Ask Del Now!
“I want you to ponder what you want the rest of your life to look like, because if we’re victorious, we are going to celebrate.
But if we spend too much time celebrating, we don’t spend enough time looking forward.
If we spend too much time looking forward, we don’t enjoy what we’ve accomplished.
The balance has to be there. “There is a time for counting when the dealing’s done.””
All the Way Back
Well, my friends, there’s a saying that I’ve always loved and really believe in. It’s called, “There’s time for counting when the dealing’s done.” And for the last 11 months now I’ve been talking to you about let’s make something happen in 2009.
And although I am one apartment complex shy of what my goal was—I wanted to buy three of them this year. I’ve bought two—I’m happy ‘cause I’ve got two more than what I had before. And the two that I bought were so large that they doubled my holdings. So my net real estate holdings and my net cash flow should double.
Now, what’s interesting about all this is that we set up this plan way early back last year in November/December of last year and we started talking about goal setting and planning. Well, here it is folks, we’re back to November/December again. We’re all the way back.
Accomplishments
How many of you out there right now can look back and say, “You know what? I got involved. I started listening to Del. I started making some family plans. We took some action, and now I’ve got something to look back on.” And I don’t care whether it’s buy one or two houses and I bought one or two apartments or somebody else did more and somebody did less. Can you even look back and say something’s better in your life?
I look back this year and I say I paid off my two Lexuses; I paid off my Cadillac Escalade, so I have three paid-in-full cars. My home’s paid for. I have no bills whatsoever, and I’m thinking that’s a pretty neat combination of accomplishments.
I’m looking and I purchased two properties—one of them 50 percent occupied, which is now 85 percent occupied and 93 percent leased. I bought another one that was 93 percent occupied that was in bad condition. We remodeled it, rehabbed it, and now it’s 93 percent occupied but 98 percent leased. I look back and I go these are some wonderful accomplishments.
Record Collections
I started a whole new partnership with a friend of mine who came out of corporate America. Now he’s an individual entrepreneur and has a whole new career and future in front of him. I have grown my own apartments—the ones that I own and operate personally without partners. Those have become record-high occupancies and rental collection. In fact in the two that we’re doing partnerships with, both of those last month in October had record collections ever.
And so I look back and I say, you know, maybe we didn’t do everything we wanted to do, but we did a lot of what we wanted to do. I lost 20 pounds. I got my blood pressure down from 220 down to—I believe now it’s like 150 over 90 whereas before it was like 220 over 160. I got my blood sugar down from 220 down to as low as 90 to 100’s a day. All of these things occurred at the same time.
While at the same time my daughter created her own little checking account, savings account, money market. She has gone out there and gotten a job and saved 5 or 6 or $7,000 as a young kid already and working on building her credit at every inch. She went and got her CAM, which is Certified Apartment Manager this year. She’s going to get her real estate license. So by the time she’s got her credit perfect, she’ll be able to buy her own properties, manage her own properties, and got enough money saved up to do it on her own.
Exuberance
All this went on in our household this year. Just tremendous amounts of accomplishments went on. My girlfriend, who operates and supervises my properties, has remodeled two of my properties — actually I guess all three — finishing those projects up right now. And of course like I said, got record-high collections in these properties.
You know, my team, my family, my friends, everybody around me is feeling this exuberance in times when most people are feeling like the world is destroyed. I just want to ask you, folks, did you do this this year? Or are you looking back right now wishing you had — because we don’t want it to happen in 2010.
There are so many things going on right now. In fact some guy looked at me and goes, “Del, we’re going to be busier during the holidays than ever. And it is, we’re always busier during the holidays because not only do we enjoy these holidays tremendously, we are right now doing what is known as counting.
Strategic Planning
We are going back and looking at all the results, getting all the accounting done for the end of the year to do year-end accounting and tax returns, and we are also setting up budgets. We are having budget meetings, and we are figuring out what we can do and accomplish next year.
We’re having meetings at Lifestyles, and we are redesigning the programs. In fact I’m so proud, we are massively redesigning and probably doubling or tripling what we are going to offer next year at Lifestyles Unlimited as a program. And all of this is being designed right now. All this is being planned. The goals are in place, the strategic planning is occurring, and it’s going to happen.
And I know in 2010, just like it has been in every other year of my life, things are going to be better. I simply ask you, “Are you making those same moves right now? Are you planning for the future?” Because if you don’t plan for the future, then it’s going to throw you whatever curve ball it wants to throw you.
Deciding to Win
You only win if you decide to win. You have to plan to succeed or by default you’re planning to fail. Now, we started this last year. This is a new year. This is the end of the old year. Now the time is for looking back. For the next six weeks, look back. For the next six weeks I want you to ponder.
I want you to ponder what you want the rest of your life to look like, because if we’re victorious, we are going to celebrate. But if we spend too much time celebrating, we don’t spend enough time looking forward. If we spend too much time looking forward, we don’t enjoy what we’ve accomplished. The balance has to be there. “There is a time for counting when the dealing’s done.” We’ve got Daryl from Houston hanging on.
DEL: How can we help you?
DARYL: Yes. Del, just getting started in your program, I’ll be there at your class on Saturday and Sunday. But I had a question regarding financing of properties. If you have private family money available—they don’t want to invest it long-term in housing, not just yet—but let’s just say it’s available to buy to make an initial purchase to avoid having to get a rehab loan and then close out of that into a permanent. If I use private cash to buy the home completely then rehab it, am I able to finance that back out and get my family back their money?
DEL: No.
DARYL: No?
DEL: This is a totally different market than what it used to be, and to do that would be the wrong way to do it. But there are things you can do. Here’s the deal. If you were to do what you want to do, your family’s money would be tied up in that house for at least six months to maybe even a year because you have to season that property before you can refinance it out.
DARYL: Oh, okay.
DEL: If you use a hard money lender, there’s no seasoning required, because you’re not refinancing any money out because you never put any money in. All you’re doing is doing what they call a rate-and-term refinance. The hard money lender lends you the money at 12 percent. You do all the work, and then you immediately refinance it out without the waiting 6 to 12 months—and you don’t have to use your parent’s money.
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