January 29, 2009 • 2:05 pm
As the Investing in San Diego Real Estate opening page suggested, there are really only two reasons the average person has missed out on the profits and safety inherent to investing in San Diego real estate: price and knowledge.
Price
First and foremost in most people’s minds, the astronomical prices have prevented all but the wealthiest from being able to purchase investment property in San Diego. One needed to have a tremendous cash reserve (or a long history of property ownership and equity appreciation) just to get in the door. Even if you did have the cash to qualify for a down payment, it was nearly impossible to purchase a property as a Small-Cap investor that would cash flow. The rents were just not great enough to match the cost of ownership. Of course that fact, along with the more widely reported mortgage crisis, led to the housing bubble.
Unfortunately for the economy (although it has been a great benefit to investors), the natural movement of the real estate cycle, caused in large part by the crash of that same bubble, has reduced most of the pricing roadblock. The benefit has been two-fold: prices in San Diego have dropped to the pre-bubble levels of 2002 and thanks to rental demand, the cash flow opportunity has returned to 1992 levels. These two factors alone put San Diego back in the forefront of real estate investment opportunities.
Knowledge
The second reason for missing out on San Diego real estate investments continues to be a much greater obstacle for the average person, derailing many potential investors before they ever really get started. It’s more than a lack of knowledge really; it’s a lack of framework. There is very little assistance or advice the Small-Cap investor can access. This is in large part due to the way real estate investing has been viewed… or more accurately: the way real estate investing has not been viewed and practiced in the same way we do other investments.
CQ Financial Group is changing that. My background is the stock and options industries and I understand how to analyze and compare various investment strategies. The tools required to do so have not existed or at least been available to the average investor. We are creating them right here… for you.
Action
The articles in this series are designed to show you the proper way to value investment properties, how to compare various opportunities using tools like Drop Amount and Arbitrage. You’ll discover how to make money, or at least prevent yourself from losing money, rehabbing properties. It is a wealth of information and like all educations, the best place to start is at the beginning. Read Real Estate Investing: Introduction first. Gain some insight into what the problems are and how they came to be so that you may fully understand the solutions. If you have any questions you are free to comment on the articles, email or call us. We are not just writing theories and creating books… we are active right now; advising clients on the best real estate investing San Diego has to offer. The time is right and the information is here; all you have to do is ACT.
Filed under: INVESTORS , knowledge, price, Real Estate Investing, San Diego
January 23, 2009 • 11:32 am
How many remember the movie Back to the Future? I always liked the play on words in that title and I am liking it even more lately. Why? Because as agents that is exactly what we are doing: going back to the future. I believe the marketing theme for 2009 is going to be “old school.” Going back to the “old school” ways of marketing… done with the tools of the future: back to the future. (Caveat: the future for me has a very Mr. Magoo aspect to it. I appreciate the high-tech agents among us keeping the laughter down to a mild snicker.) Chris Johnson understands “old school”, he was bleeding it here and here. Jeff Brown understands old school – actually, Jeff probably learned this stuff when it was just “school”…
- Touching your sphere of influence on a consistent basis is “old school” – using emails, webinars and blogging to do it is the future.
- Tracking your marketing, your prospecting and your ROI from both is “old school” – using powerful software to do so is the future.
- Picking up the phone and calling past clients or mailing something personal every day is “old school” – knowing there is no substitute for getting belly-to-belly is the future.
And WE are the future. Those of us still here. Our profession lost a lot of people last year. Our profession needed to… Many of us suffered just to make it this far and some of us are suffering still (although some flourished… think about that). But the point is, we are here. We stuck it out because this “real estate thing” isn’t something we do on the side or because it’s easy money. We are her because this is our profession. We now reap all the opportunities of 2009… AND the responsibilities. It is our charge to bring integrity and passion to everything we do. You, all of you, are the heroes and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. You help people find their way, now more so than ever before, through a giant minefield of potentially devastating mistakes on their way to buying or selling what is probably the largest financial investment of their lives. Pretty heady stuff.
I say Congratulations to each and every one of you. When you lay your head down at the end of the day, remember this: you are the walking, talking, living proof of this truth: “Tough times don’t last, tough people do.”
Filed under: LIFE THAT POPs, REALTORS , Agents, Success
January 1, 2009 • 9:49 am
Please, allow me to be the very first to wish you a Happy New Year! What’s that? Not the first huh; the second? The tenth? Well just forget it then. Truth be told “Happy New Year” is kind of silly isn’t it? I mean, it’s just an imaginary line drawn in a calendar. The time of year we just know we’re going to write the wrong date on our checks and when we do we’re still surprised by it: “Look what I did here Mac, I was writing out a check and I wrote ’08 instead of ’09! Can you believe it! Golly, I wonder how many more times I’ll make that mistake.” (Note of explanation for the younger readers out there: we used to carry around these little pads called checkbooks. They were nicely encased in a faux leather little cover and you would write on one of the sheets in this pad a kind of IOU that your bank would pay out of your account. It had the benefit, especially right after the holidays, of creating a little time between when you paid something and when you necessarily had to have the actual cash. You could not use them for online purchases, which was OK because the world was offline at the time.)
Where was I? Oh yeah: saying Happy New Year on this day is a bit arbitrary. When you think about it, we begin a new year every single day of our lives. As a matter of fact, we begin a new life every single day of our lives. Why don’t we wish each other Happy New Life each day instead of Good Morning? Wouldn’t that put a much finer point on the power of today? Oh I know what you’re thinking: “arbitrary or not, this is the time for Resolutions.” Have you read the statistics on New Year’s resolutions? Do you know how many are broken within hours of their creation? (If so, please go ahead and post them in the comments because I didn’t bother to look them up – one of my resolutions is to waste less time finding links that others can find on there own. As a matter of fact, did you know that the importance of blog linking is declining? Damn it! There, I went and broke my only New Year’s Resolution… anyone got the time?)
Here’s my point: every single day is an opportunity for us to take one more step down the path of success as we define it. Whether you want to lose weight, spend more time with your family, spend less time with your family, make a boat load of money, load a boat with money and travel the world – whatever our goals – we can get closer to them each and every day if we only take three simple steps:
- Have a Goal. This may seem obvious but you’d be surprised how many people do not have a specific, written goal they look at every day. (I’ll pause here for everyone to get a paper and pen and write their goal down.)
- Select an Action. Like ironing, one you can do every day and make into a habit. Albert Einstein said the 8th Wonder of the World was the power of compounding. If it is so powerful in the financial world, imagine the impact of a compounding habit on us!
- Recognize your WHY. Have a damn good reason “why” you want to achieve the goal. We are motivated by the why’s in our life. Nobody actually loses 50lbs because they would look better. They lose weight to save their life or to save their marriage or to finally show up at the High School Reunion and rub it in the face of “little miss popularity” who now has four kids, four chubby cheeks and a couple of chins…)
Hey, the truth is everyone looks at January 1st as a time of new beginnings. If it helps to believe in that type of mass delusion I say go for it. If you set your goals on December 3rd I say good for you too. If you are going to wait until January 2nd just to be contrarian I relish the beat of your different drum. Just make sure you don’t wait until January 3rd, because that will have been three New Lifetimes from now and no one should allow so much time to pass without purpose (last night’s festivities not withstanding).
Take a look around. If you are content with what you see, don’t change a thing between today and yesterday. If, however, you occasionally wake up and say to yourself “Hey, I don’t remember asking for more bills than money.” or “When did I decide I wanted more waist than I had belt?” you might want to engage in a little personal compounding yourself. Those three steps I mentioned above are all that’s required to create some pretty amazing miracles. Want to know the best part? Compounding your personal interest does not depend on a calendar. It doesn’t matter in the least what day today is because when it comes to your success, every day is a beginning.
Happy New Life!
Filed under: LIFE THAT POPs , Success
