Sunil Tulsiani PIC Investor Spotlight One Bogdan

The 2nd installment of our Private Investment Club's Investor Spotlight series that focuses on member deals. Tap into their insight as they openly discuss their recent results in real estate investing and also talk future deals. Sunil Tulsiani's ultimate dream of realizing one hundred PIC millionaires is well underway.

Sunil Tulsiani PIC Investor Spotlight One Bogdan from Sunil Tulsiani on Vimeo.

Sunil Tulsiani - 5 Easy Ways to Update a Room

You don’t have to hire a decorator (or break the bank) to give a room a quick update with lots of impact. So whether you’re getting ready to sell, have just moved in or feel like a mini overhaul, these five tips will have you enjoying the room of your dreams in no time.

1. Change Your Fabrics - Replace your curtains, re-cover your throw pillows, buy a new rug, Any one of these easy fixes can make a big impact; but all three will completely change the entire room! And if it’s a bedroom you’re tired of, same rules apply: Replace the duvet cover, re-cover the headboard, and toss a few new pillows on the bed.
2. Freshen Up With Paint - Whether you tackle an entire room, or maybe an accent wall or two, a new coat of paint is probably the easiest way to change a room. From light and bright to dark and dramatic, paint can completely alter the mood.
3. Re-Organize A Bookshelf - Bookshelves are amazing; not only do they keep your books organized, but they can also serve as great focal pieces. Try color-coding your books or arranging them in stacks instead of side-by-side. Remove an entire row of books and replace them with framed family photos or bright accent pieces. Sometimes all a room needs is a shift in thinking about it.
4. Update Your Art - Updating the art on your walls is a great way to showcase the family talent. Frame your daughter’s sketches from high school (no one will know it’s not a real Picasso) or your son’s first finger painting. Or grab a blank canvas and paint it a bright color to hang in the kitchen (you don’t have to be a Fine Art grad to add some basic pops of color!). And the best part of this approach is once you’ve bought the frames, the art can be rotated throughout the year at no extra cost.
5. Add An Accent - Is your bathroom feeling boring or your living room giving you the yawns? Pick bright, colorful wallpaper and add an accent wall! Paint stripes in your dining room, or buy a chandelier for your front hallway. Adding an impressive accent is a fun way to give the room some personality without a complete overhaul (of the room OR your bank account).

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Sunil Tulsiani: 10 Secrets From a Real Estate Agent

Sunil Tulsiani - 10 Secrets From a Real Estate Agent

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Sunil Tulsiani - Does it Make Sense to Buy a Second Home?

It may sound sweeter than it actually is.

Owning a second home may sound like something only the wildly rich do, but that isn't always so. Sometimes people buy a new house when they haven’t had success selling the first. Other homeowners might like the idea of buying a second home to fix up and sell at a fat profit – or to rent out.

For the right individual, two homes may be a great plan. But for the wrong homeowner, plenty can go awry. If you're thinking of getting a second mortgage for practical or profitable reasons, now is a good time to have second thoughts, because …  

1. You need to have plenty of money. You don't have to belong to the 1 percent to pull this off, but for a bank to allow you to purchase a second home without plans to sell the first, you can't be just getting by, hoping a second house will fix your financial picture.

"Underwriters will want to know you have significant reserves – potentially a buffer worth six months of payments on both properties – before approving the loan," says Brian Seibert president of Michigan First Mortgage in Waterford, Michigan.

And while every lender will be different, as a general rule, you'll need to pay a higher down payment for a second home than you would a first, says Riccardo Ravasini, owner of Rava Realty in New York City. "Say, 30 percent or more," he says.

2. You shouldn't have too much debt. You're taking on more debt when you buy a second home – something lenders take into account. In fact, your debt-to-income ratio is usually the primary issue for lenders, says Stefani Markowitz, CEO and president of Charles Rutenberg LLC, a real estate agency in New York City.

"In most cases, the debt ratio can be 36 percent to 42 percent," Markowitz says. That means, of course, that your debt – including mortgages, credit card debt, car loans and student loans – shouldn't exceed that 36 to 42 percent.

Of course, if you're planning to offset some of that debt by bringing in monthly rental income from your second home, mention that to your lender, Markowitz says.

"Renting out a home certainly lowers the risk of being rejected by a mortgage lender … the general rule of thumb is to provide as much reassurance as possible," Markowitz says.

3. You have to spend money to make money. It isn't just that you'll need a hefty down payment. Your monthly mortgage may well be higher than it would be if you just had one home.

"Because investors are viewed by banks as riskier customers, they are often subjected to higher interest rates," says Rhonda Duffy, a Georgia-based real estate agent who owns Duffy Realty of Atlanta. "To avoid financing issues, many investors use cash financing or existing lines of credit to purchase investments."

You are also going to be maintaining two homes. You thought it was hard to make sure the bushes were trimmed for one house? Now, you get to double the fun.

"Most people grossly underestimate the carrying costs of the investment in real estate. It's more than just taxes and insurance," says Celandra Deane-Bess, a vice-president with PNC Wealth Management in the District of Columbia. Consider this scenario: Eventually – assuming you are hanging onto the second house and not selling it soon – you'll have two roofs to replace, two homes to paint and twice as many appliances, such as hot water heaters and refrigerators, to purchase, she says.

If you're spending money and losing money on the house but are truly looking at the property as a long-term investment, it may not matter to you to do that for awhile, Duffy says. Some homeowners "are happy to take a loss on a property in the short term, and build up equity for a future period, such as retirement."

4. The buyers and renters may not come. Just because you have grand plans of renting out or selling a second home doesn't mean things will work out that way. If you're investing money into fixing up a property, that takes time – time that translates into money, Duffy says.

"Every day that an investment property sits empty means a loss in profitability to an investor," she says. "All repairs and renovations must be completed quickly in order to have the fastest turnaround … Even with quality contractors, investors typically spend a significant amount of time working on houses, selecting paints and flooring, purchasing appliances or attending to the other details required to transform a home."

Even if you bought a fixer-upper that's all fixed up, you have to hope a renter or seller signs on the dotted line as soon as possible. And then, if you're renting the place, you have to hope your tenant sticks around.

"Personally, I don’t recommend that my clients rely on sources of income that could suddenly stop. You have to be comfortable that if the property is not rented out, you’ll still be on solid footing," says Kurt Fillmore, president of Wealth Trac Financial Group in Southfield, Michigan. (And back to the having-plenty-of-money point – Fillmore recommends having six months of emergency funds to cover the mortgages of both houses, in case something goes wrong.)

5. All of this is harder than it looks. Even if you sell or rent out a second home fairly quickly, you could have plenty go wrong later.            

Seibert isn't just the president of a mortgage company. He has been renting properties for 20 years.

“From my own experience as a landlord, I’ve learned that it’s critical to prepare for the worst," he says. "I’ve had tenants spray paint the insides of houses, start fires indoors and attempt to flush tennis balls down the toilet. It happens with both high-priced and low-priced properties. You have to be financially ready in case the damage goes far beyond the safety deposit.”

He also observes: “Municipalities that react slowly to delinquent renters – such as Wayne County here in Michigan – can cause significant headaches for landlords. Not only are you likely to lose at least three months of rent income before any changes can begin to take place, these renters often don’t do any favors in the upkeep of the house itself.”

Fillmore even goes so far as to discourage folks who are retiring or approaching retirement from acquiring a second home – especially if they're going to rent it out – simply because of the headaches tenants can bring.

"Real estate, even on a small scale, should be seen as another job or career," Fillmore advises. "While it may be the right fit for some, it's not for everyone."         

It gets even harder if you're trying to flip houses and are solely thinking of them as investments. For instance, Deane-Bess warns that you should "understand the tax implications of short-term gains and non-primary-residence sales."

Michael Rosenberg, a financial advisor at Diversified Investment Strategies in Livingston, New Jersey, agrees that investing in real estate can get really complicated.

"I only would recommend a second home purchase if you are going to take advantage of the $500,000 for married couples and $250,000 for individuals deduction that you can make without incurring capital gains tax – as long as it was your primary residence for two years before the sale," he says.

Beyond that, Rosenberg says he wouldn't advise buying a second house unless you are a real estate developer: "I would warn the average person not to get involved unless they have a unique expertise," he says.

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Five Key Things To Know About The 2015 Spring Home Buying Season

Spring is house-hunting season. The months of April, May, and June typically account for 40% of all home sales for the year, according to Freddie Mac. And this year, sellers have the advantage—in some parts of the country, by a lot.

Home prices are going up. Wages aren’t keeping pace. And the housing supply is tight, driving prices up even faster. Lately as many as 40% of homes have sold at or above listing price, according to data from the National Association of Realtors and  RealtyTrac, an Irvine, Calif.-based data firm.

From a bird’s eye perspective, many observers are saying the housing market has normalized amid the pickup in activity since the recession doldrums. But all is not well for people trying to buy–especially if they’re first-time buyers or on the lower end of the price spectrum. Here’s what you need to know to compete as 2015’s spring housing season swings into the home stretch.

INVENTORY IS STILL SHORT

“It looks like it’s going to be a very solid spring season,” says Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. “The buyer traffic, the pending contract activity; there is enough buying activity. One constraining factor is the supply: there’s just not enough to satisfy demand and hence prices are getting bid up a little too high.”

At the end of April, the number of available homes for sale—both newly constructed and previously owned—was well below the six-month supply considered a balanced market: 5.3 months for pre-owned homes and 4.8 months for new ones, according to NAR.

Americans are buying more housing but the pace of sales hasn’t yet fully recovered to pre-recession levels. Still, Freddie Mac   predicts that 2015 will be the best year for home sales and home construction since 2007, when home sales totaled 5.8 million. NAR forecasts that total existing-home sales for 2015 will reach about 5.24 million, or about 6.1% above 2014.

How to get to those higher numbers given the current inventory shortage? The good news is that more housing is coming down the pipeline. Housing starts (groundbreakings on new homes) hit a seven-year high in April, at an annualized rate of 1.14 million. That’s a lot better than during the recession, when housing starts fell below 1 million annually for six solid years. However, even April’s relative boom in groundbreakings is still low. Yun stressed that the nation needs 1.5 million new housing units per year to bring supply back in line with demand.

Owners with high levels of equity in their homes could help matters. More than 11 million homeowners are what RealtyTrac calls “equity-rich,” meaning that they have at least 50% equity stakes in their home. “Once you have at least 20% equity you can become that move-up buyer. You have enough to sell, pay all the fees, and still have something left to put into your next property,” says Daren Blomquist, vice president of RealtyTrac.

PRICES ARE ON THE RISE

Inventory constraints coupled with demand for real estate are pushing prices up. Historically since 1975, prices have risen (on an inflation-adjusted basis) about 1% per year, says David Blitzer, chair of the S&P Dow Jones Index Committee. As of the latest data available from March, single-family home prices are up about 4.1% year-over-year accounting for inflation, Blitzer says. That’s better for buyers than in late 2013 and early 2014, when the rapidly recovering housing market welcomed double-digit annual price gains (before inflation adjustment). But 4.1% is still faster than the historic, inflation-adjusted average.

In many markets, homes are selling at or above their list price. A recent survey by the National Association of Realtors indicated that in April, about 40% of homes, on a national basis, sold at or above asking price. Similarly, RealtyTrac recently found that in April 41% of homes sold at or above their estimated market value.

Of course, real estate is local, with markets varying widely. Homes in April sold for at least 101% of market value in 85 of the 315 counties nationwide with a population of at least 100,000, according to RealtyTrac. The worst places for buyers were San Francisco and Alameda counties in California’s Bay Area, where homes sold for 108% of estimated market value, followed by D.C., Forsyth County in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina, and Yolo County, California where homes all sold for 107% of estimated market value.  The best values for buyers were in Saint Louis, Mo., where homes sold for about 77% of estimated market value, followed by Baltimore, Md. (78%), Beaver County, Penn. (82%) in the Pittsburgh metro, Bartow County, Ga. (84%) in the Atlanta metro, and Chittenden County, Vt. (85%) in the Burlington metro.

Don’t expect the price gains to go away. Freddie Mac predicts an average home price gain of 4.5% in 2015 (on a national basis), while the National Association of Realtors is now forecasting that homes will rise by 6.7% this year.

Even with the price gains, buying is still better deal than renting in many cases. Nationally, it’s about 35% cheaper to buy than rent, assuming a 20% down payment and a seven-year stay, according to Trulia. “A lot of that is because rents are quite high in several of the major markets,” notes Ralph McLaughlin, housing economist at Trulia. “It’s a bit of a double-whammy for first-time homebuyers who may be wanting to purchase their first house. Even though it is a good time to buy because rents are quite high, it can make saving up for a down payment quite difficult.”

COMPETITION IS EASING FROM INVESTORS

“For buyers the good news is in 2015 there’s less competition shaping up from investors in general,” says Blomquist. In the depths of the housing crisis, institutional investors were the big winners, snapping up single-family homes by the thousands. But they’re less of a force today. In Q1 2015, a total of 14,621 single-family homes were sold to institutional investors (defined as entities that purchase at least 10 properties per year), according to RealtyTrac. That’s about 3.4% of all sales, down from 6.2% a year ago, and the lowest share for institutional investors in four years.

Clearly, every market is different, but these days would-be homeowners face the stiffest competition from investors in Cape Coral, Fla., where 60.4% of transactions were investor purchases in Q1 2015. It’s almost as bad in Detroit, Mich. (60.4% investors), Sarasota (59%) and Lakeland (50.8%), Fla., and Columbus, Ohio (50.5%).

All-cash deals are also down: of non-owner-occupied buyers, 44.7% were all-cash, compared to 61% a year ago and also the lowest level in four years. All-cash buyers accounted for just 25.9% of single-family homes and condo purchases in Q1 2015, down from 30.3% in the prior quarter and a four-year low, according to RealtyTrac. Again, that’s good news for regular people, since a buyer who offers cash is likely to win a bidding war against a buyer with traditional financing.

FINANCING EASES, BUT MORTGAGE RATES MAY RISE

In the worst days of the housing crisis, it was tough to get credit. These days credit availability is at its highest level since the housing downturn, according to the latest read of the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index. Banks and mortgage companies have been easing their requirements and offering more types of mortgages. New VA offerings, jumbo mortgage products, and 203K home renovation loans have helped augment sources of financing.

But watch out: interest rates have stayed at historic lows for months now, and Freddie Mac is predicting increased volatility. This week, rates rose to the highest level in 2015, averaging 3.87% for a conventional (30-year, fixed rate) mortgage.

LOWER-PRICED HOMES ARE MOVING FAST

“Markets are moving slightly faster than they were last year,” says McLaughlin, of Trulia. “So it’s going to be a little more difficult overall for homebuyers to find a home that they want in a reasonable time frame.”

That’s particularly true for first-time buyers. Trulia analyzed the number of homes on the market across the nation and found that 60% of homes listed for sale on February 5 were still on the market two months later. In 2014, 62% of homes were still on the market from February to April. This year homes priced at the lower end of the market are moving quickest: only 50% of homes priced in the lower one-third were still on the market after two months, compared with 65% of higher-priced homes, Trulia found.

“If you were going into this housing season looking to buy a home, then No. 1, it’s going to be even more important to put in a competitive home offer,” McLaughlin says. “And No. 2, you’re going to have to have all your documentation sorted out so you can meet the closing time frames of closing on a house.”

This article was originally published on Forbes. See it here

The Successful Private Investment Club Is The Focus Of New Corporate Review Interview

The founder of Private Investment Club discusses how his firm helps individuals gain financial freedom through real estate investing on Corporate Review.

May 1, 2015 – Boca Raton, FL – Sunil Tulsiani, Founder and CEO, explains the mission of his company, Private Investment Club, with his observation, “Most people don’t have the training or tools to participate in the exciting field of real estate investing. They don’t have the friends, mentors or resources to be involved at a successful level. Our firm addresses that problem with a successful network and world-class training programs.” Tune in to watch the Private Investment Club segment airing on Bloomberg International (as pd. prog) on May 3, 2015 at 5:30pm ET. Check your local listings for airtimes.

Tulsiani continues, “Our goal is to produce 100 millionaires in the next year and to help thousands of others get a successful start as real estate investors. We offer the opportunity to pursue financial freedom through real estate investments.”

Based in Ontario, Canada and founded in 2005, Private Investment Club is the largest elite real estate investment group in Canada. As a celebrity real-estate wealth coach, the founder Sunil Tulsiani has educated more than 113,000 investors over the past 8 years, has been involved in more than 11,000 real estate deals, and has mentored several individuals to the level of self-made millionaires.

The company provides networking, mentoring, and access to joint venture partners, and conducts training throughout the country and the U.S. Tulsiani received an award from Jack Canfield of Hollywood, CA, for the Best-Selling Author in the field.

In concluding his remarks, Tulsiani adds, “When you become a member of the Private Investment Club you gain 5-year access to our extensive network of contacts and resources ranging from cash-flowing opportunities and properties to legal teams and renovation firms. We also introduce members of our club to sources for private investment capital and many training resources and events. ”

JL Haber, the Vice President of Programming of Corporate Review, adds his perspective with, “Our viewers turn to us to keep abreast of new and exciting companies and innovative approaches to business. The potential of Private Investment Club to help achieve financial freedom will be of great interest to many.” Tune in to watch the Private Investment Club segment airing on Bloomberg International (as pd. prog) on May 3, 2015 at 5:30pm ET. Check your local listings for airtimes. Continue reading http://www.pressreleaserocket.net/the-successful-private-investment-club-is-the-focus-of-new-corporate-review-interview/169085/

Best Places To Buy Properties In USA by Sunil Tulsiani

Youngstown, City in Ohio

Atlanta, City in Georgia

Detroit, City in Michigan

Kansas City, City in Missouri

Tampa, City in Florida