales by calling back the numbers that didn’t leave a message.  Good to have.

Also, you can set up what we call “Round Robin”.  From within the RC dashboard you can have the service rotate the calls to different agents so that no one person gets all the great leads.  And, that also eliminates the need to have a receptionist answer your phone.  You basically just put it on round robin and, let’s say if you have 6 agents, if one is busy and doesn’t answer it just rolls over to the next person. And, you can set it for how many times it rings to each person before rolling over to the next.

For the tech-savvy agent you can also embed a button in your email that will allow a potential buyer to click on that button and it will dial you up direct from their computer or cell.  Pretty cool feature.  We don’t use that feature any longer as we were getting overwhelmed with calls.  Now we just include our number on all of our mailers and advertisements.  But, you can configure that within your outgoing email provider.

They also offer fax lines as well and their plans vary according to your office size/number of numbers/agents/etc.  Every feature that you can imagine is offer for the mobile device as well. 

Since we have streamlines our operation with E-voice/Cloud based phone communication we have noticed an upswing in productivity.

Hello. I’m Len Dietrich. If you’d like to learn more about how to successfully use evoice review ring central then visit our site for more information on how to the best apps for realtors

Best Apps For Real Estate Agents

Best Apps For Real Estate Agents

With Apple formerly blowing away the all the competition Android is now quickly on their tale with many more app developers developing apps for realtors for the Android.  How do you decide?  Which ones are the best?  Well, it really depends on which smartphone you are using and what problem you are looking to solve. 

Here are some of the best apps for real estate agents in the iPhone format.  We will have Android apps reviews in the future but for now we will just focus on iPhone apps.

CalcsFree:  Have you ever been showing a property and the buyer asks you how much the payments will be? For those that aren’t good at math, this is a great app for you.  When I started out I really had no clue how loans worked and, honestly, I still don’t.  Too much detail and too many variables considering the market that fluctuates so much.  It is hard to keep up with what is happening.  I’m more focused on getting well-qualified buyers and cultivating relationships with them more than I am interested in keeping up with loan BS.  My buyers expected me to know the going rates for loans.  I’m not a lending specialist and, I am sure, you probably aren’t either.  A good app and it is free!

Evernote:  This is a simple program that is great for archiving and organizing your goals, thoughts and images.  You can access your files from anywhere 24/7.  Easy to navigate and it is also free!

HomeFinder.com:  If your local newspaper is one of the 130 that HomeFinder.com services, this is a handy tool. Agents who subscribe to HomeFinder.com are able to enter open house information to appear on their newspaper’s website, and this app lets you search for those open houses.  On the home screen you have three very simple options – look at open houses coming up this weekend, look at open houses going on today, or look at homes for sale. If you aren’t getting results with the default options of 5 miles surrounding your current location, then you can hit the Refine Search button to expand your search radius, or choose a different location by entering a city and state or ZIP code.

A couple other apps are quite helpful as well.  Trulia and Zillow.  While I don't believe they have the most current and up to date information available for agents and homeowners I do believe they offer a glimpse in to some data that you may find helpful in your search for your client a home.  Zillow I believe is the most inaccurate of the two you can still grab some helpful info from Zillow.  Trulia is a bit more accurate and I trust their data much more. 

There are many apps for realtors coming on the market every week.  The market is in need of some more thorough applications for both Android and iPhone.  Do you have any favorites that you are using?
Hi my name is Len Dietrich. Real estate is changing in to a social media MONSTER and getting started as a real estate agent or becoming a better one has never been more difficult. Find the the best realtor apps for iphone by visiting our site where we will provide a real estate one-stop-shop with reviews, how to outsource real estate tasks and recommendations for the tools you will need to improve your real estate marketing efforts.

Best Books On Real Estate

Some of the best books on real estate are some of the most common ones but for unrelated various reasons.  Most books on real estate only give anecdotal information and, with the laws varying from state to state, can be difficult to apply to your career.

What I decided to do was to grab a few of these books, both hard cover and also on audio book.  I picked up one from Gary Keller (of Keller Williams) Donald Trump & Dean Graziosi.  I enjoyed them all but for different reasons. 

First off, Gary Keller offers the most practical approach to any real estate agent getting started.  He's one of the most popular real estate agents on the planet and has, in my opinion, one of the most successful brokerages in the US.  All the information he provided in his book was applicable to me when I was getting started.  His book is really for someone that maybe is a part of a small mom and pop office where there isn't much training.  After one get's their RE license then few offices offer ongoing training.  For the most part, you will have to go to your local board or MLS to obtain any relevant on going training.  However, Gary's books are good and, like I said, give you valuable insight for getting started. I recommend his "The Millionaire Real Estate Agent:  It's not about the money...it's about being the best you can be!"

My next two favorites are Donald Trump and Dean Graziosi.  Now, these are two polarizing individuals.  Either you love them or you hate them.  I happen to like them both. 

For The Donald, I recommend "Trump Strategies For Real Estate".  Now, if you are in a small market you won't find any real applicable strategies as most of the insight is from DT's experiences in NYC.  The one thing that does irritate me about his books is that, from what I can tell, he doesn't put pen to paper and write the book.  He co-writes with another author that he trusts.  Now, nothing wrong with that but I want to hear the author talking to me.  There was some valuable information in the book that I read and the insight gained from made me think in  ways I had never thought of before.  The way he structured and negotiated some of those deals is mind boggling.  A very interesting read for sure.

Now, Dean is an interesting cat.  If you look him up on line that guy is selling everything from cars to real estate.  I like that he has a history selling informational products.  One interesting thing I learned from him was that he shared with me how to buy tax liens.  A very interesting concept and one that is easy to implement.  Well worth reading.

All in all, none of these books gave a step by step process to getting started as a real estate agent and, honestly, I don't believe any book on the market will give you those tips and tricks encompassed in one book.  However, I have found that they are practical in the advice offered.  If I had to pick the best of the three I would recommend Gary's books as a first read. You really can't go wrong.  Especially for the agent that is looking to brush up on some fresh concepts or the new agent looking to get started. The Donald and Dean are good for the real estate investor looking for additional strategies.  I enjoyed those for different reasons that I applied to my real estate investing career.
Hi my name is Len Dietrich. Real estate is changing in to a social media MONSTER and getting started as a real estate agent or becoming a better one has never been more difficult. Find our recommendation for the best real estate agent books by visiting our site where we will provide a real estate one-stop-shop with reviews, how to outsource real estate tasks and recommendations for the tools you will need to improve your real estate marketing efforts.

Texting For Real Estate Agents And How You Can Use It In Marketing Your Properties

 Many have asked; which is better, texting for real estate agents or using a QR code for realtors. Both offer distinct advantages and it really depends on what your desired, end result is. Fact is, they are similar but remarkably different in the way they work. We will discuss the benefits of text marketing and how you can implement texting in to your real estate career.

How a real estate agent/broker can use text marketing. Within the dashboard of a text marketing account you configure your text auto-response to send out a text immediately upon someone texting in the keyword you choose. In that text you embed the link to that property. What I did was I created a YouTube channel then created a slide show of the property, uploaded to YouTube then copied the URL in to the auto-responder text. That way when someone text'd “Len1″ to 41242 it automatically sent to them the link to view the property. Pretty handy hey? With QR codes you can’t do that. If a person scans the QR code then they are redirected to the QR code providers site where the profile/information on your property resides. Also, with QR codes you can’t capture the inquirer’s cell phone info.

What service to choose? There are a lot of text messaging services out there. Most are fairly competitive and basically do the same thing as the others. There really is no great difference. The texting service I have used is called Yep Text.

Pricing: Depending on how many texts you want to send each month determines the plan you want to choose. Prices range from $9 a month to $149 a month and there are additional, higher volume packages as well. The $9 a month package allows you 150 texts per month + one yep word and $149 package allows 4000 messages a month + 3 yep words. Additional Yep words can be purchased and added to any package for $8.

Billing: You are only billed for outgoing texts and that rate is about 5.3 cents per text.

What is a keyword for texting? Texting services have a dedicated 5 digit number associated with their service. For example, Yep Text’s designated number is 41242. You don’t own the number, they do. What you would own is what they call the "keyword" or “Yep Word”. Essentially, your Yep word is your keyword. So, let’s say you have a listing on East Broadway. Then you would enter that “yep word” in to the dashboard and see if that keyword is available. If so, then you now own “East Broadway” for the 41242 number.

What keyword do you choose? We’ve all seen something like this before: “text the word Subway to 41242 to receive our weekly specials”. You create your key word and add the word to your website, business cards and, what I did was that I even created a sticker to attach to my signs. I wouldn’t recommend using a specific name or number associated with each property. I would use something like “YourName1″, “YourName2″, etc., for each of your properties and here is why. Once that property sells you want to reassign that Yep word to your next property. And, if your keyword is something like "East Broadway1" and your property is on East Broadway then once you sell that property and reassign the keyword to a property say, on 7th Street, then you'll be stuck with the sticker on your sign saying "Test East Broadway1" to 41242. That may become confusing to your potential buyers.

Benefits: Text marketing allows you to capture the inquirer’s cell phone number so that you can re-solicit to them a property that meets their criteria at a later date. Much like an email data base, you are creating a “text data base” which is the most important thing in real estate; a list. QR codes, at this point, do not allow you to capture information.

So, the jury is out on this one. Really depends if you want to create a list and re-solicit later or if you want to just offer QR codes so that the customer can gain access to the relevant information for the property.

Real estate is changing in to a social media MONSTER and marketing homes has never been more competitive. Find the benefits of texting for real estate agents along with realtor apps for iphone by visiting our site where we will provide a real estate one-stop-shop with reviews and recommendations for all the tools you will need to improve your real estate endeavors.