Foreclosure Property turned into prime commercial property

This property has a very long interesting history of potential loss and tenacious and diligent efforts to create a long term investment.  In the northeast corner at SR 207 and I-95 south St. Augustine, Florida, the building has 1890 square feet is zoned Commercial Highway Tourist which allows hotels, motels,  professional offices, restaurant, gas stations and has 250ft of frontage on SR 207. We currently use these facilities as our real estate office. We have lots of parking and  great visibilty at one of the major interchanges on Interstate 95.  Lot is irregular 250x216x534x357 Survey on file.

Foreclosure property leveraged to profitable development

This property was a foreclosure. We purchased the corporation and filed the corporation into Chapter 11 bankruptcy to stop the foreclosure sale, until we had time to either refinance or settle with the current existing mortgage holder. After several months we were able to renenogiate a refinance program with the existing individual mortgage holder. We were able to purchase the property for about 20% of its value by having the experience and knowledge about foreclosures, as well as partnerships, and refinances, if necessary. The bankruptcy filing ultimately saved the property for us and without that there was not enough time to refinance prior to the foreclosure sale. Purchasing the corporation that acutally owned the property gave us the leverage position that could not have been handled otherwise. The LLC that held title to the property had no other assets or liabilities so a lesson in this is if you buy substantial parcels of property you should title it in a separate entity in the event that you find yourself or someone else in a similar position as this. Each of these complicated real estate transactions that we have been involved in in the last 45 years has contributed to our tremendous curve. We were able to accomplish this without any of our own money even though there was a $500,000 mortgage on the property. We currently have the property listed for sale for $6,250,000 and have recently gotten it approved for concurrency to develop 330 single and multi-family units. With an excellent location convenient to major highways and to St. Augustine and Jacksonville, Florida, this property allows residents to take advantage of the the amenities of the northeast Florida coast, its recreation and the quality of life.

Understanding market trends and adjusting to the market

There are some very basic principles related to determining what the current market is for a specific property and studying any trends that may be occurring in different geographic locations even on a local basis. For instance, for some economic reason, such as a new industrial plant that is going to employ many people. Example: down in a small town not far from here, a major retail chain acquired a large tract of land and plans to build a major distribution center. This will impact this little area with several hundred jobs. To understand the relationship between the numbers of jobs that are created and the relationship of the respective income brackets should provide insight into the size, price, and location of properties that will be directly impacted by this increase in the job demographics. Anticipating this impact will allow for entrepreneurs to take advantage of what is happening in their community. For instance, if they are going to have six hundred new jobs, and this is going to require an influx of people to fill the jobs, we must provide the necessary housing, restaurants, etc. Studying these trends can usually be accomodated by information provided by your local Chamber of Commerce or from your zoning boards and other growth management departments of your local governments. These developments can take years to clear through the maze of governmental bureaucratic nightmares. Therefore, I recommend that you learn to go on-line and search your government sites for zoning changes, subdivision platting and recording, Planned Unit Development applications and approvals. Learning to be current with all of the information that is going on in your community is essential to understanding trends that truly affect your decision-making when purchasing and/or selling real estate. Such a scenario would suggest that values and certain price ranges based on the number of jobs and income is going to positively affect the property values. Speculating on a major happening in a community in your decision-making process is a very dangerous investment strategy. The safety factor is to do your due diligence based on current sales in your chosen investment area. This will allow you to make positive determinations as to purchase prices for your acquisitions, as well as sales prices for your inventory. One of the most important ingredients in your consideration when doing your due diligence is the average time on the market for the properties that have sold within the last six months that are comparable with the property you are purchasing or selling. Having a steady source of willing sellers and a steady source of willing buyers certainly are important but applying the principles we teach, and using our due diligence system,  is critical for a new entrepreneur or for anyone who has not adopted a plan of action wherein you cover all of your bases including your exit strategy. This information and system is offered in our PDP course.

Real Estate Specialty--Your Choice

Education--Early in my career my broker Eber V. Overby taught me a lesson that ultimately created our ability to obtain and keep updated information that is essential to a steady source of prospective leads in the foreclosure, mortgage, tax deeds, government auctions, estates, liens, judgments, information which is available in the courthouse updated on a daily basis. Mr. Overby taught me that the courthouse embodied so much data and information that is free to utilize to create business which most entrepreneurs never learn. For instance, in Florida, a mortgage goes into default after collection attempts by the lender. The lender may file a foreclosure lawsuit and simultaneously file a lis pendens. Today much of this information is on line and can be accessed from the comfort of your own home. There are also services that sell the leads which we call court reports. The court reports will contain information that is essential to making correct and informed decisions as to the next course of action you should take. So you will obtain information regarding foreclosures that have just been filed and updated information on each file as the case progresses through the chronological process from beginning to the ultimate courthouse step sale. Learning this process will allow you to be light years ahead of the majority of the other so-called real estate investors who are your competition in the field of flipping, acquisition for rehab, or investing for longer term plans. This is just an initial suggestion that took me many years to learn precisely how it worked. In the process of learning we also discovered that many of the owners in an effort to save their property would sometimes defend the lawsuit by hiring an attorney but many of them filed chapter 13 in the bankruptcy court and were able to restructure their financial situation. Also it became obvious to us that divorces, civil lawsuits, criminal charges, etc., caused people to make decisions to sell. This is a portion of what we teach in our course titled "PDP" which means Pre-foreclosure, During foreclosure, Post-foreclosure, a 40-hour course that is designed specifically for instruction and training to help insure the success of our students so that they may be the best educated real estate entrepreneurs in the industry.