Kennyg's Journal: Pro Poker Player turned REI

Congrats on your success in your poker life and welcome to the DG family! You will absolutly love it here! The people are amazing and we all are willing to answer any questions that you have! Read, read, and read again. Get your hands on anything that has to do with real estate. And don't hesitate to just go out there and do it! You will be a real estate millionaire before you know it!

Good luck,
Shaun

You made a great move. Welcome here to the DG family! I like to gamble sometimes also, but you win, you lose. Real estate will bring you money for ever if you invest right. Dean, Donald Trump, and some of the richest people in the world have found their success through real estate. You made the right move my friend. Congrats on beginning and starting up already opening a LLC.

Jeremy

Congrats on reading Dean's book and being a part of the DG family. You will find a bunch of great information and helpful DG members here. With your poker background that should help in reading people and deteriming what sellers may actual need rather than want. Best of luck with real estate investing. Believe and Achieve! - Joe

Welcome to table. Man you have got to sure a better poker face when talking with those Vegas girls...ROFL...j/k....Maybe you can teach me a thing or two bout playing poker. I'd like to get me, one of them brackets, they give out during Poker Championships.

Thanks for the support guys! It is very much appreciated. Hopefully I'll have some good stories and incite to share soon!

You may be right. I've read a couple of books on the subject of body language and "tells" back in the day for poker. I have some experience after 6 years. You wouldn't believe what a person's feet can tell you about their attitude towards a poker hand (or real estate deal.)

lol. On the other hand, my job title usually impresses men. Sigh. haha.

Well I found a killer property on MLS yesterday. It was a 1 Bed/ 1 Bath condo a mile from where I live. 42k. Rent in the area is going from 700-800 for that property type. It sold for 170k in 05. Better yet they just build a new casino 2 miles down the road.

I called the success academy on what kind of questions to ask and so forth.. which helped out a lot.

Sadly, it was put under contract a few days ago. It was a short sale. All the condos in this complex look like steals. The Realtor for the property told me that there is pending litigation against the HOA. This means that banks will not give loans to buyers. So the only people who can purchase are cash investors.

There's a 2 bedroom for 60k that sold for 250k in 05. Yeah... seriously. It currently is renting to a tenant so I can't imagine it's in terrible shape. I may try to assign or somehow find a partner with cash. The only problem is the Realtor wouldn't give me the unit #. I asked for a showing but she won't unless I have proof of cash.

Back to studying assigns again.

Any thoughts guys?

from Coastal-funding.com to show her your serious Investor and that you have the funding available (if you choose to use their services--there's fee) so that she will disclose the unit # & set up a showing for you to view the unit.

So I went through Legal Zoom and purchased my first LLC. They said initially it seems LV Home Buyers LLC is not taken, but we'll find out for sure in a few days.

I've been going through the different strategies in Dean's book. So far the most attractive to me seems to be Matt's 25:1 system. To be honest it almost sounds too easy. But it makes sense! Out of 25-30 offers someone will take a low bid.

I think my next step is just to get through these classes in Dean's success academy. I realized when I was talking to the realtor about the last property that I'm still not knowledgeable enough. A few things she said went a bit over my head.

Once I feel educated and can understand various real estate jargon and can articulate my thoughts on it, I plan to find a mortgage broker and realtor. The mortgage broker first since I need to figure out what kinds of loans I can pull off. I have no idea at the moment. I've made a decent amount of money playing poker, but I'm sure it isn't viewed as the most "stable" job. That worries me a bit. On a good note, I reviewed my credit score and apparently I'm at 850. W00t!

Interviewing the realtors will be fun. I need a good one so I plan on meeting with a bunch.

I hope to have (at least) these steps taken care of by the end of July. I want to be actively pursuing properties in August. I need to join some REI clubs as well, but first I need some business cards. Arg too much to do!

It's 2:30 am. Bed time!

My LLC is now an official entity! LV Home Buyers LLC.

I took a break from real estate for a while with the World Series of Poker going on. I'm getting back on track now. I was waiting for this LLC to be finalized. Now that it is I'm going into super-excited mode once again.

I've been studying with a renewed urgency. I've read PFRRN twice now, and I'm on my second reading of BARM. I'm also doing the real estate academy classes of which I've made some signifacnt progress the last few days.

I made my business bank account while probing about loan pre-approval. And I quote the lady at BOA, "We don't do that here." Sigh. Amazingly, I can apply for pre-approval on their website. Hiring good help is never easy I suppose.

I setup an appointment with a realtor on Saturday. I worked with her when finding my current home. She's very professional. I only hope she'll work with a real estate investor and Matt Larson's 25:1 system.

I've decided I want to focus on buy and hold's. Prices in Las Vegas are amazing. I want to buy property, rent it out, make cash flow, and build equity. I'm not sure I want to get involved with assignments and bird-dogging. It doesn't sound like something that interests me, especially when my job is decent. I'm more interested in building equity for the long term than quick cash. That being said, I'm still taking the time to learn about it. One can never have enough information and I may use it in the future on a specific deal.

Here's my plan for the buy and holds so far. I want to purchase inexpensive condos and homes in decent neighborhoods. I will use the 25:1 system. Since I no longer need to increase my poker bankroll for the limits I'm playing... I plan on taking the extra money I make after my bills and pouring it into my business for down payments. (This extra money used to go into my aforementioned bankroll.) If I have a losing or break-even month with poker (happens about once a year), I will wait to take money out until the bankroll is back to a specific amount I have set. Complicated I know, but it protects all my interests.

I'm not sure how much I will be approved for on these loans, but I'm hoping my credit score goes a long way. I'm self-employed which may be a problem, but I have my tax returns from the last 5 years which show proof of income.

After thinking through all of this, I realized that I need to purchase my own home as well! Obama and Congress are giving me the 8k home buyers tax credit if I purchase by Dec. 1st. (Info on that here http://www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com/2009/faq.php#1 ) I was a little frustrated because I thought I'd have to wait to buy any investment properties until after the first home purchase. Apparently that's not the case, however. Investment properties do not count against me as long as they are not my principle residence. So I can still invest first.. though I will consult an accountant just to be sure.

This post seemed quite long-winded. Anyone have any thoughts or insights on my Buy and Hold strategy?

into Action!

Blah. Spoke to first real estate agents today. They seem professional and hard working but I don't think they're right for me. "The 25:1 system won't work in this market."

The other problem: I kept asking what they did that would benefit an investor and got nothing. "We treat our investors and our home buyers the same."

I'll keep looking. Now I wish I had more time to buy my own house... it needs to be purchased in September and I don't even have an agent yet.

It's amazing the negative vibe I got once I mentioned that strategy. I have to fight through this. Reminds me of when I took a shot as a poker pro. All that negative energy around me. "You can't do that." "It's just gambling." "But how much did you lose?" etc etc etc. I wonder if Phil Ivey ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ivey ) had the same issues.

Does anyone have advice on finding a superb real estate agent? Sadly I don't know enough people in this town for a lot of word-of-mouth referrals.

real estate agent has to be diverse in their daily real estate business dealings. Instead of just telling you they can help you find a home or investment property, any RE agent can do that for that matter, ask them to show you their portfolio of properties they have closed on. Find out how many investors they are currently working with. Pick their minds see what investment strategies they've use if any to close deals of their own or of their clients.

I decided to go ahead and buy my own home first, before buying rentals. The 8k tax credit is too much to resist. I'm looking at an awesome 4B/2.5 bath with a pool in a good, growing neighborhood. I put my final bid at 175k. This house sold for $276k in 2003, which was way before the bubble hit the top. Going to rent out some rooms to my friends and hope they will cover most of the payments. If they don't it's not a big deal , but why pay for it myself if I don't have to?

An interesting note:
Reading through one of Vegas's local papers there was an article about REI from SoCal buying Vegas homes. The negative feedback on the comments about REIs are almost to the level of absurdity. The problem with these people IMO is that they never think outside of the box themselves, to try something new and different. Instead they just blame the REIs for all the town's woes.

I will buy houses and I'll rent them out, happily, while waiting for the market to turn around. I guess the comments just shocked me a bit. They should read Rich Dad Poor Dad and maybe they'll understand how money works a bit better.

Here's the link:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/aug/03/here-comes-vegas-new-breed-b...

seem as though their Mad because they didn't get in on the action back in 2006 on up to this year. I had to laugh at this one comment, 'They are part of the ones who dumped their investments when the prices went south and now coming back like vultures to do the same. Buy now and dump later for cash. The group that got the bad end of the stick were the ones that has jobs, HAD good credit, and bought their homes when the prices were inlated.'

Its obviously it is not the same group of investors this round buying houses. These are business men people with thousands of dollars to invest, the contributor writes, not everyday ordinary joes/janes (who lost their shirts/skirts from the previous market) trying to get in on the today's market action. You can't place the blame entirely on just Investors, for the over inflated prices that people brought into years ago. Some of blame lies with the Builders and original home owners who sold their homes at inflate prices to cash out and move away or move up to a bigger house as well as the people who weren't smart enough to step back and say yeah wait a dang minute and actually look at the yearly appreciation trends for that real estate market before buying into that over inflated market.

Yeah there is blame to go all around. I guess maybe I should be more understanding of the homeowners' plight. In a way I'm very lucky I never thought about buying a home until now. If I had purchased in '06 I'd imagine I'd have a lot of resentment as well. Though, I don't think I would be buying a 300k house either, if I could get the loan or not....