She Ready LLC

Real Estate Investing With A Budget

The first question people ask me when I tell them that I invest in Real Estate is “why did you decide to start investing?” Although my purpose has changed since I made the decision. It all started because of my budget. I purchased my current home in 2017 after renting for a while. Then I bought a new car in 2018. Yes, I bought it brand new and after buying the car, I started looking at my monthly budget and noticed that I wasn’t saving as much money as I used to nor that I wanted to.

Of course, me being the over analyzer that I am sometimes, I took a deeper dive into my finances as a whole. I looked at how much I was spending on everything. I created an Excel spreadsheet to look at how much money came in and out of my bank account. Every month after I looked at the money I would have left after I paid all my bills, I took the remainder and either put it aside or I invested it. I did this process for about 8 months and was helpful to know where I can take some risks with investing and saving.

For anyone looking to invest, I highly recommend that you analyze your monthly finances first. I often hear people asking questions such as what should they invest in or how much money do they need to start investing. The answer is simple. What can you afford?

Tax Lien Buying In Mississippi

It’s the Fall Annual Tax Lien Sale in Mississippi. I’m going to list the basic steps I went through to bid in the August 2020 Mississippi Tax Lien Auction. I’ve already discussed why I participate in tax lien auctions in a previous blog post. This year, I’m excited to be bidding in the state that I invest in.

NO, I’M NOT LEAVING THE COMFORT OF MY OWN HOME TO BID IN MISSISSIPPI!

It took me a while to find the website that is used by the state of Mississippi and sure enough, I soon realized the process of bidding was not going to the be same as it is in Florida or Arizona.

I’ve broken down the main steps below:

Step 1. Register with the tax auction website

Step 2. Complete the W-9 Form

Step 3. Contact the specific county I registered for to find out additional requirements of bidding.

*I recommend sending any information they require in step 3 with a signature required.*

Step 4. I checked the website every few days to see if the properties were loaded.

Step 5. I imported the entire list of properties into Excel and begin to weed out the ones that I didn’t meet my criteria.

Step 6. Once pre-bidding begin, I entered the max bid amount for the properties I was interested in.

Step 7. I chose to watch the live bid since this was my first time bidding in this state, but you certainly don’t have to.

Overall, it was a good experience, I won on a few of the properties, I was interested in.

More details will be presented in the Tax Lien Buying Course!

Deciding To Get Into Real Estate

www.voyagemia.com/interview/meet-yolanda-brown-ready-west-palm-beach

The first question everyone always asks me is why did I decided to get into real estate. The truth is Real Estate kinda found me. After buying a new car in 2018, I realized I wasn’t saving the money I used to and when I took a deeper dive into my life and how I want to live in my elder years; I realized I have to start making different decisions about my finances.

Even though moving can be a pain, I always like shopping for places to stay. I like going into properties and seeing if my furniture is going to fit, if it will be enough space for visitors, etc. Even now, when I’m not actively looking for another property, I still look at properties. Deciding to get into real estate was kind of an easy choice. I did some research and found out there are so many ways real estate can help people reach that next level in their life. I was really only looking to stack more money for my retirement and get some rotating income. However, plans changed after I started seeing how I can I can make a bigger impact on the community I grew up in by providing affordable housing and helping to rebuild the community.

The impact of the hurricanes in 2005 affected so many people, including people in Mississippi. I can remember the days when businesses did well and were open for longer than 2 years, now it seems like every time I visit, another business has closed or is going out of business. It’s been kind of heartbreaking to see, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel and with consistency, I know it will be the city it once was.

She Did It With No Experience-YouTube University

Have you every thought to yourself that some people just seem to have it all figured out and they have got it together. As I grow my business in Real Estate, I’m reminded that behind every successful business, there is a story filled with a lot of hard work, long hours, sacrifices and dedication.

Back in March, I attend a virtual conference to get more continuing education credits for my Professional Project Management (PMP) certification. This was my first time attending this event so I wasn’t sure what to expect. To be honest, I thought it was going to be boring. Little did I know the keynote speaker would be someone who would inspire me to keep pushing towards my goals. Her name is Cara Brookins, author of a book titled “How a House Built a Family”. As the author begin talking, I was immediately glued to my computer monitor. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and most impressively, I couldn’t believe how she achieved it.

This brave woman not only had the courage to leave a bad marriage with her kids, but they managed to build a home for themselves by themselves without knowing a thing about construction. They drew the floor plans and after she purchased some land and got the bank to give her loan; they spent every day working on building their home. As I watched her talk, I asked myself, how did she know how to lay the blocks and cut the wood and when she said, she learned this all from watching youtube videos; I thought I might fall out of my chair.

I wasn’t surprised that she found this information on youtube, because I understand that there is a lot of information on youtube and it’s FREE, but to take all that information and build a house was simply amazing to me. As she wrapped up her speech, I wrote down the name her name so that I could read her book later on when I had some free time.

Well the time came just as things were coming to a close for my rental. I downloaded the book and I listened to it. I was still amazed how she did it. I now have a different view of people’s success even though I’m blogging about my experience so others will see it’s not all glitter and gold in business. I have more confirmation than ever that success doesn’t happen over night. It takes time to build a business and see profit, but the key is to not give up when things get hard because they will and their will always be something or someone negative to make you think twice, but if you want it, you have to push the negativity aside and keep moving forward.

Rookie Mistakes-My Contractor Experience

When you think about rehabbing a project, one of the things that may come to your mind is HGTV. Of course, you have watched tons of HGTV shows and they show you how they are doing demo and encountering an issue here and there, but is that really what happens when “YOU DO IT”.

Uuuuhhh yes and no. Yes demo and issues happen when doing doing a renovation, but what those tv shows don’t show you is how it all starts. I’m going to break down my experience as a newbie real estate investor and explain the process I went through.

After the paperwork was signed and I officially owned the property. I followed these steps.

Step 1. I got a home inspection. Why, because as stated in a previous blog (https://shereadyllc.com/2020/07/19/quit-claim-deed-rental-keeping-it-in-the-family/), the home hadn’t been lived in for years and I needed to get a full view of what I was going to be dealing with.

Step 2. Put together a list of questions for the contractor. I included, things like are you insured, licensed, do you work on weekends, etc.

Step 3. Meet with contractors to do a walk-through of the property and get quotes and references.

Step 4. Sign the contract of the contractor and pay a deposit

I failed to follow steps 2 and 3 more thoroughly. In step 2, because of the rural area, the rehab was in, I found that lot of contractors were actually handy men. Some of them were not even registered with the state as an official business. In step 3, and this one may have saved me thousands of dollars, I didn’t call and check references of work they had done previously. I was impatient and it cost more money.

Looking back, I definitely realized that my process needs refinement, but now that the property is rented, I’m happy that I have lessons learned so that I can apply them moving forward.

In my interview with Coach Carson, we discussed my successes and losses with contractors. Please click on the link below for more details.

How To Avoid Bad Contractors