Michele Ashton

NASHVILLE, TN - Michele Ashton is still flying high with excitement after closing her 3rd deal on Wednesday bringing her grand total profits to more than $42,000 in 42 days. But she is even more excited about the certainty of her future. This is what Michele emailed me today:

“I truly believe my future earning potential is limitless. I cannot thank you and the coaches enough for all of your support and the knowledge I’ve been given through the short sales step by step program. I am so grateful that I found this program.”

Below is a video of Michele at the actual closing table, with the closing HUD and her check on the table before her, describing how her life is so incredibly different now that she has closed 3 short sales in 42 days for a grand total of more than $42,000 in profits. And below the video are the nitty gritty details of this third deal and exactly how she closed it:

$42,000 in 42 Days Success Story Video

Would you like to experience the same incredible feeling that Michele Ashton has now that she has netted $42,000 in the past 42 days? Join the Short Sales Step by Step Mentorship Program and let your money problems become a thing of the past.

This last deal took a little while to come to fruition but I’ve learned through the program the importance of having lots of deals going at the same time. This Seller came through an internet lead source and they were motivated to sell. They were definitely upside down in the property to the tune of about $40,000. In addition, they were going through a divorce and neither of them could afford to keep the house even if they wanted to. All said and done, the deal profited $18,000 and everyone was happy. The Sellers couldn’t thank me enough for saving them from foreclosure and the new Buyers were ecstatic about the great deal they received on the property. I felt like a hero and walked away with a big fat check – somebody pinch me! This is the life!
Michele Ashton – Nashville, TN

Brian Busch

DALLAS, TX - Most investors limit their vision to just deals in their local area. Not Brian Busch. Many investors limit their scope to just “bread and butter” 3 bed, 2 bath single family homes in subdivisions. Not Brian Busch. With Short Sales Step By Step, Brian was able to think outside the box and began tackling deals that most investors would turn away. A very nice couple approached Brian with a real estate problem. They had recently transferred from Missouri to Dallas, TX for a new job and they had left behind a farm house on a retired dairy farm. It wasn’t selling because they owed more than what any buyer was willing pay for it, so it sat on the market vacant and the mortgage payments began to fall behind. Brian asked us if we would coach him to success on a farm house in the middle of rural Missouri. We said “Absolutely!” because we knew that our systems, our formulas, and our coaching can be effective on any property, even long distance deals. From the comfort of his own home office, without ever leaving his chair and armed with a phone, a fax, a computer and Short Sales Step By Step Mentorship Program, Brian Busch made $17,986 on a retired dairy farm deal in rural Missouri some 500 miles away. Here is a video detailing this phenominal story. And below the video is all of the nitty gritty details on exactly how Brian did it.

Brian Busch Makes $17,986 on His 2nd Short Sale Deal Video

You too can make big money on long distance deals, without cash, credit or leaving your chair by joining the exact same program that has changed Brian’s life. Simply CLICK HERE

Nitty Gritty Details

The sellers lived in Dallas, having recently transferred from thier rural home in Missouri. They must have gone online in search of help because the lead came from (to be continued)

Michele Ashton

NASHVILLE, TN - A tremendous weight was lifted off Michele’s shoulders as she was driving to the bank with a check for nearly $18,000 in profits created by closing her very first short sale deal using Phil Pustejovsky’s Short Sales Step By Step system. Michele is a licensed real estate agent and has the Realtor designation. She saw the vast profits made from real estate investing and began her foray into investing by doing subject to and lease purchase option deals. And although those techniques can produce terrific financial returns, she also found they created profits with “strings attached”. The reason those profits have “strings attached” is because until the property has been sold to the end buyer, in a subject to or lease purchase option deal, whatever cashflow or upfront money is recieved, must be socked away in savings to cover the massive amount of expenses that occur when the tenant stops paying rent.

What gave Michele such relief on this deal was the fact that with her short sale profits, those funds could go into her bank account and she could spend that money immediately. No strings attached. That was cold, hard cash that she could do whatever she wanted with. As you’ll see in the below video, she even video recorded her trip to the bank so you could see what happens after the closing and what the proper way to handle a $18,000 check is. Then, below the video, I’ll describe the nitty gritty details of how she found the deal, how she negotiated the short sale, how she found the buyer and how she closed the deal without any of her own cash or credit.

Michele Ashton Success Video

You too can experience the incredible feeling of depositing huge checks into your bank account consistently by joining the exact same program that has changed Michele’s life. Simple CLICK HERE

The Nitty Gritty Details

As you heard from the video, Michele located this deal from a paid internet lead (www.betterinvestorleads.com/reli). The owner was upside down in the house and had no way to make future payments. He was very easy to work with, extremely motivated and let Michele do everything she needed to do to help him without any hassles. There was only one loan, with Wells Fargo, and it was an FHA loan so there were a few extra details she had to take care of like making sure the HUD reflected $1000 going to the seller as a HUD incentive and making sure the borrower went to a HUD counseling session. That was taken care of easily and quickly.

One bonus of the FHA short sale is that they always disclose the BPO, which came in at $124,000. This was a very helpful number since she would go on to find a buyer for $134,900. These days, FHA starts off at an 88% approval but then goes down 86% after 30 days and finally, down to 84% after 60 days. Michele received her approval letter on 06/15/09 in the amount of $109,120 (which is 88% of $124,000) and she immediately put it on the MLS for $139,900 that same day. Within a few days she had an offer of $134,900. Well ahead of schedule, on July 10th, the deal closed with Michele walking away with nearly $18,000. Her title company did not require transactional funding in the middle so she didn’t have to pay that extra closing expense. It was a clean, smooth closing with almost no bumps in the road. About the only thing that came up was during the inspection, a few shingles had blown off in a storm the night before and the inspector picked up on that. So Michele paid $75 to a roofer guy to jump up on the roof and replace the shingles. Other than that, the deal was smooth sailing.

You may be asking yourself why Michele didn’t get the lender to accept 86%. The reason is that FHA now has a new set of rules whereby from the day they issue the approval letter, in this case, 06/15/09, the first 30 days, the approval is for 88%. Then, they have the ability to drop it to 86% after 30 days, or on 07/15/09 in this case and then drop it again to 84% after 60 days, in this case, on 08/15/09. For Michele, the closing was way ahead of schedule (07/10/09) so she went with the strategy to take the money and run. I would hope you would do the same. A bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. Had she waited, she would have had to submit a new offer to get the 86% which could have taken days or even weeks (althought it would have brought the approval amount to $106,640, effectively giving her over $2000 more in profits). The problem is that waiting could have killed the deal altogether and any of a number of issues could have popped up, like the buyer’s lender not funding the loan, the buyer falling in love with another home, you name it. So the moral of the story is that Michele took the correct approach and grabbed the getting while the getting was good. You want to do the same. Think of Steve Miller Band’s classic song, “…Go on and take the money and run, whooo, whoo, who, Go on and take the money and run…”

You too can experience the incredible feeling of depositing huge checks into your bank account consistently by joining the exact same program that has changed Michele’s life. Simple CLICK HERE

Brian Busch

DALLAS, TX – For Brian Busch, the concept of making money from real estate without having to put in sweat equity or borrowing money was very appealing to him. After making the leap from a corporate environment to full time real estate investing, he found that the traditional way of investing was far more labor intensive and risky than he had originally thought. He spent his days fixing up houses in the intense Texas heat, bouncing back and forth to Home Depot and Lowes and was altogether tired of it. Plus, with the real estate bubble collapse, he felt the pinch of having to drop his price and sit on his houses for months, paying out thousands in monthly holding costs. Brian went on the look out for a better way than the traditional rehabber technique of buying a house with cash or credit (or both) and then putting in months of labor to fix up the property and then praying he could sell it for a profit before he ran out of cash to pay the holding costs.

He found the Real Estate Leadership Institute and joined the Short Sales Step By Step Program. He was attracted to the idea that he could make bigger profits doing no fix up work and not having to use cash or borrow any money. But he did have one nagging concern; how to find buyers in a real estate market that was vastly different from a few years ago. We assured him that finding a buyer would not be an issue. He took us on faith that we knew what we were doing and set about to make some deals happen.

His first deal, as you know from the title, made nearly $28,000. The following video will detail Brian’s experience, complete with the actual house in the background. Then, I’ll go into the Nitty Gritty details of exactly how Brian made this enormous amount of money, the easy way.

Brian Busch Success Story Video

Wouldn’t you like to be in his shoes right now? YOU CAN! Join the exact same program that has changed Brian’s life and so many others like him. Click HERE.

The Nitty Gritty Details

His first deal was a winner from the start. The property was a nice home in a nice area of Dallas, TX. The owners had moved out some years prior and had it rented to tenants. These tenants had stopped paying rent and the owners were unable to carry two payments so they began to fall behind. They had contacted a few real estate agents but each agent echoed the same bad news, “we can’t list this property because you owe more than the current value.” So the owners looked elsewhere and went online to find someone to help. The online lead service provider, WeHaveHomeLeads.com, sent the lead to Brian. If you want to use that same service, use the discount code “WHHL2008” to get a far reduced monthly rate off the retail price. After receiving the email, Brian contacted the owners and they were, by this time, ready to do whatever it took to avoid foreclosure.

Brian followed the Short Sales Step By Step plan to a “T” and before long he was negotiating with HSBC Mortgage Services. The full payoff when Brian first got the deal started was $129,798.34. Using our Lender Database as his secret weapon, he got HSBC to accept a payoff of $68,424.97. What he needed now was a buyer. He knew it would sell for $119,000 all day long but the tenants had left the property less than perfect.
We showed him the “bang for your buck” ways to get the house prepared for a retail buyer. He got a carpet cleaner, a house cleaner and a junk remover over there and a few hundred bucks later, it was ready to go. He still didn’t believe it was going to work because he felt it needed new paint and some other items. He was a perfectionist and wasn’t used to not fixing up a property to make it perfect. We opened his mind to a whole new world with this style of selling real estate.

It came as a shocked when we told him to list it for $99,900. Brian thought he would be leaving $20,000 on the table if he did that. We told him a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (no pun intended). So, once again, on faith, he gave it a try. Like clockwork, buyers agents were scheduling showings left and right. Within a week, he had three solid buyers who all wanted the property. With so many buyers to choose from, he was able to pick the one that gave him the highest price (which happened to be $104,000) and the fastest close time. Plus, these buyers we not nit-picking the whole house because they knew they were getting a great deal. They could look past the ugly blue paint in the 2nd bathroom and the old vinyl in the kitchen.

Exactly 28 days from the day he picked his buyer, Brian closed on his first short sale deal making a profit of $27,903.89. He didn’t borrow any money, he didn’t need any cash to close the transaction and he walked away with an enormous check. Plus, the sellers were thrilled to avoid foreclosure and the buyer’s thought that they had basically stolen the house for the price they got it for. In fact, the buyers hugged everyone in the closing office after they signed the papers because they were so happy about the transaction. That’s what I call a win-win-win deal.

Wouldn’t you like to be in his shoes right now? YOU CAN! Join the exact same program that has changed Brian’s life and so many others like him. Click HERE.

Michele Evans

LOS ANGELES, CA – For Michele Evans, the idea of being in an independent real estate investor had never even crossed her mind until recently. She grew up in a middle class family and she always felt like her father obsessed over making more money. So, even as a small child, she was turned off by the prospects of making tons of money and subsequently, embraced her more artistic side, hoping to be a creative force in the world. However, after becoming a mother of three (and living in the most expensive city in America), Michele’s stance on money began to change. Even as a smart, capable, educated woman, she found the need for money becoming higher and higher on her priority list. Soon after making this distinction, she met a successful real estate investor and he recommended she read Think and Grow Rich. This opened up a whole new world to her and she proceeded to devour every personal finance book she could get her hands on. She eventually stumbled upon our mentorship program on a webinar and saw the incredible value of having someone to hold her hand every step of the way. She signed up with us the first week in February 2009. In less than 4 months from her start date, she made $88,932. Here is a video detailing the remarkable true story. And below the video are all the nitty gritty details on exactly how she made such a huge amount of money in such a short period of time.

Michele Evans $88,932 Deal Video

Freddie Mac CEO Ed Haldeman said that Freddie Mac is doing everything it can to prevent more foreclosures and that short sales are becoming an ever-popular tool in situations where foreclosure is immenent and modifications have failed.  Short sales have become so prominent that RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace, is even preparing a short sale report to go along with its usual foreclosure report every month.  Sources at RealtyTrac say that this will not be launched until the end of the year. 

Haldeman made it very clear that a short sale is an important foreclosure alternative.  Citing numerous indepedent studies, he even revealed a lending secret stating that banks lose 30% to 60% of the outstanding mortgage when a property goes to foreclosures.  Freddie Mac, of all organizations, would be acutely aware of this because they have reported $84.4 Billion in loses since the middle of 2008…OUCH!

The Orange County Register reported that short sale transactions are up 74% in Southern California this year.  The total amount of short sales in Southern Cal have topped 13,000 in the first half of 2010 alone and that number is rising. 

What makes these statistics so incredibly powerful is just how many short sales there have been in 2008 and 2009.  Short sales were swallowing the market for the last few years and now they are even bigger than ever (once again, as this author had predicted).

Happy Investing!

If you are NOT a member of one of our mentoring programs, listen up.   Join me for my all new FREE Short Sale and Foreclosure Training.  This training is geared for anyone who wants to start making money investing in real estate but may not have the cash, or the credit or the experience.  This training could change your financial life forever.  To register, click the following link  FREE Short Sale and Foreclosure Training.

Also, feel free to leave any comments below.

Jack Schakett, Bank of America senior vice president for credit loss and mitigation strategies, said this week that if a borrower proves he can no longer pay the mortgage and has few or no assets, the bank will waive its right to a deficiency judgment during the closing of a short sale.  However, if someone can afford to pay or has assets, the bank will try to negotiate a set fee for the borrower to pay at closing or ask the borrower to sign a partial or full note.  And in the event the borrower refuses to turn over financial information, Bank of America will retain its right to go after the money.

“We want to help customers who legitimately can’t afford to make payments, but we don’t want the ones who have a bunch of money to just be able to walk away,” Schakett said. “They have to share some of our pain.”

Schakett, who spoke Thursday at a National Association of Real Estate Editors conference, said the change is part of a new approach to short sales.  “Customers would like to know if they do a short sale deal, are they done or not,” he said. “It’s best for both of us.”

Is this really a policy change?

Let’s look at Jack’s comments a bit closer.  First of all, how is “few or no assets” defined?  Bank of America hasn’t released that ultra-important definition.  Secondly, what does “has assets” look like?  The lack of detail plays into Bank of America’s favor because it gives BoA the ability to enforce a deficiency requirement on basically any short sale request they want.  Third, Bank of America has historically not even accepted a short sale offer unless the borrower’s financial information was also submitted.  Therefore, this so called “policy change” sounds like the same ol’, same ol’.

What are the best practices for avoiding being held responsible for the difference created from a short sale?  If you are a borrower considering or currently in the short sale process, listen up! First, being stuck with a deficiency is NOT automatic, it can be negotiated.  The key is to work with a highly trained, expert short sale specialist.  This person needs to be an investor, someone who is going to buy the property directly from you.  If you work with a real estate agent who is listing the property, their hands will be tied and they are more unlikely to have the negotiating flexibility necessary to fight the deficiency.

As a licensed real estate, by recommending you work with an investor, I am NOT dogging agents in the short sale process. It’s not their fault. Their hands are tied in the process. You need to work with a person who is the buyer so that they can negotiate directly with the lender’s short sale department to find a middle ground. Experienced investors have numerous tools and strategies that very few people know about that can all play a role in getting the bank to not hold the borrower responsible for the difference. Where do you find these people? Our organization has the largest and the most experienced network of highly trained, expert short sale specialists in America. Leave a comment below and we’ll get you in contact with one of our people closest to you.

I’m also interested to hear your comments on my position that Bank of America hasn’t really changed anything with this latest announcement. Your thoughts?

How to Work with Agents

*** Only a few seats remain for the upcoming live training in Ft Lauderdale led by me and Robert Shemin.  You can reserve your seat at www.LiveWithPhil.com Use the coupon code “shemin” on the checkout page to get in for FREE ***

This comes on the heels of a new government initiative to incentivize and streamline short sales.  The new HAFA (Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives) program is scheduled to go into affect on April 5, 2010 and encourages borrowers to work with their loan servicers for reaching an alternative to foreclosure.  Many critics  foresee this legislation to be counter-productive to our country’s real estate recovery because it will encourage borrowers to walk away from their mortgages.

Proponents of this newest form of government intervention into our free market economy would say that borrowers are already walking away from their mortgages.  And they’re right.  The fastest growing segment of defaulted borrower population is surprisingly those who are current on their payments.  Strategic Defaults, as they have been dubbed, is the latest trend puzzling mortgage underwriters across the country because they are trying to assess a new loan applications and the standard rules of risk are being turned upside down.

Only time will tell.  You’re encouraged to post your point of view on the new HAFA program and whether you think it will help or hinder a real estate recovery in the comments section below.

There have been some very high profile organizations in this “strategic default” catagory recently.  Among them is Tishman Speyer Properties, who  performed the largest residential strategic default in history in January 2010.  They walking away from $4.4 Billion that was borrowed to acquire the sprawling Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complex in Manhattan encompassing 56 buildings and a total of 11,000 units.  And the company remains in business.  Only in America.  Another organization that saw the benefit of walking away was the Mortgage Banker’s Association who strategically defaulted on their headquarters.  That story was highlighted in a previous blog post titled, “Embarassing Short Sale.”     

If you are Beverly Hills 90210 star Brian Austin Green however, deciding to stop paying the mortgage may relieve some short term burdens but unfortunately, may not release the responsibilites quite as easily as with Tishman and the MBA.  A sad injustice indeed.  It would seem that the bigger the default, the fewer the long term reprecussions.

So when is it a good time to walk away from a mortgage?  The article penned by Lisa Smith mentioned at the beginning of this post posits that one should run their life like a business.  But it is extremely important to point out that choosing to stop making mortgage payments is a serious decision and shouldn’t be taken lightly.  Despite the injustices of big banks and their ability to incur big losses and pit that on taxpayers.  Despite the unfair ability for businesses such as Tishman Speyer Properties or the MBA to walk away basically scott free.  The average borrower in Anywhere, USA is not a business and defaulting on a mortgage is not a light matter. 

 Just ask folks in California.   This tax season many were shocked to find out that even though they may not have had a federal tax liability on the losses incurred from a short sale or foreclosure, they did have a state income tax liability.  I guess California was so broke that they were willing to kick their people while they were down.  The governor of CA has vetoed an appeal on this subject but the debate ever wages and many believe the Californian government will lift this tax burden soon. 

For those of you who have always paid your mortgage on time, have never defaulted on a loan and have always paid debts back, sorry to say, but you’re not the big winners here.  In fact, it seems the rewards have gone to the Tishman’s of the world who gambled big and lost big. (And the loan brokers who pushed those loans through and earned percentage commissions on the close.)  But hopefully you learned a mighty fine lesson about our banking system from all this.  If you owe a bank $50,000, you have a problem.  If you owe a bank $5,000,000,000, they have a problem.

1.  Temporary Foreclosure Moratoriums - In many states, during the fall and winter, the government placed foreclosure moratoriums on homes nearing their foreclosure date.  This temporary postponement of the inevitable caused many homes to sit in idle.  These homes were therefore not sold (or transacted).

2.  Loan Modifications - As was the case with the entire year of 2009, the government pushed for loan modifications to be completed on past due borrowers.  Very similar to a foreclosure moratorium, any veteran of the loan modification industry will tell you that a “loan mod” is usually nothing more than a postponement of the inevitable.  As much as many homeowners would love to believe that if they just had their loan re-worked, all would be well, the statistics show a much different story.  Once again, these homes that were tied up in loan modifications were not sold (or transacted).

3.  Phantom REO Inventory - During 2008 and 2009, banks began taking back homes through foreclosure and then just sitting on them, or building up what is called “phantom REO inventory”.  The theory they had was to hold onto these properties until the market rebounded and to then sell off their REOs then.  Little did they know that the housing slump would be far from over in 2010.  In fact, as a general rule nationwide, house prices continue to decrease as of this month.

It’s March 2010, the temporary foreclosure moratoriums have been lifted, loan modifications have been turned down by lenders and further, the government has turned their attention from loan mods to the short sales.  In fact, numerous publications have dubbed 2010 “The Year of the Short Sale.”  Plus, banks have built up so much phantom inventory over the years, they are stuck having to dump some of it right now.  Add to these conditions, such factors as a very generous tax credit for prospective homebuyers as well as ultra low interest rates and what you have on your hands is better than the perfect storm…it’s the perfect perfect storm.

I have pleaded for years that every investor should be in the short sale and foreclosure game so that they can take their slice of the $50 Billion pie that is available.  If you have been sitting on the sidelines up until now, please heed my words and get in the game.  If you are in the game and are struggling, you shouldn’t be…you’re doing something wrong.  Let us help you.  Register for my upcoming webinar HERE and let me show you exactly how to turn your efforts into some real money.  If you are unfortunate enough to have a short sale you need done on one of your properties, GO HERE and someone on our team that is closest to you can help you.  And finally, if you have no interest in becoming an investor but simply want to buy a home right now at a great bargain, let us show you how.  My upcoming webinar will show you everything you need to know. Register for my upcoming webinar HERE 

You’re welcome to add your thoughts to the comment section below: