The team has been up in Maryland for the past several days for the wedding, and it was a fantastic event! We’ll be back in Atlanta this week, and hopefully closing on and starting work on The Flood House in the next several days…

There’s a couple (good) reasons for this…

First and foremost, with the tax credit expiring at the end of last month, we are quite confident that the numbers of buyers for all residential real estate has diminished. This means two things:

1. From a purchase standpoint, there is going to be less competition for bank-owned (REO) properties. This means that we expect to see increased inventory and lower prices for houses we want to buy over the next several weeks/months. Therefore, we want to hold off a bit before putting in offers, to give prices a chance to dip; and
2. From a selling standpoint, there are fewer buyers out there to buy our rehabbed properties, so we’re in no hurry to get any properties renovated and back on the market.

All that said, we plan to start buying again come June, and will hopefully have those properties back on the market in the August time-frame. While there probably still won’t be a lot of buyers out there come the end of the summer, I imagine there will be more than there is now.

So, for the next couple weeks, we’re in a holding pattern with respect to buying properties.

The second reason for the slowdown is that my wife and I have been working on a couple other business projects (some real estate related and some not), so our attention has been split between rehabbing and other ventures. Stay tuned, as we’ll be announcing a new venture in a couple weeks that all my readers will hopefully find very useful in their investing endeavors!

He Won!

Thanks again to everyone who voted for him!!!

In the two years I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve made a point to try not to use it as a way to make money or to benefit myself personally…I like giving back, and I sincerely hope that everyone who reads this blog finds it worthwhile…

But, on this one occasion, I’d like to ask a personal favor from my readers! It’s a silly favor, but I’ll ask anyway…

We entered our baby in a local radio station contest looking for “the cutest baby in Atlanta”. Of the 1200 entrants, it’s been narrowed down to the Top 10, and my little boy (his name is Chase) is one of those 10…

For the next week, anyone registered with the radio station’s website can vote once per day for the Top 10…the baby with the most votes come next Friday wins a little prize package (and bragging rights, of course).

My favor request is that you follow the steps below to register with the radio station website and then vote for Chase once per day for the next week. It will probably take a couple minutes to register, do your email confirmation and vote the first time, but after that you should be able to vote each day in about 20 seconds.

So, if you’ve found this blog informative, useful, inspiring or beneficial in any way, and you want to return the favor, now’s your chance!

Here’s what you need to do to register and vote:

1. Click Here
2. Click on “Not a member yet? Sign up now!”
3. Fill out the one page form and click “Join the Club”
4. Check your email for a confirmation email and click on the confirmation link

You’re now registered, and can start voting! To vote for Chase (do this once per day):

1. Click Here
2. Log in (if you’re not already)
3. Scroll down until you see Chase’s beautiful face (he’s currently the second baby listed)
4. Click the radio button to the left of Chase’s picture (see pic below to know which baby you’re looking for)
5. Scroll to the bottom and click the “Enter” button to register your vote

Again, you can vote once per day between today and next Friday (May 7). I really appreciate your help!

And here’s Chase’s pic (the first pic is the one is the one you’ll see in the contest):

Chase

It was a rough start to our little boy’s life…he didn’t want to take that first breath, and needed quite a lot of help to convince him that it was in his best interest. After a night in the NICU, the doctors determined that he was ready to join mommy and daddy, and we’re now all back together. On top of that, my wife needed a semi-emergency C-Section, so she has some recovery to do as well.

But all-in-all, after a rough several hours, things are now fantastic! And again, thanks to everyone for all the kind words…

I’ll be back on Thursday…

This week marks the start of the 2008 World Series of Poker. I played semi-professional poker for many years (along with the corporate gig), and even played tournament poker very seriously for a couple years as well. While the World Series is my favorite time of the year for poker (the Series lasts for just over a month), I generally have to plan my trips to Las Vegas around my work schedule, and can only get away for a few days at a time. Well, this year I don’t have that constraint.

While I’d love to be there for the entire month, I am pretty excited about getting my businesses and investing underway, so I’m limiting my Vegas trip this year to a week. I haven’t played much poker the past year (too many more important things going on), so it’s probably better that I’m not going the entire month anyway.

Of course, I prepared a number of blog posts for the week while I’m away (starting tomorrow), and I think you’ll find them very interesting. I’ll spend several days discussing real estate market cycles and the analysis of real estate markets; I’ll continue to fill out my business plan; and then I’ll spend a couple days highlighting some great resources you can use to help analyze your particular market/location.

I hope you enjoy the posts, and don’t hesitate to leave comments if you have anything to add!

After several long days of driving through snow (yes, snow!) and thunder storms, sleeping in our car (everyone else was smart enough to get out of the storm and the hotels were booked), and one 27 hour stretch of driving, we made it to Atlanta. Our stuff arrived on Tuesday, and the computer is finally unpacked, so here I am, back in the land of Internet access…

It’s been a great couple days since we arrived. We’ve met two of our neighbors (who were fighting our us for dinner), the dog is getting acclimated to the new house (if not the hot, humid weather), and the fiancee and I are getting unpacked and settled.

Time to get down to business — starting tomorrow on this blog I’ll be digging in a little deeper into financial analysis of real estate, why investing in apartments can be so lucrative, and in-depth discussion of real estate cycles and markets. I’ll also be finishing my business plan over the next two weeks…