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Co-founder of www.BlackWidowNetwork.com where investors can search and post investment property for sale, explode their Rolodex with other investors and service providers, and find Killer Apps for business success.
HAH! FINALLY Harrison Long just brought up the issue of educating young people about building wealth and learning financial responsibility. Somehow, we need to develop a culture of highlighting the importance of this early on... school should include real life skills like managing your money, sales, negotiating, networking, staying in shape, treating people with respect and leading a life with integrity and ethics. We have a much larger issue at stake here, beyond simply running the real estate professionals through the wringer; I'm certainly no expert, but we seem to have a national mindset that needs adjusting and that's a huge undertaking that should start early on.... BTW, don't forget to include the appraisers in this mess, too! Richard :) Chief Deal Weaver www.BlackWidowNetwork.com - STRIKE FAST!
I know I'm preaching to the choir here and there must be THOUSANDS of investors who have experienced the very same scenario with Countrywide and other banks when doing a short sale. This is when the bank won't discount any less than 80c on the dollar, then sells it MUCH later through a Realtor at 50c on the dollar. I've even said to a loss mitigator who was refusing my offer: "OK, why don't we follow this through, all the way to the final sale with a Realtor (after the auction, several months of holding costs and a commission)and see how your bank made out compared to my original offer?" The loss mitigator responded with "I don't care... once it becomes an REO, it's out of my department." To give a real example, Countrywide were owed $220,000 on a house that was worth really around $159,000 in its' current condition - I had a retail buyer willing to pay $179,000 on a short sale and the bank refused it. I followed the property to final sale once the bank had taken it back at auction, listed it with a Realtor for several months and finally sold it through the Realtor for $96,000. Unbelieveable. Here we are in 2008 and this type of madness is still occurring - the government should listen to investors who are out there seeing this stuff first hand! Yours in disbelief, Richard :) Chief Deal Weaver www.BlackWidowNetwork.com
Response to Joe and Sean….. Just a quick note to follow up on your comments regarding www.BlackWidowNetwork.com; my partner Kevin and I appreciate your feedback and it’s great to see folks being active and commenting on leading real estate blogs like Inman. Certainly such an experienced real estate professional as Joe and a very active investor like Sean have a good handle on the foreclosure world and how the activities of real estate investors play into this picture. Our whole spider brand and STRIKE FAST relate to the fact that as an investor, you need to be prepared to move quickly when it comes to making an investment in real estate; (hang around and the deal’s gone), but NONE of our brand effort has anything to do with taking advantage of folks in an unfortunate position. I absolutely agree with you that there’s been a negative public perception of investors. As a full time investor myself and a Board member of the New Hampshire Real Estate Investor’s Association, I’ve spent a huge amount of time conveying to investors to behave with ETHICS and INTEGRITY, formulate truly win-win solutions and develop a culture of helping people; believe me, I’ve sat at way too many people’s kitchen tables, figuring out ways to help them with their incredibly tough situations! The type of investors you speak of won’t be around very long….. The essence of Black Widow Network is providing a dynamic platform for investors to share deals, insights and ideas, network with each other and find new ways of becoming more successful with their businesses. This is a HARD business and it takes a lot of integrity, knowledge and energy to see it through – we plan to be a catalyst for this AND pave the way for real estate investors to be recognized as helpful, caring individuals. Hopefully I’m preaching to the choir here and we’d love to get some articles/podcast interviews from the two of you; you certainly seem to care about our industry, which we applaud. Yours with boundless enthusiasm, Richard Dale-Mesaros :) Chief Deal Weaver www.BlackWidowNetwork.com - STRIKE FAST!
