As i mentioned briefly in my last few posts I have been working on a new blog in order to take advantage of a features not offered by blogger.com. If you are so kind I'd be greatful if you would follow me over to my new location. There is no doubt that I would not have gotten as far as I have without the help of everyone who has read and pushed me.

THANK YOU!

And this way to my new blog...

StrugglingInvestor.com

I'm not sure why exactly I picked this house, but I'm going to be making an offer on the Mt Pleasant property.

As you may recall it's an Estate property (ties in nicely with the whole probate thing I'm going after). Has been on the market for 45 days, not long but they have already dropped the price 30k from the original asking price of 369k. So that is a sign of motivation I would say. The property is a very big lot that a larger house (which tends to be the thing in my town) could be built on.

So those where the reasons. I'm going to go drive by it today on my way home from work and then I've got to sure up what the ARV would be in that area of town. My educated guess would be 360k for a 3/1. So breaking that down into an MAO...

arv(360,000) * .60 - repairs(70,000) - Profit(5,000) = MAO(141,000)

the biggest question that I have no idea about is the repair costs. That really depends on what my buyer wants to do with the house. If they want to knock it down and build a 600k house or if they just want to repair the place and maybe add a bathroom. I guess this is why it's so important to know your buyers.

Anyone have any suggestions on what to do about estimating repair costs? Houses that have had old people living there, in my area, always seem to need the bathrooms and kitchens, flooring and painting completely redone.

So that is where I'm at today. I've got to re look at my goals for this week to make sure I'm on track.

Later

This week is going to be a busy one! My main goal is to pick out 1 or more of these 4 houses to make an offer on. Take a look.

Let's review last weeks goals.

1. Create Facebook Page - DONE
   
   I managed to pull this feet off. I did catch some flack from my friends because I've told them many times over that I will not ever create a facebook page because I'm not in high school. Well they will soon find out why I created it when it's full of Real Estate Investing stuff. Not sure how it all works just yet but If anyone wants to send me a friend request the email I used is scostell AT yahoo DOT com.
   
   
2. Post Ads on Craigslist Looking for houses - DONE
   
   I did this early last week and got no responses through my squeeze pages and one response through email that was just a spam response. I think I need to put more ads out there. For this coming week I'm going to put up ads on monday, wednesday and friday. We'll see if that helps the responses
   
   
3. Go to Court House on Friday and Find Probate files - DONE
   
   I was really proud of myself for doing this as this is the exact type of thing that I would keep putting off. I just put my head down and went for it. I found the surrogates office no problem and with an example docket number that I pulled from the online search, I ask one of the employees where I could find it. She pulled it out for me and I was then off and running. I've got a few key questions about probate files now that I will post about tomorrow, but I'm ready to go back this friday and pull leads leads and more leads...woohooo!
   
   
   
4. Find a home to make an offer on, then make an offer. - FAILED
   
   I found a few homes I wanted to do more research on before making an offer, but I didn't get it done. Ii will be making the offer this week. I want to do this badly as I want to find out the process and be ready to go for the next time. Shae I know you are gonna get on me for failing this one...
   
   
5. Redo JerseyRei.com and Rei-Links.com - DONE
   
   This is done, but only sorta. I still need to add alot more information to the sites, but the setups are there and I'm adding new content every day.
   
   

This weeks Goals

• Make an offer on one of the houses I picked out
  
• Go to the courthouse on Friday and get Leads
  
• Mail letters to Probate Leads
  
• Get my new blog up and running
  
• Post Ads looking for Sellers and Buyers on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
  

Have a productive week!

I was reading through my daily blogs and came by a post by Scott Carson that listed the 10 traits a successful investor has as opposed to the 10 traits and bad investor has. Have a read...

10 Characteristics That Make Up Good And Bad Investors

The one major characterisic that I must continue to work on is "to talk with other people". I'm a shy and quiet person by nature and it has always bugged me that the simple task of picking up the phone to call anyone, even my friends, is nerve racking.

I fear that I will not have anything to say, not be able to say what I mean (this happens all the time) or just sound stupid. Depending on who I need/want to call one of those is always the reason why I don't dial that number. I've been working on this over the past year and have gotten much better, but still have a long way to go.

For those that have similar problems, I'll share with you what works for me the best. As soon as I think of a person I want to call I just pick up the phone and call. I don't say I'll call them later, tomorrow or whenever. I call them right then and there. If I'm really nervous I just tell me self "Do it!"

Hope that can help someone.

Articles

I'm in the process of reworking my blog and moving over to a WordPress based site. The main reason is that it gives me more flexibility and I can add different pages like an about page or an articles section. This brings me to my question...would anyone like to write an article about some aspect of wholesaling for me to post on the site? It doesn't have to be long, 500 to 1000 words. I can't pay you, but it's always good to help out your fellow investors :) Just thought I'd ask. And you can put a back-link to your blog or website and gain traffic.

I've been trying to write one article a day to try and get about 20 articles before I launch the new site. I'm far from a writer and my sentence structure and grammer is about a 2 on a scale of 10, but if the info is good who cares right??

Goals

My weekly goals for this week are going ok, I've posted my ads on craigslist and placed my squeeze page links in the ads. No responses yet, but I'll keep that up for sure.

I've also identified about 4 houses I want to take a look at and possibly make offers on.


Funny Stuff

I had a dentist appointment scheduled for today. Thought I set it up for 7:00pm but apparently it was 7:00am. Got a call on my way to work asking where I was. I'm sure they weren't happy. I blame my wife...hahahaha...oh crap hope she doesn't read this.

later

Dave Ramsey
I've finally got'n to the point in the book where it's time to start taking action. My wife and I don't have a lot of debt, we've got student loans, two car payments and a mortgage. We don't carry any credit card debt from month to month so we are ahead of most people who would normally follow The Total Money Makeover program, but I want to get rid of ALL my debt. Dave recommends you list your debts in order from least to most. Then start paying off the lowest amount first. That is our student loan which current sits at about $2500. I'll report back on how this goes on a monthly basis. We should take care of this one quickly.

Probates
I've been trying to think of what types of leads would consistently supply me with deals and I keep coming back to probates. The average age in my farm area is 40 yrs old with a population percentage of 15% over 65 years old. Since most people who live in this area stay here, those people who are 65 bought back in the 60's and 70's and have A LOT of equity. My parents who live in town bought their house back in 1976 for 80k and the home is now worth 550k.

Many of these elderly folks are moving on in one way or another if you know what i mean (trying not to sound harsh)? Elderly people tend not to take care of their houses and thus makes it harder for their heirs to sell the place...enter me. Of the 5 phone calls I've gotten from my mailers, 3 of them have been from estate properties. This should tell me something and is why i've been trying to get to the court house for the probate leads.


Hacked Websites
As I mentioned in my weekly goals post, my two websites got hacked and some how they deleted them entirely. Just a warning for those who use Joomla to build webpages, be careful what extensions/plug-ins you use as some may have security holes that allow a hacker to break into your account. Joomla is a great tool and I will continue to use it, but I'll just be more careful and back everything up.

I've gotten the prelims of my sites back up and running. So take a look and if you have an suggestions drop me a comment.

JerseyRei.com
Rei-Links.com

Figured I'd do something new and list a few good blog posts that I've read in the past few days.

Lots of Investor Updates

Stop Work Order

Blogger tip: create a dropdown menu for your labels

Current Recession in Context

As the weather gets warmer so does my will to get this real estate investing career humming. This past week was a short week for me because of Memorial day last weekend so I only set myself 3 goals. While I only officially finished one of them, the other two kinda worked themselves out. Lets take a look...

1. Create a Buyers Squeeze Page - DONE
   
   My biggest problem here was finding out what to put on it exactly. I posted a few question in the forums I go to and they helped out. Let me quote a response (by Fadi Zeidan) that I thought was most helpful..
   

   Who are your buyers? bad credit looking for owner financing, investors, or good credit average people?
   
   bad credit:
   give them this great talk about how your company specializes in finding affordable owner financed homes regardless of credit, the benefits, and how it works (very simple), and with time add testimonials.
   
   Investors:
   this is for wholesaling, a simple sign up can do with some sample deals they can find. They would get an email of all available deals as they come in and they can contact you for the one they like.
   
   Good credit:
   tough one, what is their inventive to buy from you vs buying from a realtor... Finding greatly discounted properties that need little to no work?
   
   
   information I would look for:
   1. area of town
   2. age of home
   3. size of home
   4. bedrooms/bath/garage
   5. condition
   6. price range
   7. how much down payment they have
   8. Employment
   9. current income (PITI shouldn't be more than 50% of their monthly income, ideally within 36%. this would prescreen some of them)
   10. Contact information
   11. How soon do they want to move
   
   For wholesalers of course it is a different story.
   
   Just some ideas
   

   
   
   Here is my Buyers Page. I think it stinks but I'm always my worst critic.
   
   Buyers Squeeze Page
   
   
2. Ask my Realtor if my Coastal Funding PreQual is acceptable.
   
   I never did this, but I am going to take Steph and Shae's advice and just use it. Why raise any red flags. I've heard in the business that it's better to ask for forgiveness then for Permission. I don't agree with that completely, but in this instance it is the best tactic for sure.
   
   
3. Figure out how to use the online information I found on Probates at my surrogates website.
   
   Well I don't think I'll be able to find the executors address to mail anything to unless I go to the courthouse. The list gives me up until the prior months probated cases (so aprils) and gives the docket number and the name of the executor, but not much else. So i'll go armed with that info to the courthouse this friday and see what I can dig up.
   
   I hate taking time away from my wife but Friday after I get out of work at noon is the absolute only time I can go. Anyone know if the Morris County courthouse has weekend hours?
   
   

This weeks goals

If I get all these done I'll make some great strides! It's a lot to take on but I want to push myself. It does suck that some of it is repeat work

• Go to the court house on friday and find the probate files (3 week in a row for this one, COME ONE ALREADY!)
  
• Find a home to make an offer on, then make the offer!
  
• Redo my JerseyRei.com and Rei-Links.com websites because they were HACKED and deleted (If I get a hold of the person who did that I'm gonna most likely go to jail)
  
• Post ads on Craigslist looking for houses
  
• Create a Face Book page (my wife is making fun of me cause I told her I'd NEVER create one of these. Seems so High School!)
  

From reading other people's blogs, I've found that I get a lot out of reading about what others have learned from past deals. The lead that I talked about in the last few posts fell to the grave. The investor I gave the lead to gave the owners a "fair Cash Offer" that I later found out insulted them. When we tried to call them back they wanted nothing to do with us and thought we were all in cahoots. Any way I did learn some things that I would like to share..

1. As a newbie investor, just setup an appointment to go see the house whether it's a deal or not.
   
   I say this because it's great practice dealing with people. You can see how their situation affects them personally which is a great learning opportunity. You learn how to deal with them, what you can say to put them at ease and what not to say. I think I did pretty well when I went out to their house. I had them walk me through the place and let them talk. My one problem was that you could tell they were attached to the house, the home they grew up in. They shared a lot of memories with me.
   They wanted to sell the place, but you could tell it wasn't going to be easy for them...which probably means they weren't going to "let it go" for cheap. At least not yet.
   
   
2. When Bird Dogging, only deal with 1 or 2 investors.
   
   You don't want to be passing your leads off to different people. Work with one or two people only. This gives you the opportunity to really learn what they are looking for and how they operate. You build trust! When I passed the lead to someone I've never met I had no idea what this guy payed, what he was looking for or how he'd handle the owners. I'll never know what would have happened if I passed the lead to 1 of my 2 trusted partners, but I do know that it is not a deal now!
   
   
3. Be more patient
   
   I was so worried about getting the owners their offer quickly, that I didn't wait long enough for my trusted investors to get back to me. I waited less then 24 hours before I was sending out emails looking for someone else to take the lead. This hurt me I believe.
   
   
4. I can do this!
   
   Even though the deal didn't happen, I've gotten a lot more confidence in myself and my ability to handle new leads that come in. This lead forced me to talk to other investors and learn how some of them take action. All in all I'm taking away very many positives from this "failed" lead.
   
   

I hope this post helps out someone who is just starting out!

Later..

Last week I did ok on my goals. I set some lofty ones and got a good start on them all but with the holiday weekend I got side track towards the end of the week. So lets do a reviewsky...

• Advertise JerseyRei.com on Craigslist 3 times - DONE
  
  This was easy and I finish this up last monday. I didn't get many responses at all, I got one person to sign up for the site, but that was about it. It's going to take some time to get this site going. I've added My Lis Pendens list to the site so people can save some time and pull the list right from my site. I also added a section to list properties.
  
  I tell you...Joomla is a wonderful tool with so many extensions/plugins that you can create any kind of site quickly and easily!
  
  Joomla.com
  
  
• See if my realtor would accept Coastal Funding prequal - FAILED
  
  This was stupid of me not to get done. I kept putting if off for some reason and then the week was over and I failed to get it done. This will go on this weeks goals for sure.
  
  
• Create Squeeze Page for Sellers - DONE
  
  I bought a template for a squeeze page and then used Wordpress to create the page. It was very easy and took me about 2 hours.
  
  ScottyBuys.com
  
  
• Create Squeeze Page for Buyers - FAILED
  
  I know how to set the page up now, but I have no idea what to put on it. It's not like the sellers page, I've got to offer something to the buyers in order to get them to fill out the short form. Maybe a weekly Lis Pending List????
  
  
• Go to Courthouse on friday to look for probate leads - NO NEED
  
  As I was preparing to go to the courthouse last friday, I was looking for directions on the surrogates webpage and what do you know!!! I found a link that listed all the Estated Properties in Morris County! Are you kidding me, has this been there the entire time? or was it just added???? Either way I was pumped.
  
  

This weeks Goals

• Ask realtor if I can use Coastal Funding Prequal to make offers
  
• Finish up Buyers Squeeze page
  
• Create process to get Executors' mailing address for Probated Estates (I'll use this one for Steph's Accountability Monday)
  

Short week so I won't overload myself.

I had a good time spending my memorial weekend with family and friends. Had a bbq to go to each day and got a chance to spend extra time with my wife because she took off work on Sunday and Monday. For those who haven't followed from the beginning, my wife and I work opposite hours so weekends are the only time we really see each other.

On to Rei news....

Saturday I got to meet up with the lead that called my mailers. Went to the house and had them show me around and asked them all about the house and their situation. A nice brother and sister who were in town to clean out the house after their mother had passed away. Here is what I found out...

• Estated Property
  
• Was a complete mess, with stuff all over the house.
  
• 3 bedrooms and 1 bath
  
• Nothing was owed on the house
  
• The siblings wanted to get rid of it to avoid having to clean it up and do repairs in order to sell it (Motivation baby!)
  

I told them I'd stick them on the "excelerated" plan to try and get them an offer as quick as possible because the family was in town from out of state to clean out the house and all.

I contacted the Guys at NJQuicksell first, but I didn't hear from them for about a day. They usually respond very quickly, but I later found out they were away for the holiday weekend. So I put the lead out there to my meetup group and passed the contact info along to the first person who responded.

This is risky because I don't really know any of them from adam, and I could be passing the lead to a scum bag who is going to take advantage of me. I needed to move quickly so I took my chances. I probably should have discussed my referral fee before passing the info though. That is up in the air and I don't know what he is going to give me.

Anyhow, the guy went out and looked at the house on Monday and made them a cash offer. We are waiting to hear back from them. The investor also told me that is the exact type of house he looks for.

This is the closest I've come to a pay day so far and it has increased my confidence 10 fold.

I realize I didn't post my goals for the week just yet, I'll do so shortly. The holiday weekend put me off schedule.

I got a call back from the lady who responded to my mailer. I setup an appointment to go see the house on saturday morning. I couldn't get much out of her on the phone. I'm not sure HOW motivated they are as this seems to be the first attempt at selling the home. She said they were going to sign up with a realtor but saw my postcard and wanted to give me a call first. Not screeming motivation to me, but in order to get practice I'm going to meet her and see the house. Which reminds me I've got to do some research on the house before hand. This is what I plan on doing...

1. Look on Realquest and Zillow to see if I can get a gadge on the house value and the area.
   
2. Find the house location on MS Live to see what it looks like from a birdseye view
   
3. Look the house up on the county tax records
   
4. Locate the mortgage and see if I can figure out how much equity there is.
   
5. not sure what else to do...
   

When I get to the house and talk to the owners I'm going to ask them the following to try and get some info out of them...

In no particular order

• What has been updated
  
• How much do they owe
  
• What do they need to sell the house for
  
• Any problems with the house
  
• Is there an oil tank
  

If anyone has any other questions I should ask drop me a line.

Have a good holiday weekend everyone! happy BBQing

Everyone better sit down, preferably in a chair that isn't to high off the ground...you ready? I just got a call from one of my mailers! Amazing I know...It's been about a month since my last call.

I didn't get much out of this lady, she is going to have her husband call back later (we'll see). She did say they are trying to sell her mother-in-laws house and that they are in florida and the house is in NJ. If they sound motivated after talking to the husband I'll setup an appointment to go see the house and meet them. If that is the case ANYONE want to come with me and take point so I can see how it's done?

I have been slowly coming around to the mind set of "who cares if I mess up, no skin off my back" I do learn quickly from my mistakes so every call is a learning experience.

Other Things

Over the past two weeks I've been sinking my teeth into online networking and learning how to promote my sites. My main goal is to attract people to my sites and by doing so I might earn a little money on the side with my adsense ads or affiliate links. I'm doing my best to offer good quality content and useful webpages as well. My plan is to have the earnings going to fund my marketing. All my sites are based off of what I've learned in REI so far (Rei-Links.com) and being able to network with others in my area (JerseyRei.com).

If anyone knows much about webpage optimization and SEO shoot me an email and we can discuss strategies.

Squeeze Pages

I've created a rough squeeze page and think its pretty good. I can't take credit for all the content as I have borrowed bits and pieces from other sites. I hope that's ok as I ain't no writer. Take a look at the page...

ScottyBuys.com

..the link is www.nnjhouses.com but I'm thinking of changing that to scottybuys.com soon. Which do you think is better? I think ScottyBuys.com is easier to remember.

That's it for today, I've got a lot more to do this week to get my goals accomplished.

Just a quick post. The other day I listened to a great phone call from Steve Cook that dealt with Creative Deal structuring. if you have a chance down load this and listen...


http://reitips.com/special/deal-structuring/replay/

This week was a little hectic as I lost a couple days to some family emergencies. So it was good that I only assigned myself 3 goals. I did ok with all things considered but I think I could have done a better job, lets review...

• Get pre qualified for a loan. DONE
  
  This I sort of cheated on cause I had a Pre-Qual letter from Coastal Funding already. Like I mentioned in a previous post I had forgotten I had this but will attempt to use it. I still would like to get pre-approved by an actual bank although I have my doubts that I can at the moment, unless I include my wife. Now I've been doing a lot of thinking about Steve Cooks no debt investing and I'd love to try and figure out how best to do that.
  
  
• Find 2 rehabbers in my area and contact them. DONE
  
  I found one looking through craigslist ads and sent the guy an email just asking if he'd be intrested in any deals I may come across. The other rehabber is the father of a friend of mine. Granted it's a friend who I don't talk to much at all these days because of life, but I emailed his father as well. Maybe I'll get something back maybe not.
  
  
• Contact the probate at 20 Wilson St. - DONE
  
  Because I'm a little leary of calling up a family who is grieving from the lose of a loved one I decided to send them a letter. I got this letter from Preston Ely and I hand wrote out the envelope. I think this is the best way and is good practice for next week.
  

This Weeks Goals

• Create a Squeeze page for Sellers
  
• Create a Squeeze page for buyers
  
• Go to the courthouse on Friday to look for Probate leads
  
• See if my realtor would accept the Coastal funding PreQual with an offer
  
• Go to the Gym twice this week (I needed a fifth goal)
  

I sometimes have trouble coming up with goals for myself and thought it might be a good idea to have you guys help me sometimes. Anyone care to suggest some goals for me? Maybe we could help each other out and keep each other motivated?

Have a good week! My summer hours start this week so I work 9 hour days M-Th and get a half day on fridays. Totally makes my weekends better!

I just got my copy of Dave Ramsey's The Total Money Makeover yesterday in the mail. I'm excited to get into the guts of the book and make some changes to my financial life. Granted my wife and I do a great job of limiting our debt with credit cards (we have none), but even with a decent savings out house mortgage and car payments really keep us having to work our JOBs and be fearful of loosing them. As I'm reading the book I'm sure I'll hit on some topics that I'll post about here so stay tuned!

Steve Cook

Last night Steve Cook had a call about deal structuring that was excellent! He went over different scenarios and explained how he would...

• Structure the deal
  
• What he'd sell the property for
  
• What kind of lender he would try and use
  
• How to handle the downpayment
  
• etc...
  

Steve is also have what seems to be a wonderful bootcamp coming up in june. I'd love to be able to go, but my wife and I already have plans for that weekend. The price for the bootcamp is $1500, soudns like a lot but hey he gives you all his courses for free which you could easily sell for 1500 + the traveling expenses. That is assuming you already have his material because if you don't you should keep them.


Momentum

Outside of the above, what ever momentum I had a few weeks ago has died out completely. I've got to hunt down another investor who is willing to let me try and sell some of his stuff so I can keep myself in the game.

Maybe a little help...here is the post card I've been sending out and getting no responses from. What could I change? let me have it!

I'm starting to get the hang of creating webpages pretty quickly using joomla and random templates. Those RocketTheme.com templates are amazing! Anyhow I've always been looking for a forum or group that is really local to the area I'm investing in. The REIA's in my area have investors that are more focused on urban areas such as Newark, Jersey City, Patterson and North Bergan. This doesn't do me very good if I'm looking to network with investors in my area, so i decided instead of me trying to find them let them find me!

With that in mind I created a Forum called...

JerseyRei.com - Northern NJ Investors Forum

I'll be advertising it on craigslist and through my meetup groups to try and attract some members. It only took me about 5 hours to put together so what ever I get out of it will be a bonus.

Pre Qual

Steph's comment on my last post reminded me that I did have a prequal letter from Coastal funding that i got back in October. I'm not sure how I forgot about this, but hopefully I can use it to make offers. Has anyone ran into problems making offers through a realtor with one of these?


Mailers

I've been gotting absoultely NO response from my mailers over the last month. I've been sending out about 100 ever week. That's not a lot but I should be getting 1-3 calls per week but instead...NADA!

I've been following my 7 bucket strategy with repeat mailings and still nothing. Gets a bit frustrating shelling out money for postcards and not even getting tire kickers to call.

Next week my summer hours start at work and I'll be getting a half day on fridays so I'll be headed to the courthouse to try and dig up the Probate files. I've been looking forward to doing this for a few months now. Maybe that is the list that will give me the most response.

I'm never going to give up, so you guys don't have to worry about that. Something will work eventually!

Review of last weeks goals

* DONE - Find owner of vacant house

I found out the the owner of the vacant house was the owner of a larger lot that included the house next to it. The house wasn't for sale but part of a future investment.

* FAILED - Get Prequalified so I can make offers

I attampted to get prequalified but was declined because of my debt to income ratio. I was attempting to get the prequal myself only, but the debt that my wife and I have together (house and cars) was counted against my salarie only and not my wife's and mine together. I'll have to try and requalify again using my wife as the coborrower.

* FAILED - Call Hard Money Lender

I didn't do this, I emailed a couple but have yet to hear back. This is an on going issue of mine. The issue of Phones and myself. I will be working on this in weeks to come in order to get more comfortable talking on the phone.

* DONE - Sign up for Realtor Pre-Licensing class

Did this early in the week and will start the class July 24th.

* FAILED - Finish Goals by Saturday

If all went smoothly I would have accomplished this but because I didn't call the hard money lender and get rejected for my prequal, I'll say I failed this.



Goals for this week...

• Get Prequalified some how


• Get Names and contact info for 2 builders in my area


• Call owner of 120 Wilson Pl

...I'm knocking the number down to 3 so I can spend more time getting the Prequal.

Last night I was sitting in my condo trying to think of something real estate related to do.....I came up with nothing! I was kind of mad at myself because there were 3 hours right in front of me just waiting to be taken advantage of. I looked at my weekly goals and the only thing I didn't have accomplished was calling a hard money lender. Well it was 8pm so a little late for that. I decided to look up a couple here...

Hard Money Lenders

...and sent off an email to one of them who lends in my area. Wow that took up 10 minutes of my time!!

It was just one of those frustrating, I have no idea what to do now, moments that I'm sure will hit me many more times. I just don't like that feeling of wasting time.

So I fiddled with my webpages a little bit and played with my dog.

But of course now that I'm writing this blog entry I think of the perfect way I could have spent that time...Looking over my short and long term goals. Well I'll keep that in mind for the next time I get lost in what to do.

Random Things

I bought the book Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

I just notified my mortgage broker to go ahead and send in the paper work for my personal refinance. Then I got this explanation (here) that changed my mind. The main reason is I didn't think about

• The already lost money from my original loan's closing costs.
  
• Restarting the term all over again.
  
• Losing of 4000 in equity because we were rolling the closing costs into the new loan.
  

I also just didn't want to get stuck living in my current condo longer then I want to because I had to justify refinancing. That just seems ass-backwords. Am I off base in thinking this? ahh, I keep going back and forth. I've got the rate locked in so I'm just gonna take the weekend to think about it and discuss it. if anyone has any opinions drop me a comment please.

Thanks

Today is my day to try and get Pre-Qualified. I talked to the broker that is working with the realtor I just found and I actually got rejected for any kind of mortgage...haha. That is basically because I was trying to pull the mortgage myself (excluding my wife) and making 80k and 800 credit score just wasn't going to cut it with my current bills (even though those bills are shared with my wife). I didn't want them to run my wife's credit before talking to her about it, but the guy was confident we could get something done if I included her. As part of being a good husband I'm not going to make that decision without my better half's say.

As I sat in my cube, after talking with the broker, I got one of those DUUHHH moments. See, I'm currently getting my own mortgage refinanced so why not just ask that guy if I could get a Pre-Qual from him?? he already has all my financial info and my wifes, so no more credit checks. Is that going back on what I said in my last paragraph? I'm not sure.

Twitter

I've gotten my iPhone3g and it's pretty cool so far. I'm going to have to get use to the size of it as it's bigger then my old blackberry pearl. Anyhow, I downloaded a twitter app and plan on tweeting when I do something or get an idea. This will serve as a reminder of what i want to write about in my blog and also give you guys a status on how my goals are going. So feel free to follow my tweets :)

I didn't get much done yesterday. I got caught up watching the Yankees and playing with my dog. I knew I shouldn't have turned that TV on, it just saps the willpower right out from underneath you.

I did sign up for the training to get my Realtor License. It will start on July 21st and to through September 24th. Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:00 to 9:45pm. I'm looking forward to it, but it reminds me a lot of summer school in college and I hated that! haha

I also worked out some of the kinks on the new format for my blog. I'm liking it for the most part now that I understand how I can manipulate the template a little bit. The new twitter feature is pretty cool, I just have to get into the twitter world. As you can see I've tried some but I can never be consistent. Maybe it will be easier when i get my new Iphone 3g today, I here there is a nice twitter app for it.

I always think of 100 things to talk about on my blog at night, but when I sit down to write something my mind goes blank...figures. I'll write another post when they pop into my head so stay tuned...