Ron Costa

The economy is bad enough and there's just about no one here in Vegas that doesn't seem to be underwater with their home mortgage. Which means only one thing: it provides the perfect opportunity for scammers, and home loan modification seems to be the scam of choice these days.

Just the other day there was a local story here of a Las Vegas mortgage broker charged with theft regarding a home loan modification gone awry. Here's the typical sales-pitch:

"Do you owe more on your mortgage than your home is currently worth?" or "Are you on the verge or in foreclosure?

Talk about a ripe market! But here's the real question: Does home loan modification really even work?... or is it just a short-term answer to a long-term problem? Quite frankly, I don't know the answer to that one. Most will tell you to check the Better Busines Bureau before moving ahead with a company offering loan modification, but even that doesn't insure you that you're dealing with legit people. After all, is there an organization out there that has "jumped the shark" more than the BBB?

Maybe the solution is to contact a reputable short sales specialist instead. Or, what I would do is try to find someone out there that's actually done a successful loan modification to their benefit and find out from them what company they used. Can't find one? Well, maybe that tells you something too...

As of today, I now have access to the legendary "$100 million REO foreclosure portfolios, both residential and commercial properties typically made available to only the elite hedge funds and institutional investors that have "inside connections" of some kind.

As a result, I am looking for investors seeking access to a portfolio of REO investment properties in this $100 million price range with highrly customized specifications on the exact location and property type desired.

You (the investor) name your price range, the property condition, the specific area codes, any property specifications, and we'll provide you with a resource to cherry-pick these properties at REALISTIC mega-discounts off the current broker price opinion for the bulk purchase. Through my "priority access" association with this group, I can provide to the investor prices and terms that are not available to the general public via the relationship with www.CommercialREOS.com

Prospective REO investors and investor groups will be required to sign a "Letter of Intent" indicating your price point, location, condition, etc., and the type of product you want to buy and how much of it to take down PER MONTH which basically acts a starting point to initiate the process. Along with the LOI, a current "hard proof of funds" statement from your bank is also required. Due to the nature of the business, both these documents are required before moving forward.

We also have REO opportunities for the smaller investor or investor group in the $10 million range, albeit with a lesser discount. This is a real deal opportunity for the REALISTIC investor group that's looking to capitalize on some amazing discounts in today's national foreclosure market.

What is "realistic"? We are currently working with investors in California who are buying a typical $100 million portfolio at .58 cents on the dollar and also with smaller groups selling them $10 million REO portfolios at .68 cents on the dollar. That's the marketplace folks, and anyone who thinks they can do better will just have to keep looking, because it's just not out there - except in urban legend land.

If you're a serious sophisticated investor or a member of an investment group looking to take down a $100 million custom REO portfolio and the above discounted values are attractive to you, please contact me at 702-336-5554 or email ron@commercialREOs.com for more details.

If you're active on Active Rain, most likely you understand the value of blogging. In addition to my Active Rain blogging, I've been working very closely with the folks over at the Free Blog Factory in creating fully customized wordpress blogs and wanted to showcase another blog we just published at http://www.ShortSaleHomesLasVegas.com on behalf of Las Vegas short sale specialist Joe Samples of REMAX Benchmark Realty.

I was hoping you can take a look at the site and send me your feedback on what you think of the wordpress blog.

There are many blogging platforms out there, but in my experience, I really like the Wordpress interface because it's so easy to integrate targeted posts and pages with social media platforms. Add video, widgets, plug-ins, or just about any imaginable way to make your content more readable. Plus the search engines seem to like wordpress blogs alot too.

The admin section of ShortSaleHomesLasVegas.com allows the ability to change the look and feel of the site, the page names, the way the content is displayed, the graphics attached to the post, the posts themselves all from a single click of the mouse. The interface is incredibly intuitive and even a real estate agent with absolutely no knowledge of technology can position his/her site as the industry expert - and look that way too!

This site has customized pages targeting short sale buyers and short sale sellers by showcasing a variety of short sale properties on the Las Vegas MLS, plus links to related short sale articles and even original short sale content written by Mr. Samples himself. The backoffice makes for easy graphic uploads, so you can attach a picture (or pictures) to whatever post you want to make very easily. In addition, the navigation bar on the right has links to social media sites, a quick property search based on category criteria, and a tag cloud indicating what the most popular search terms on the website are.

There's no doubt blogging on Active Rain is huge for search engine results! But adding an outside blog can only help your internet exposure. Joe's blog benefits short sale buyers and short sale sellers. Why don't you set up one for yourself as well by getting started here. Oh, and by the way, did I mention it was free?

McIntosh Commercial Bank has lost so much money on loans that, by one measure, it was financially the weakest of Georgia's roughly 300 banks. So rather than look within for insights as to why the bank has failed miserably, representatives are actually complaining that federal regulators were being overzealous in closing banks.

Here's probably a more realistic explanation: they loaned too much money to developers, builders, and buyers and when the market tanked, so did they - just like countless others.

Greed causes the downfall of many. And it seems blame is very commonplace when things go wrong.

Do newspapers, TV, and the media in general report what's REALLY going on in the news, specifically commercial real estate? It's hard to believe what you read some times when the authors of these newsworthy pieces are clearly misssing out on key signals and indicators that portend exactly the opposite of what they're saying.

Take today's story in the Las Vegas Review Journal, "Commercial real estate prices reaching one third 2007 levels". Here's a few talking points from the article:

• "I think we're pretty close to the bottom because once a bank gets a property back, you can't go any lower than that"
• "The most common trend in the industrial market continues to be the lasting expectation among buyers and tenants for reduced sales prices and lease rates"
• "Both residential and commercial transactions are slowly starting to pick up compared with the last couple of years"
• "The ones that take the jump now are poised to make the most profit when things turn around."
• "There continues to be strong demand for quality properties."
• "We're getting a lot of activity, which is going in the right direction"

Remember these comments were taken directly from a major media outlet, not from an agent's website or someone's real estate blog. Let's analyze each point a bit further:

"I think we're pretty close to the bottom because once a bank gets a property back, you can't go any lower than that" - Oh we can, and we will. If you think the commercial market is bad now, wait until the end of the year when the banks move from their current "denial" state into "acceptance" of the problem and start taking massive action to unload properties.

"The most common trend in the industrial market continues to be the lasting expectation among buyers and tenants for reduced sales prices and lease rates" - The most common trend is ALL of real estate is that the prices will continue to fall until job growth prospects get better. The focus should be on job creation - until that happens, the real estate market will continue to fall. And I don't see it happening (for real at least, although you can probably find examples of news articles massaging the facts to make it seem so in the short term.

"Both residential and commercial transactions are slowly starting to pick up compared with the last couple of years" - the key words here are "the last couple of years", which were lousy. Comparing something negative to something even more negative makes your negatively seem less negative.

"The ones that take the jump now are poised to make the most profit when things turn around." - this statement is the single-most exact reason people hate real estate agents. And for obvioius reasons. When Starbucks tells you their coffee is great, watch out.

"There continues to be strong demand for quality properties." - Strong demand? I don't see it. Maybe in other markets, but since this article was written for a Las Vegas paper, I'm assuming they're referencing the Las Vegas market, where the exact opposite seems to be the case. Just look around you if you're a local.

We're getting a lot of activity, which is going in the right direction" - Trust me, the only activity people are seeing are investors looking for an unrealistic "steal", then looking to steal the steal. There's certainly a lot of activity there.

Here's the tough love folks: if you're looking to invest in commercial real estate, take my advice and WAIT. WAIT WAIT WAIT. It's going to get worse short-term. There will be great opportunities for profits in the future and we're currently paving the ground with that at www.CommercialREOs.com, but only when the time is right. It's not now. Turn off the TV and stop reading the newspapers with all those stories written by those with agendas.