Do as I say, not as I did!

You will read this list and say "Duh" everyone knows this! But we are living proof that not everyone does this! Stupid, stupid, stupid, we were such idiots!

Yup, there's my sign! I cannot stress too vigorously that no matter from whom you buy residential real estate you always do the following. If the seller doesn't agree to each of these steps...well, then, step away. There are more sellers out there. In future posts, I will refer back to these missteps so you can do this better than we did.

1. GO LOOK AT THE PROPERTY.... we did not. We were so stupid! Yes, we have collected a LOT of signs over the past 18 months! We trusted that looking at pictures would tell us what we were getting. Oh, but did we ask WHEN those pictures were taken? Of course not and we got another sign. I will give you more about this in a future post.

2. GET AN SPDS this is the subject of my next post.

3. GET AN INSPECTION OK now I'm tired of all the signs I'm collecting! Again, subject of a future post that will either bring tears to your eyes, or have you ROFLYAO!

4. GET AN APPRAISAL Just because you are financing without a requirement for an appraised valuation of the property, get one. We would have passed on several properties in our IRA account, or made a counter offer. We believe we would have saved 10's of thousands of $$! 5. LOOK FOR CONVECTIONAL FINANCING Many lenders are jumping on the SDIRA bandwagon, and offer interest rates of 4-5% on non-recourse loams for well qualified borrowers. We are currently working with 1stBank to refinance from the insane DOT financing.

6. BE PROACTIVE WITH YOUR PROPERTY MANAGEMENT My future post on this subject will have you scratching your head, again. Let them drive, but you need to be the navigator,

OK, talk to you later about these key mistakes we made.