Pet Health 101

1-800-PetMeds provides a valuable list of common topics to aid the pet owner in taking care of their cat and/or dog. Pet Health 101 has several categories that you can choose from. For example:

Fleas & ticks; tick & flea meds, tick & flea control (indoors & outside)

Fleas jump, ticks crawl, and they’re both unwanted company for your pet. Despite its name, the cat flea is the number one external parasite of both cats and dogs and over 95% of the flea population exists in carpet and grass. Treat your pet and the surrounding environment, and if your pet spends any time outdoors, make sure you thoroughly spray the yard.

Flea & tick preventatives (Frontline Plus, Advantage and K9 Advantix)
How to apply flea & tick medications
When flea meds fail
Tick & flea medication comparison chart

Flea meds FAQ
Flea & tick control for the indoors · Flea & tick control for the outdoors

Flea control for kittens · Flea control for puppies

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Getting Help with Financing

Money makes the world go around. It takes money to make money. Money can't buy happiness...but you sure can rent it for a while. All of these saying are common things people think about money. If you want more money people think it is because you are greedy. Actually, money builds security, comfort, and a way to spend more time with family and friends. In real estate investing, there are few deals that can be done without money. The part I like to deal with is OPM--other people's money.

If you structure a deal to purchase a home, you need to come up with earnest money, a down payment, a loan, and closing costs. Earnest money can be yours since it is usually a small sum. A down payment and the closing costs can come from investors, friends, family, or partners. The loan is obviously money from somebody else. After all, it is a loan.


Where does all this money come from? As I said, your family, friends, investors, and/or partners. Depending on the source of this money, it will have a different cost to acquire. Family can be very low to no interest rate depending on the family member. Friends can have a small interest rate to help with the risk of investing. Partners will be even higher since they are still carrying part of the risk. Investors will charge quite a large rate since they are trusting a stranger they do not know very well. If all else fails, you can go to a hard money lender which will charge the most as well as points (a percentage of the loan) as he or she are the ones getting the investors together to fund your project. There is always a combination of the above as well.



Some experts agree that if you find the deals, you will find the money. This is true if you have a great deal and you have a network of people willing to give you money for your deals. Once you gain an understanding of the amounts of interest you can charge, you will see that you will eventually be able to show that you do have the ability to come through on the project and they will be paid not only their interest but their principle investment as well. Since the cost of this money is lower as you start with family and work your way to hard money, you need to focus on the cheaper sources first. Once you have enough money, the hard money lenders will always be there since you need to have at least a portion of your own money in the game for them to play.


As I find deals that can be a good venture, I send out the details to my twitter friends. With a few good words included, you can get more followers to see your deals and to get the word out. Also, there is a great list of investment clubs on http://www.reiclub.com, or http://www.creonline.com/clubs.htm. These are two of the best lists out there. You can also Google the terms and find more clubs. Going to the meetings, getting to know the members, and asking questions, will help you find those that are good sources of funds or friends.


Remember, once you get the first deal funded and closed, you need to use some of that money to help with your next deal. The less you borrow, the less you pay. But, there will always be a need for investors to help you since you do not always want to use all your own money when you don't have to.


If you know anybody that is willing to earn a great return on their investments backed by high equity real estate deals, let me know. I can certainly set them up on a track to get a return that will make their 401K's look pitiful.

Standard House Flip

When you watch cable TV, you see a show about some real estate investors that are flipping a house and making a nice sum of money doing it. How do they do it? How do they find them? How do they repair and sell them to make that kind of money?

Well, one of the biggest flippers in the country is Armando Montelongo. He is seen on the series called "Flip this House". He started with no money and has created an empire that spans the spectrum to buying and flipping, to real estate education. He has made the money and has turned around and is giving back by teaching others to do what he has learned in a much shorter time.

Finding houses to flip can be done by paying 'bird dogs' or those that find homes to be repaired or sold to other investors 'wholesaling' for a finder's fee. There are many of these people that do this because they might not have the ability or desire to go into full buying or flipping. Others are the wholesalers that buy the property with the sole desire to sell to another investor. They do not want to keep or do anything with the home. Finally, there are the homeowners themselves. They will advertise that their home is for sale and the flipper will negotiate directly.

Once the house is found, the job of fixing it up to put it back on the market as quickly as possible. The longer you hold onto a property, the more costs are building up. Interest on the loan you took out on it, utilities, and other holding costs that eat into your profit. Having a good contractor on hand will speed things up, but while the house is in escrow, you can have a couple of contractors go through the house and give you estimates to fix it up for sale.

Once the keys are in your hands, the contractors are on the site to fix up the house and make it marketable to home owners, landlords that want to rent it out, other investors, or even prospective renters if you want to make a monthly income out of the home. Either way, you need to have a time line in place to make sure you can fix the property and sell it or rent it to stop the costs from adding up.

Once you have a buyer, you can them add up your profits. When you started this venture, you made all the calculations, and you figured out how much you will make when it is sold. You also setup a buffer once the repairs are made to make sure you had a reserve in case the unexpected occurs. But, once you close escrow the second time, you get that check in the mail.

You bought the property from a homeowner for $125,000. You fixed it up for an additional $15,000. You paid $8,000 in holding costs including interest, utilities, closing costs, etc. So far you hvae invested $148,000 in this property. Now when you sell it, you know already that the other homes in the area sold for $160,000 to $175,000. You know you did a great job of fixing it up and post it for $175,000 since the other homes for sale are higher. Since you want it to sell before the others, you make it the lowest of the similar homes.

An offer comes along for the $175,000 and you accept it. What did this get you after all the work? $27,000 for 2-3 months of work. If you had other properties in mind, you can turn around and put it down on the next and get your next project going quickly, or you pay off your bills, and you improve your personal finances and you become more comfortable in your lifestyle. Either way, you are much better off, you bought a home that somebody needed to get rid of, you fixed it up so the neighborhood is better off for it, and you sold it to a person that wanted a nice hime for his kids to grow up in. That is a win/win/win deal.

Real Estate Investing

Do you know that there are people out there that will tell you that it takes money to make money. That you can't make money in real estate since we are in a recession, and that anybody that invests in real estate is a con man and will take advantage of people in dire straits.

Well, these are all false. There are several ways you can make money in real estate withou the use of your own money or very little of your own money. Lease options, subject-to, seller financing, and private investors will give you an opportunity to purchase a house, condo, or land and be able to sell it, rehab and resell it (flip), or keep it as a rental and gain some monthly income from it.

The plan I like the best is the subject-to deal. It allows a home owner to sell or transfer their home to an investor that is able to sell, flip, or keep, and give the seller the chance to save his or her money by not have to make anymore payments for the house. They can move on with their lives and not have to worry about getting behind in their mortgage ever again.

The trick to subject-to deals is that you are literally taking over and paying the monthly mortgage payments yourself and by virtue of this, taking possession of the house as well. Although the seller still has the obligation to keep up on the payments, you are bound, by contract, to do so for him.

Once you take ownership of the house, by quit claim deed, you can do whatever you want with the house. If you sell it quickly to an investor, landlord, or home buyer, you just releived the original seller of any financial obligation to make the payments you are making. You then give the original home owner the selling price you decided on, you pay off the remaining mortgage, and you keep the rest. Many times, depending on the original agreement, it can be a very nice amount of money. Another thing you can do is to find a rent-to-own buyer, have them give yo payments for rent along with a additional sum to go to the purchase of the home. This allows you to make a monthly income along with the down payment of the contract to purchase the house.

With these options, you are then using no money out of your pocket, you are making money in this economy, and you are not taking advantage of a distressed home owner, but are helping him or her out of a jam. That is a win/win/win in my book.