As an example, my first wholesale deal was an older brick single-family house in Columbia, SC. A hot lead came in from an extremely motivated seller. They lived out of state, had been taken advantage of by several local contractors and decided to cut their losses. The sellers wanted $10,000 for the house, and agreed to pay the back taxes and closing costs also. Sure sounded like a great deal and figured if I couldn’t make this work, perhaps real estate investing wasn’t for me. Immediately after getting the contract signed I called an investor who did a lot of rehabs in the area. Now I had valued the house at $115,000 based on a few houses nearby that sold for $120,000 each. They were a little bigger in square footage and I found their sales prices on Zillow.com, so I felt pretty confident on my ARV. My house needed a lot of work in the kitchen and outside, but was in good shape for its age (old!).

My asking price was $45,000 for the deal and this investor immediately began negotiating the price down. Since another investor had already contacted me (there were quite a few after I placed some ads), we went to the house together. The second investor asked how I had determined the home’s value, and I showed him the other two houses on the same street. At that point, this investor informed me that those were new houses, built in an old style in keeping with the community. Whoops, it quickly became apparent the more realistic ARV of my house was around $95,000. Fortunately, my deal was so good I really couldn’t lose money. I ended up selling the house for $27,000- and then that investor resold it for $33,000. However, I quickly learned a valuable lesson.

In my next article, we will look at more accurate and reliable methods to determine the ARV or After Repair Value of Residential Real Estate. This is a must if you will become a successful RE investor.

Jo Amick invites you to learn to earn high and even INFINITE returns investing in commercial real estate with a group (on money you used to have sitting in pathetic CD’s at 4% or less) when you become a Select Member with America’s #1 Real Estate Network today! Join us for an upcoming educational presentation online to get information or to get started now: Real Estate Investor Webinar

Find out how to join hundreds of successful investors now who are building a sizeable retirement: http://www.hisrealestatenetwork.com/ Email jo@hisrealestatenetwork.com or call 803-394-9357

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jo_Amick

(PRWEB) September 11, 2009 — A simple, well designed, functional website that helps you close more deals is a basic necessity of any real estate investing business. When choosing a good real estate investing web site, it is important not only to have a wide selection of designs to choose from, but also to be able to customize the web site to look exactly the way you like it. In keeping with this principle, RealEstateInvestorsWebSites.net have released new designs for their real estate investing websites.

Real estate investors can now choose from 120 designs created specifically for real estate investing. You can personalize each design with your company name and slogan or even logo, or get any design fully customized to reflect your full brand identity or even a new one built from the ground up at no extra cost.

Real Estate Investing WebSite

“Real estate investors can now choose from 120 designs created specifically for real estate investing. You can personalize each design with your company name and slogan or even logo, or get any design fully customized to reflect your full brand identity or even a new one built from the ground up at no extra cost.”

With many squeeze pages (landing pages) available with each web site, real estate investors can run targeted marketing and convert more leads into closed deals.

The websites are fully database-driven, interactive and adaptable to suit any real estate investing business model controlled from a virtual back office (admin panel) with an inbuilt follow-up autoresponder system and un-equaled automation capability in the industry.

Each web site is delivered fully customized to suit your investing needs, whether you buy, sell or wholesale houses, attracting private money lenders or any other business model. Each comes fully optimized for search engines targeting your local market right where you buy and sell properties.

For more information and to see the available designs, visit Real Estate Investing WebSites or call 214-227-8718.