Michigan Foreclosure Report by Mark Ijlal

FiredUP-Episode 3

2009-11-06T14:36:27Z

FiredUp guys tackle a question that every Michigan real estate investor has to answer when they buy a foreclosure - should they fix the house themselves or get it contracted out even when it will cost them less to fix it up themselves?

FiredUP-Episode 2

2009-11-04T14:33:06Z

The Firedup guys argue about buying REO's with mold and whether they are still a profitable play in Michigan foreclosures.

FiredUP is a new web show about investing in Michigan foreclosures. New episodes every week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

If you use Facebook personally then stop by our Facebook Page. Fan us up so you never miss out on new episodes and network with other Michigan real estate investors and fellow fans of FiredUp! You can also get the show on iTunes.

6 Good Reasons To Join our new community and the FiredUp guys on Facebook

2009-11-03T15:33:48Z

FiredUp on Facebook

Why you want to join the FiredUp guys on Facebook:

1. You will never miss out on anything.
2. Get daily updates that inspire and inform you to make more money in your real estate investing business in Michigan.
3. Connect with other like minded investors in your Michigan city.
4. Go behind the scenes of FiredUP - the new web show about investing in Michigan foreclosures.
5. It is free.
6. Tell the FiredUP guys what you want them to discussing next. It is your show as much as it theirs. So go to the Page. Fan us up and tell us your wishes about the new show episodes.

FiredUp-Episode1

2009-11-01T19:42:57Z

What happens when you put 5 Michigan real estate investors, five chairs, one table and one video camera in a room?

Well a 10 minute, 3 times a week, video show that is going to change the way you think about buying Michigan foreclosures in 2009 and 2010.

The name of the show is FiredUp!

New episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on MarkIjlal.com

What would a pirate do?

2009-10-29T18:20:54Z

First in a series of videos, live, unedited from a seminar I taught recently to raise funds and awareness for Habitat for Humanity in Oakland County. Next video in the series is about the coming foreclosure boom in apartments REO's and short sales in Michigan. If you cannot watch the video then click here for the direct link.

Nothing Changes By Accident

2009-10-14T14:52:03Z

I stumbled into a former employee of mine recently. When I hired her, despite some objections from my staff back in 2003 - she was waitressing in a Coney Island. I don't even think she bought a resume to the interview. I hired her anyway because she was working 10 hours per day for almost nothing and her work ethic and her cheerfulness even in that tough job impressed me. She turned out to be a good hiring decision. Quick learner and hard worker. Fast to think and react to any crises that came our way.

Once in a while we ended up sharing a meal together on the road and although it served me no purpose, I told her that she should really consider going back to school. She just looked at me and laughed. She was 33, with two kids, about to get married again and the mere thought of going back to school with a full life and not too much money in the bank sounded ridiculous to her.

We ended up parting company sometime later and I forgot all about her until recently. Turns out she did remember our conversations. Got married. Kids got a little older and she dusted her brains off, got a nighttime job and went back to school at 37. She will become a nurse in two and half years. She gave me credit for ignition. I told her that she has nobody to give credit to but herself.

In the blink of an eye, she is going to go from working for minimum wage to a respectable profession with good income, benefits and a future. There is no luck at play here. There is no talent at play here. Just determination, a plan and action to take out what is not to her liking in her life anymore and put in place a future that she knows she wants in her life. Change, manufactured by her.

During my first year in USA, I met a professor from Bangladesh, who was working in the local Meijer in Ypsilanti at that time. I used to go there, late at night to pick up groceries. The buses ran till midnight so I could leave work at 11 sometimes, run to Meijer and take the bus home before they shut down the route for the night. We talked sometimes and he was an angry little man. He had a useless PhD that was unable to get him a decent job. Somebody told him that doctors get paid well in Michigan.

At the age of 56, he applied for Medical school. Failed to get into Wayne State. Applied to the medical school in the Caribbean who has a more relaxed admissions policy. Got in and moved to the Bahamas for a couple of years. Finished school, came back and did his residency here and by the time it was all said and done, at the tender age of 61, he was making $110,000 per year as a M.D. Just did not like what he was doing and how his life was looking standing eight hours on his feet at the Meijer on Carpenter Road in Ypsilanti. So he decided to make a change.

Once again, he did not wait for the auto sector to stage a comeback, for Jenny to figure out Economics 101, for Obama's stimulus package to launch, for the bailout funds to reach him - he just manufactured change in his life. Investigated his options, made a plan, and got started doing things (moving to Bahamas, going to school) that would bring the change in his and his family's life that he wanted to see.

Change, made in America, manufactured by him and her alone. Very very few things in this amazing country are out of your reach. Despite of what you might hear or made to believe. As long as you know that you are the founder, architect and executor of all the change in your life. You can have whatever you want. Believe what you may. Those are the lies. This is the truth.

What do you need to succeed in your business?

2009-10-13T19:15:55Z

"The biggest life lesson I have learned is that you have to discipline yourself to do the work. If you want to accomplish something, you can't spend time hemming and hawing and making excuses. You actually have to do it. I still have to go home every single day, know where I am, what I'm doing - and include 45 minutes of practice on my clarinet, because I want to play. I want to write, too, so I get up, go in, close the door and write. You can't string paper clips and get a pad ready and play around."

- Woody Allen

Saturday's Fundraising Seminar in Southfield

2009-10-11T04:53:48Z

Mark Ijlal teaching a completely sold out, full room, we ran out of chairs not once but twice seminar

Thank you everyone who found time to support a great cause on Saturday. I had a great time on Saturday and finally got to meet several dozen new MarkIjlal.com readers. We did got the seminar on video and in the next few days I will be putting it all up here.

But next time try to make it even though you can watch the video, download the audio later but nothing REPEAT NOTHING beats being there and shaking hands and making new friends who will become your strategic contacts as you launch and grow your Michigan real estate investing business.

One of the things that almost everybody said to me at the end of the day was "I cannot believe how many new and valuable contacts I have made today."

No great or little fortunes for that matter have ever been made while sitting in your home and hoping that things will turn for better.

You got to go out, whether it is cold or rain, foggy or hot, even on a cold Saturday like today and meet not just anybody but right people like today's full room, people who are in the game, want to be in the game like you and learn and exchange information that can literally change your business overnight in Michigan.

Wine Tasting Fundraiser in Royal Oak

2009-10-08T21:54:54Z

Pics from the wine tasting fund raiser my Inner Circle member Eric Tomei just hosted in Royal Oak. We all had a great time and ended up raising money and awareness for the good things Habitat for Humanity Oakland County Chapter is doing.

Mark Ijlal and bunch of Michigan real estate investors and guests

Mike and Nannette Simmons with Marilyn Boike, they are my Inner Circle members from Troy and St.Clair Shores. You just heard Allan Boike, Marilyn husband last week on the audio interview I did with him about his new short sale negotiating service.

Guests having a great time. The wine was great.

Eric Tomei raffles of some great prizes for attendees.

Mark Solobic who I am trying to convince to convince his dad to start teaching how to make wine because his dad has been making wine all his life.

We took over the whole winery

URGENT for Seminar next Saturday

2009-10-04T22:39:49Z

Next Saturday I am teaching the last seminar I will teach in 2009 about real estate investing in Michigan. The goal was to raise money for Oakland County Habitat for Humanity by doing a wine tasting which happened last night and we had a great time.

Some folks emailed me and asked if they could still attend the free seminar next Saturday by donating $15 per person to Habitat for Humanity. The answer is YES as I have some seats left for next Saturday.

If you are interested in attending next Saturday's seminar with me, please email nora@markijlal.com with your name, guest name if you are bringing somebody with you, cell phone number so she can call you back on Monday and give you the location etc.

Bring a check with you made out to Habitat for Humanity Oakland County with you next Saturday. It is a non-profit 501 C3 so your check is actually tax deductible.

I have three of my Inner Circle members also joining me on Saturday. These guys are kicking butt and taking names in their Michigan cities and you want their cell phone numbers. Very small and intimate setting.

We will start at 9am sharp and end somewhere around 1pm. No lunch break. Just don't have time for it. I will however provide some snacks drinks etc all throughout the session so you guys don't pass out.

We have limited seating. 2/3 of which are already taken by people who attended last night's wine tasting or left Nora voice mail messages so don't wait too long to reply.

If you emailed her on Friday / Saturday, you will be getting an email from her on Monday, but email her your phone number anyway so she can also talk to you on Monday. Any questions? Call her at 248-561-3535 ASAP.

The seminar topics are here:

- How to find, convince and do business with other Michigan real estate investors with a private money LLC company.

- How to get your short sales done really fast without spending hours on the telephone waiting for loss mitigation officers to talk to you.

- How to fund your short sales as cash buys for quick flip to other real estate investors.

- The coming $100 billion dollars foreclosure boom in small apartment buildings and how you can start buying them in your Michigan cities. One of my clients Dennis Fassett is looking to buy a building that just dropped in price a cool $100,000. This is just the beginning of the one in a life time opportunity in Michigan to become cashflow rich.

- What if you get fired tomorrow? Are you doing something on the side to build a business? 15 business lessons I learned in the last 9 years of being on my own that you can use to build a business faster than ever in Michigan.

- Hard money, business credit and non-owner occupied financing is not coming for another 2 years. My backup plan for buying foreclosures without using your own money.

One last time in 2009

2009-09-30T15:50:39Z

I am teaching a free seminar in Southfield on October 10th, 2009. Probably the last time I will be speaking in public in 2009 on Michigan real estate investing.

Some of the topics I will be discussing:

- How to find, convince and do business with other Michigan real estate investors with a private money LLC company.

- How to get your short sales done really fast without spending hours on the telephone waiting for loss mitigation officers to talk to you.

- How to fund your short sales as cash buys for quick flip to other real estate investors.

- Hard money, business credit and non-owner occupied financing is not coming for another 2 years. My backup plan for buying foreclosures without using your own money.

In order to be invited to my free seminar, please help me in a good cause.

A good friend of mine Eric Tomei is hosting a wine tasting in Royal Oak to raise money for Habitat for Humanity which is dear to his heart as this was his late father's favorite charity.

It is $15 per person includes 5 samples of wine, cheese, crackers, and grapes as well as a donation to Habitat for Humanity. Many prizes will be raffled off also.

I would love for you to join me there with your friends or significant other. I will be there all day helping Eric. Come and introduce yourself to me and I will put you on the seminar list.

It is a measly $15 but it might change a family's life in metro Detroit. Plus you and your significant others and friends will have a great time. I guarantee you that.

Also some of the top real estate investing friends and clients will be there. Guys and girls you want to meet because one contact like this can literally change your life.

*****************************************************
Here are the details:
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Vintner's Cellar Custom Winery-Royal Oak
(www.royaloakwinery.com)
325 E. Fourth Street, Royal Oak, MI
******************************************************

If you use Facebook - the event link is here - go there and confirm your self as a guest so Eric can keep a head count. You don't have to pay for tickets there. Just pay them at the door on Saturday, October 3 in Royal Oak.

If you have any questions, email me back or call Nora at 248-561-3535.

Lastly, if you cannot make the event because of prior commitments - I will still appreciate if you can spread the word out about the wine tasting to your friends and mention it on Facebook or Twitter if you use either one of them. Just pass out the link to Facebook event page.

Things we lost in the fire

2009-09-24T14:44:24Z

- The days where you can get hard money on decent terms if you had good credit and a stable job history.

- Any hopes to get hard money on ridiculous high rates and fees if you had bad credit.

- Joys of sitting on the Internet and applying, applying and applying and getting, the 50 business credit cards and unsecured credit lines as long you had a pulse, an LLC and a FICO over 680.

- All activity on the Internet from California investors discussing the gold mine of East Side Detroit foreclosures and how it was going to make them millionaires in the next 12 months.

- Mainstream magazine covers from Fortune, Forbes, Money and Smart Money talking about the need of adding real estate (read: condos in FL, NV, AZ) to your portfolio).

- Buyers with bad credit on the edge who cannot get qualified anymore even with decent jobs.

- Buyers who cannot document their income. Self employed plumbers, waitresses and strippers just dropped out of the buyer's pool overnight.

- The idea that worked for 50 years in Michigan - that as long as you worked for a company that makes cars - you have job security for life since as long as there are people, they will need cars.

- The stability of owning an engineering degree in Michigan and the benefits, salary and job security that came with it.

- The idea that you can own a retail business of any kind near a automobile manufacturing plant and do O.K. for the rest of your life. This does breaks my heart, because they are collateral damage in a fight they did not started.

I can fill another ten pages with this.

Change, whether you like it or not, happens.

To us (getting old is a drag); to our personal relationships (wife does not think as highly of me as she used to 10 years ago); families (kids grow up); jobs (they used to be stable back in the days) and it also applies to things you know and do in your business and real estate investing in Michigan.

To say most jobs are worth half of what they were 15 years ago is not an exaggeration. Scary part is to sit and think what your job is going to be worth 15 years from today?

So here is one big question for you: What skills, things, stuff, strategies, knowledge, brain waves you currently own and comfortable with right now that are going to be lost in the fire in the next 12 months?

Even a bigger and more uncomfortable question: what are you going to do about it? What it the plan, resources, people you are lining up as we race toward the end of 2009 who and what are going to replace the things and skills that will be lost in the fire?

Where is the big opportunity that you might be missing out?

"Incredible amount of lust and lots and lots of patience."

2009-09-19T04:51:57Z

Paul Newman was describing the secret behind his 50 year old marriage to Joan Woodward, a strange thing in Hollywood. I say his words also apply to people who start their own businesses. Who can really explain why we do, what we do? We, the true believers, who get up one day and decide, without paying any attention to what is going on in the world, in the stock market, in the economy, to start a business. I never investigated what the economy or Dow Jones was doing on January 10th, 2001 when I incorporated my business.

I would make an argument that is probably dumb. That one should take careful consideration of all the things that is happening in the world, in your industry, what your competition is doing, what the forecasters of the world are saying about what might, could, should, would happen tomorrow... but that is not the way the entrepreneur heart works.

I know it should sound strange and disturbingly reckless to somebody who does not belong to our tribe but it is what it is. You get up one morning and just know, that you have to try it, that you would not be able to go another day if you did not give it a shot.

Could you lose money? Sure. Could you spend all this time learning about a business only to discover that it is not for you? Happens all the time. Could you completely flop and risk your significant other, friends and family snicker at you, both in your face and behind your back? Happened to me several times. Will somebody who you respect, will take you in a corner and whisper to you give up that really you are a good person but nobody thinks this is a good idea. Very possible.

I have noticed that if I tell somebody who is an entrepreneur about something that I tried and it did not work out... their face becomes excited, their eyes glow with happiness and they cannot just stop smiling. I have just made their day. Proved to them that their strategy of not-doing-anything-because-something-bad-may-happen-and-I-might-hurt-myself is valid, that the world is a dangerous place where you can lose money / credit / reputation / respect of your loved ones if you go out and try something new that you have not and you may fail.

I don't mind. Really. They are right in their own way and for their own life. They don't get to taste the bitter defeat of hearing 'NO", of seeing a deal fall apart for no logical reason, to try out a new marketing campaign and to see it fall flat on its face, to put out a new website that doesn't convince even one person to do business with you.

They are right in staying behind the walls and not venturing out. But they, who don't belong to our tribe, also don't get to share the insane joy of seeing a business grow, they don't get to open up their emails and read the testimonials of happy clients, the rush of seeing a tactic work perfectly after 10 tweaks and knowing that we did this, inch by inch, all by ourselves.

Lust operates without reason. Patience requires planting seeds every day. Lust defies explanation. Patience and everyday boring progress silences all skeptics eventually.

50 year marriages are not easy. Getting rich is not easy. Running a business is not easy. Raising children is not easy.

Since we are at it... name one thing that is worthwhile doing in a short life which is easy?

What it takes to be a genius?

2009-09-17T19:31:59Z

"I am convinced that in our society, people that can articulate common sense are hailed as geniuses. I have never felt it more so than working in real estate where common sense is as rare as non-owner occupied bank financing..."

Doug "The Lansing Real Estate Guy" Benson

PS: I have been laughing for a few minutes now since I read this. Thought you might like it too.

Metro Detroit Short Sale Update

2009-09-15T19:40:22Z

Allan Boike and Steve Londeau of Property Solutions of Michigan

Last week Allan Boike and Steve Londeau, two real estate investors who operate a short sale negotiating service for real estate investors, real estate agents and real estate brokers in Metro Detroit area stopped by my office.

These guys are doing some interesting things and have been in the trenches in the real estate investing game for a long time in Michigan. I grilled them about their business and recorded a quick interview.

Here are some of the big things we talked about:

1. What are they hearing while talking and negotiating deals with Loss Mitigation officers every day?

2. How are they selling their own deals even is expensive cities in West Bloomfield really fast?

3. How do they work with real estate agents and brokers so they don't lose out on their commission when banks discount?

4. How come they decided not to charge anything upfront to real estate investors in Michigan for negotiating short sales while everybody else is doing it?

5. My favorite part: What they recently heard on a conference call with some of the top loss mitigation officers of big bank about what banks are planning with regards to negotiating discounts? It will make your head spin.

6. The biggest mistake Allan sees new real estate investors in Michigan make every day? And yeah I made it too and so did Allan but hopefully you will learn from our lessons.

Here is the link to their interview in MP3.

Also their website is here. But please before you call them and drive them crazy with your Short Sale questions, download my interview and listen to it.