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Turnkey Real Estate Investing

5 min read

Are Lenders Seriously Writing These Real Estate Loans...Again?

By Chris Clothier on Wed, Aug 28, 2013

Some economists and experienced real estate investors think they know and most will not like the news they have.

I was recently in Los Angeles at a dinner with a group of investors and investment service providers and at one point the conversation turned to the current housing market.  The dinner was sponsored by MOR Financial and one of the partners was recounting an advertisement he had heard earlier in the week.  The advertisement was from a mortgage lender and they were promoting a brand new product they had for home buyers...the 5/1 ARM.  For anyone not familiar with the terminology, that is an adjustable rate mortgage that has an artificially low interest rate for the first year and then can increase by 1% each year for the next 5 years.  Traditionally, an offering like this is tied to the LIBOR, which coincidentally has nothing to do with the housing market.

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4 min read

Real Estate Investing Skills: Dealing with Disappointment

By Chris Clothier on Tue, Aug 27, 2013

Disappointment. It's a fact of life. It's not a particularly enjoyable fact of life, but neither is getting your order wrong at a fast-food drive-through or people who don't use their blinkers. And what do we do in those situations? Well, we may complain, fume, or vent with some colorful metaphors, but eventually we deal with them and move on.  They are rarely life threatening and we tend to get over them fairly quickly.  If you are like me, your kids will be there to remind you in the future of how you deal with them!

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2 min read

Military Veteran & Pro Baseball Prospect Joins Memphis Invest

By Chris Clothier on Sun, Aug 25, 2013

Drew Clothier, the nephew of Kent Clothier, Sr. has joined Memphis Invest, GP after completing his military service commitment.  Drew chose the military in his late teens when he accepted a baseball scholarship to pitch at Westpoint.  Drew was a standout high school baseball player in Memphis, starring for Christian Brothers High School before leaving for Westpoint.  

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4 min read

Memphis Real Estate Company Has A New Habit: Awards And Recognition

By Chris Clothier on Wed, Aug 21, 2013

Memphis Invest, GP was on the Inc. Magazine FastestGrowing Companies list for the second year in a row moving up to #303 in 2013 from #1320 in 2012.  This is a tremendous honor as Memphis Invest, GP joins a prestigious - and exclusive - list of companies that has included Zappos, Microsoft, Jamba Juice, Under Armour, Oracle, Clif Bar, and Otterbox, just to name a few.  This is an impressive list and is an incredible distinction for the Memphis real estate investment company.

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2 min read

Tenant Safety and Landlord Liability Issues

By Chris Clothier on Fri, Aug 16, 2013

Investing in rental property can be a rewarding career if you're doing it right, both in terms of the work and the financial compensation. But it can also be an extremely difficult, tedious job at times, and there are certain considerations that you don't have to deal with in other forms of investing.

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4 min read

Customer Service Is More Than Bottom-Line Real Estate Metrics

By Chris Clothier on Tue, Aug 13, 2013

If we were sitting around a table trying to come up with a phrase for our customer service strategy, Enhanced Customer Experience, or ECE, would have to be it.  It is the term that defines exactly what we are trying to accomplish with our in-house customer service program.  Anyone can sell houses and almost anyone can set up a property management company.  Notice I am not claiming that just anyone can do either very well! 

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5 min read

4 Circles of Real Estate Investing Excellence - Quality

By Chris Clothier on Sun, Aug 11, 2013

What does Quality mean?  I am not talking about the qualities of a company - the description that people use to describe the company.  I am talking about Quality as THE description of a companies work.  The way clients and competitors alike describe their work, their craftsmanship and their processes.  All real estate investment companies have qualities, but not all real estate investment companies have Quality.

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5 min read

4 Circles of Real Estate Investing Excellence - Customer Service

By Chris Clothier on Wed, Aug 7, 2013

When my fourth child was born I picked up a comment card at the hospital on our way out.  It had a picture of 4 circles on it and the words "Service ~ Teamwork ~ Quality ~ Integrity" printed around the circles.  The card opened up and there was their Mission Statement and a few questions and lines for comments.  I grabbed two cards.  One so I could respond with how impressed I was with the level of care they showed and the other I kept as a reminder that these were absolutely four characteristics of our company.  These were four areas that not just the owners, but every single person at Memphis Invest had committed to work to improve on every day.  I saved it for a day just like today.

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4 min read

Real Estate Strategies: Indicators That It's Time to Buy

By Chris Clothier on Mon, Aug 5, 2013

Real estate is a fickle beast. There are ebbs and flows, ups and downs, and...well, you catch my drift. Real estate investing is not like buying a car or a computer or a new refrigerator where you can point to a certain day on the calendar and know what something will cost on that day.  Real estate investing is all about trends and the key is to be able to recognize trends. Is it a buyer's market or a seller's market? Is it a market that's in transition from one to the other? If so, how rapidly is the market changing?  More importantly, is the information I am watching actually telling me something or is the trend a very subtle one meaning that even as it moves - in either direction - the timing is still good for buying real estate.

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2 min read

Creating Real Estate Video Content with Vine and Instagram Video

By Chris Clothier on Fri, Aug 2, 2013

It seems that as social media outlets have become more and more popular, our attention span to view the content from such sites and applications has gotten shorter and shorter. Twitter forced us to squeeze our thoughts into a mere 140 characters, and then Instagram took the need for written communication out of the equation altogether.

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