I'm desperate and need your help

Gordon and Everyone,

I'll give more details. First the speculative real estate project. I bought 4.5 acres of vacant land and a building leased by Dollar General. I built an 8,000 sq. ft. strip center on part of the land and the remaining would be built on in the future. The only reason I proceeded with the sale is that I had 2 letters of intent from well known tenants.

One backed out after the fact and as I found out afterwards the other one never signed the letter of intent and the bank still gave the loan. As I've found out over the past few months there were a lot of "questionable practices" by those involved - the appraiser, real estate agent, bank and seller.

Up to this point I had been exclusively involved with single family homes - buy, fix and sell. But I wanted to get involved in commercial real estate and took the plunge. My down payment was $168,000 and I've also put in another $130,000 to cover expenses and negative cash flow. A lot of this has come from credit lines I have established for my real estate. Tenant lease up has been slow but is now picking up after a number of months. I've had to offer some free rent and am striving to break out even once the building is leased up. To break out even overall with a sale I have to have the building leased (to be continued)

Part B-I've always wanted to get involved with direct marketing projects. So as I mentioned in the 1st post I contacted a very well known copywriter. I had read his newsletters on the web. He mentioned he had tons of ideas for different promotions but didn't have the time. But you could hire him at 15k and he would write an ad for the promotion and we would share in the profits. I contacted him because as I said he was "the Best." After I sent the money(he liked handshake agreements) we would get started. Well it took me a few weeks to get a hold of him and then he changed his tune and wanted me to come up with my own idea and he would write the ad. Then he said his friend was running a skin creme promotion that had been tested and just needed money to roll out. Gary said this promotion was a winner and I could make a lot of money. By the way a picture of his girlfriend was in the ad. So I sent a ton more money. A few weeks more went by and Gary finally called. I gave him an idea for the promotion - a real estate information product. He said he would get to it soon - but in April he died. Long story short I contacted the estate to try to get my money back and it was a losing cause. This copywriter might have been honest in the past but as I found out I wasn't the first guy he ripped off. In the later years he was going off reputation and I bought into it

Back to the other promotion. Weeks went by with the other promotion and what I found out is that I had been lied to. The promotion had not been tested and ready to roll out. My money was used to do the testing. This guy however does I believe have some morals and he was being used by Gary just like I was. He's trying to make good with me but in the meantime I'm out that money.
Part c- my present real estate projects. Prior to the last few months my rehabs would sell within 30 days. But this real estate crash happened like overnight and I'm stuck with 2 houses that wont sell. I bought both with lines of credit. There is equity in both and I've reduced the prices but they still haven't sold.

So as you can see I'm highly leveraged and have lost thousands of dollars. My cash flow is nil. I'll end this diatribe in the next post with what I have learned..............

Like many of you I want to be wealthy. I have a love for doing 3 things. Real estate, directing marketing promotions and turning around failing businesses with powerful marketing. I was living comfortably until the last 10 months. Maybe things were too easy for me.

I used to be a Catholic priest and a lot of my trusting others comes from catholic guilt and believing all people are good and giving them the benefit of the doubt. I also havea fault of wanting to please people and not saying no to them. The experiences I've shared with you have changed me. I'm looking at business in a whole new light. I now trust no one until we do business a few times together. And I've also learned to check out referrals. There's a myth out there that just because someone refers someone that person is reputable. Hasn't been true in my experience. I need to concentrate on what I want to do with my business career. But in the meantime I'M STILL LOOKING FOR ANY MONEY MAKING IDEAS TO INCREASE MY CASH FLOW!!! THANK YOU!!

It's getting close to the Holiday BUYING season.

You said you have some space available in your strip mall.

Set up a "Christmas Craft" show...where you rent space for $500 a booth for the Holiday from Nov 15 thru Dec 25. 20 Booths gross $10,000.

The "Craft" stores and Churches know people who make crafts to sell.

You'd have to run some local ads AND...this lends itself to Free PR from local media.

Or set up a "Business Fair" where local businesses would rent a space to display their wares or services. Beauty Salon doing new hairdos, Nail Salon doing new nail designs, carpet cleaner, painter, plumber, roofer, water softener, pest control, realtor, bank.

Which reminds me;
I did the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Annual, "Aspen Home Show" in the banquet room of the Holiday Inn on Hwy 82 just before you get into Aspen. First time I rented 30 booths for $500ea...2nd, 40 booths for $600, 3rd, 50 booths for $750.

AND....I did a "Holiday Craft Fair" in the same room, one Christmas. Started the day after T'Day thru Sunday at 6pm...the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Rented 50 booths for $300 for the weekend.

Ran some ads in newspaper, radio and local Tv and...got some good PR.

You'd have to "hustle your bustle"...make phone calls, go see people to sign them up and collect your booth rent.

In the "Holiday" show I rented a helicopter for $1500...talked Barbi Benton into dressing up in a "revealing" Santa outfit....let all the media know that Barbi as Santa would be "landing at noon on Friday, the day after T'Day.

Got some GREAT...FREE PR...and had a smashing show.

Don Alm

[MMacGillivray]

.... there are many stores and business owners who would be keen to have short-term space at a reasonable rent in a place which is getting publicity ... especially with Christmas coming around. Not knowing the local regulations, you might consider getting a huge banner made saying just that and putting it somewhere visible on the side of your mall. Contact local craft associations to let them know as well.

I'd probably have in front of me a note of my monthly overheads to service the loans - one of those cute little graphs where I could mark out each time I made a contribution towards the overheads .... quite motivating seeing it being filled up.

There is a market for PLR articles about house-flipping. You could probably sell some here in the special offers section - as well as the Warrior Forum. It won't make you a fortune, but meeting a percentage of your costs would be better than chewing your fingernails ....

Is there any use which could be made of the remaining land in your commercial real-estate - storage, parking, .... or what about letting people sell their autos there themselves. I'm certain that there's a whole lot of posts by Don on setting up such a business.

Are there any local charities looking for a venue for a charity event - so that you could make the mall busy and get free publicity for your venue?

Your rehabs - I read somewhere about Lease to Buy - not knowing anything about this, I'm going to ask if this is a possibility for you? Would they rent as vacation rentals?

Is there a market for running courses on renovating property to resell? You probably have a lot of expertise on this.

I don't know if that's any help at all - my hubby and I saw a programme on UK television about the state of the US property market (Cleveland, OH) - and to say that it was frightening is a small understatement. I hope you manage to find a solution.

Margaret

Great ideas as always Don.

I would add that if you can't sell the residential properties, can you at least find renters?

You could also rent strip mall space for holiday office parties possibly? I like Don's idea of craft shows and business fairs. Maybe you could host a swap meet every weekend. Give others a means to generate some extra holiday cash and also get a little cash flowing your way as well.

If you've been around these boards for a while, and you're looking for others ways to make quick cash, I'd look into chatteling (see Gordon), or Skip's quick cash reports: http://makemoneyalerts.com/sowpubtwofreereports.html
or Don Alm's Midas Report: http://www.donalm.com/
Those all contain some ways to make some quick cash, maybe some could even be modified to use some resources you already have, who knows!

Good luck, and keep us posted on how it all turns out.

Todd

You've had some great ideas here so let's add to them.

Have you considered a children's toy and learning show in the mall area...one weekend or more? Sure to get people's attention this time of year. Try an after hours one so parents can get babysitter help and shop without the kids.

Another option: a local artist's show in one segment of the mall areas. Lots of specialty things that don't ordinarily occur.

Incidentally, you might check with a lawyer. There might be a way to get your money back from the estate. Of course they'll try to discourage you but it's worth a try. Not your fault the agreement wasn't completed so no reason you should have to forfeit. Worth checking at least. Estates have been tapped before as I know from a close friend's experience.

You might consider lease-options on the houses. Do a thorough check on the new folks, make sure they can follow through with the purchase eventually. More likely to take care and pride in the place and avoid wrecking the house. Even if they don't purchase eventually, you've had the income and any improvements they do to add value.

Sandi Bowman

you've really got some great ideas here! i agree with auctioning off your properties. there are a lot of people out there who are sure to be needing your stuff and will be willing to pay for it!

My aunt owned a school that she rented to people to conduct classes and she charged a percentage of the income that the teacher collected.

For example suppose I know a lot about Microsoft Excel. I create a course on Excel and call several companies to offer to tech their employees excel. Then I book a room for a certain number of days and pay the 'landlord' 20% of my gross.