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I recently joined the message boards at www.wahm.com and was pleased to find a board dedicated to moms and dads in the real estate business. As I have mentioned before, Dad is a full-time investor and realtor. I rather enjoy helping him with his business and have a knack for finding properties to rehab.

A member on the site asked about “Bird-Dogging” and how one could do this for a living. Here was my reply:

Bird-dogging involves finding real-estate investors (Specifically rehabbers, house flippers) houses to purchase, and in turn, you receive a “finders fee”. Such fees can range from $500 to $1000 or more. There are many ways to find such investors, like calling numbers on “We Buy Houses” signs and joining a local Real Estate Investor club.

You mentioned that there are quite a few “fixer uppers” in your area…well you could contact those owners and arrange the referral to the investors.

The key is to get the motivated sellers before they list through a realtor (and then the house is on MLS, accessible to buy by anyone). We find houses by looking for run down houses in decent neighborhoods, and then contacting the owners to see if they want to sell. Many times an owner is in a bad place financially and cannot afford to repair his/her home and selling (to the investor you are bird-dogging for) is an answer to prayers. They save money by selling “by owner” and not paying a realty firm commission.

Do real estate investors use bird-dog services? You betcha! My husband gets so busy at times that we would gladly pay a bird-dog fee for a decent rehabber that would be profitable for us to buy, fix-up and sell.

It’s important to treat bird-dogging as a business, not just your “real estate hobby”.

Building a successful bird-dogging business takes time, perseverance, and a willingness to learn. Investors will take you seriously if you are professional in both communication and appearance. Consistently looking for deals and building your network of investors can pay off.

This is a nice part-time business and who knows, a great deal could come along and jumpstart the purchase of your own real estate investment!

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Are you ready?

Last year, I put a reminder in my Outlook Calendar to alert me when to start my countdown to December 25th. Instead of waiting until October to make my to-do lists, I thought we would benefit from a few extra weeks. My countdown has begun! I really can’t believe there are 99 days left!

This year, my focus is how to simplify our traditions and get the home organized. I also want to scale back on spending. Get the silly stuff out of the way, so we can focus on what is important to our family - spending time together and having fun.

A few ideas I’m tossing around:

• Do an adult grab bag for Mom’s side of the family, limited to a small dollar amount for the gift. My brother has been out of work for 9 months and my other brother is on a sabbatical of sorts. No need for anyone to stress about money and we can have fun with this one.
• Dad’s side of the family would never go for grab bag fun. Instead, we plan on scaling back the amount spent by giving well thought out, meaningful, family gifts.
• When we first got married, our finances were very tight. Dad and I gave each other a “house gift”. Instead of buying individual gifts, we agreed upon a home improvement purchase. One year we bought the materials for a solid oak mantelpiece and built it together. This was more meaningful to me than any store-bought gift. We are doing a “house gift” this year.
• Double the amount of shoeboxes we give this year to Operation Christmas Child. We enjoy this and have already started collecting goodies to fill the boxes.

I will post more in the 99 days to come about how we are saving and organizing.

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I’ve neglected to keep my desk tidy while I wade through the gazillion e-mails in my inbox, a by-product of being away from my home office several days. I’m finding the visual clutter is rather distracting.

Web Worker Daily has recently posted Declutter your Desk to Improve your Productivity that I read through and will begin to apply some of these tips today.

What a great gift to give myself for Monday…a clean workspace!

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