Today was a very interesting day at the Hudson and Marshall REO Auction. I went with my friend Jason and we ended up seeing many people that I knew. We ran into Iris Veneracion and Bobi Simanton who own the Invest Club for Women in Irvine. Additionally, I saw about another 7-8 investors that I have gotten to know through REIC of LA and other events, including a investor that I met through REIC named Gary Kopp.
Out of everyone I saw only the wonderful Iris was successful in buying a house! All the others went well beyond the Maximum bids. Oh well - good times will soon be here - we're not worried! I wasn't bidding on houses today, I was just obseving like many many others. The place had about 800 - 900 people, and from what I could tell most were not bidding.
Although there were homes sold below the current comps, they were still only about 90 - 70% of MV. But - it was very disturbing to see so many houses go for way over the comps! What a ridiculous scene.
Below are a couple of videos from the day. One is Iris' final bidding and the other is just the auction in action.
Celebratory Drink with Iris, Bobbi, Gary, Jason and Iris' broker on her and Bobbi's winning bid today! She got it below her maximum bid!
We all discussed the ins and outs of being investors and the interesting thing I learned yesterday was that all these investors, including Gary who has been a heavy investor for at least 10 years, still feel like they are "Newbies". I was telling them that even though I have about 10 houses under my belt, I'm still a newbie. They all agreed that even they still feel like newbies because they are always educating themselves, they still make mistakes and every deal brings a new learning experience. This really shruck me, because a lot of us - beat ourselves up for making mistakes - or worse - we don't do a deal because we think "we don't know enough yet". So - I would like to say to all of us - Make your move, do deals, and get over it! If we don't know something - go learn it fast or ask someone who does know, if we make a mistake - then pick yourself up by your bootstaps and get back in the game. Keep moving forward.
Boy - there are so many amazing people in our investor world and it's wonderful how much I learn about myself and how motivated I get just in talking to them. There is a lot of money to be made in the next couple of years - let's not let negative self talk stop us from making it big.
