Success Stories

Send us your success story by email. It is a great inspiration to everyone when you share your successes and it feels great to give a little something back.

Hi Cam

My only regret about your 'Financial Calculator' is that I waited two and a half weeks to study it in detail. At midnite tonite, I finally mastered the skills of performing the FC to its best use. Now, what do I do? Ha!

Secondly, I have felt scared of the business because I thought someone would "intimitate me right through the front door"; but now I feel confident and sure now I'll succeed. ThankYou for teaching the class in Charlotte last month.

Your student,
Kendall Jones

Cam,

I sent you an e-mail a few weeks ago. At the time I told you I lost my JOB and was going to invest my time and effort into just doing this house business.

Since that time I mailed out 40-50 letters to people in mortgage foreclosure. I received five phone calls and got five appointments. One has resulted in a house purchase!

The sellers signed a "subject to" purchase and sale agreement with me on the first visit. I have had the title checked and everything is clean! I am spending some money out of pocket to make up some back payments but conservatively estimate $25k-30k in potential profit.

All the house needs is paint and carpet! It's 1800 square feet ranch, 3 bdrm/1.5 bath, full basement(partial finished), 2 car attached garage, on 2.5 acres, paved road, natural gas. All the appliances stay and I even get a wood burning stove for free. I am buying (stealing) it for $188,600.00. In 2001 it appraised for $240,000.00. With paint and carpet and 5% annual appreciation value the home should sell for $264k-$265k.

This business is the greatest business in the world!!!

Sincerely,

Frankie & Michele Ybarra
Dryden, MI

Hey Cam
Our first deal is done- We got a house - 3 yrs new 4/2/3 on a L/o for what the people owe- (they accidentally gave it to us for 2K less than they owe (OOPS) so we got this house for 176$ and found some great people to L/O it for 191 - with 10K down- 5K on the back. Now I know to you vets this looks like hardly anything - but that just made it possible for my husband to quit his job and pursue this full time! I am done with my job in a month! We can hardly wait!!! Thanks for all you insight and help! Jen

Jennifer Spath

Hi Cam
Tami and I made our first deposit today of real money made in a real house deal! We were mentored by a pre-foreclosure specialist on one of our first deals (we've actually "sold" a house already but the money will be on the back end) and it was about four months from the day the phone rang until we deposited the check. I figure we "started" in late October (that's the first boot camp I attended) so it's been all of six months. I have the patience of a lit fuse so I was really getting anxious to make some money! I left Pretty House in early November with a plan to quit my J.O.B. by March. Although I never doubted that I'd be successful I was wondering when.

Our first "sale" was a lease option on a house that we took the deed on. We went to a $3000 seminar on that one (we didn't follow the rules!) but we now have tenants and will pull $20000 out of it in a year or so. This pre-foreclosure deal that netted us $7600 was a learning experience also. We had visions of grandeur but in the end we flipped it to another investor. Now that we've made our first deposit I have taken time to breathe and take stock. We've bought five houses since November. We've sold two and have one more on the verge.

We're sitting on $80,000 in equity that we will cash out in 12-18 months. That's not bad for just fumbling along after a few thousand dollars in boot camps. Frankly, we're still fumbling along. I now speak to all of you who are just getting started...it's not easy but it's totally doable. Cam, Becky and others make it LOOK easy because they are so good at it. So give yourself come credit. You know more that you think and it will come with time if you work steadily and follow the instructions. We come away from boot camps and convention feeling invincible. That's a good thing. Then a lot of people drop out, discouraged because of the effort it takes. Hang in there, I want to hear about your first check!

Tom Bradley

Hi Cameron,
I'm so excited. This last weekend we were at the wholesale retail boot camp in riverside doing our first retake from last November. At first my beautiful girlfriend and I were not sure how we were going to do this business but I've been studying hard since last November and have just signed by first contract. It's a very interesting how I was able to marry the concepts to put this deal together. It looks like this:

The house has an ARV of $175,000 to $185,000, seller owes $109,000 with payments of $1120. He wants all cash and $40,000 equity. The house needs about $6,000 to $10,000 in repairs. After seating down with him twice I made three offers and even then restructured a better offer for both of us. I took the first mortgage subject to, gave him a note for $15,000, with no interest, no payments, a two year balloon, $10,000 at closing, and he will be making the next two payments. The total purchase price is $134,000.

The market in California is pretty hot right now and I feel confident that I can flip it for $10,000 or $15,000 or retail it. What I believe made this deal attrative to me is the financing and the house could rent for $1,600 a month with a $480 positive. Yes I will come out of pocket to wholesale it at $6,000 in repairs plus $10,000 at closing. I'm a little nervous about doing a wholesale on my first deal because of the holding time not so such the cost. I can see a bigger payday here with a lease option. Do you see any other good ideas?

By the way I'm going to learn how to use your calculator and thanks for the floppy disk.
Sincerely,

Roger Clayton

P.S. The most important part, THANK YOU, THANK YOU SO MUCH. I can really see my dreams came true now and so can she.

Hi Cam;
How was your first winter back up in NY. Hopefully, we'll be up for the NASCAR races in August and get to see you. I'm keeping busy with houses and appraising in FL.
I don't remember if I told you about our probate property. We picked up a 1500 SF pool home, furniture and computers, with $24K equity. Oh! I forgot to mention that its on 4 fenced acres and came with a '92 Mitsubishi P/U, in northwest Pasco County, 35 miles north of Tampa. After doing our cosmetic work and some fix up our equity will increase to approximately $40,000. with minimal cash outflow. The hard work was worth it! Searching for more!

Leon Stefanovich

Cam,
The Deal: A woman who works for me had a house in North Carolina (We live in Texas) that she could not afford to keep. I offered to help her out by taking the deed and keeping her current. The numbers:

Mortgage balance $80,000; PITI $645; FMV 95,000

At the time I had no idea how I would do the legwork in NC. I just new my employee could not afford to carry the house and I could; and she was worth it. Right then I had just joined the Cam Direct Website. As I was surfing it I saw there was a guy on the Network list right where the house was. It was Troy Williams.

I emailed Troy with the numbers and asked if he was interested to partner with me 50/50 split on the Down Payment and Backend I keep the spread and I guarantee the payments, he gets the Tennant buyer in and brings to close. At this point we had never even spoken on the phone. He immediately agreed. Troy was brilliant! He got a TB in the house in a month with $3,500 down, $725 lease, and a sale price of $101,000. That's $21,0000 before the TB buys down the mortgage for the next 2 or 3 years. Troy and I are both extremely happy about it and it was all made possible because of you. Thank you.

P.S. Wife and I have done 4 L/O so far this year. We are on track to our 24 deal goal. This is one great hobby!

Gung Ho Friend, Zeke Zucaro

Hi Cam
I got a call 3 weeks ago off of my foreclosure letter I sent out 3 months ago. They guy had cured the default but still had the house to deal with. It was his mom's house and she had passed away. He is a builder. He now is the trustee of the living trust and the only beneficiary as well. I determined the MAO and offered him $60,000 cash to the mortgage (subject to) of $116,000 for a total price of $177,000. I had comped the after repaired value at $299,000. (MAO being $184,300.00)

The house was gutted. His idea of a "rehab" was to tear out 3 bedrooms and 2 baths of the 4/3 house. That amounted to almost ½ of the downstairs. It was to the studs AND he had jack hammered out and re-poured the slab as well so he could rearrange the bathrooms. It was scary to walk into this normal looking house and see only studs. Not even any partition walls were left in that portion of the downstairs. I was afraid to walk upstairs as there were only 2x8's holding up one upstairs bedroom! The Kitchen and dining room and living rooms were all beautiful and upgraded.

He wanted 60k now and 40k later. That violated MAO big time so I said I would think about it. I called him back the next day and said I could only offer him the 60k and take over the payments on the first. He said his wife would not let him walk away that cheap. I said OK. But asked him to call me if he had a change of heart.

2 weeks later he called and said OK. He had done nothing more on the house at all. He was totally emotionally caught up in the thing. As a builder he should have thought nothing of finishing the rehab himself but he was out of cash and MOTIVATED! I then promptly freaked out!!! Somebody said yes!!!!! Yikes!!! Now what???

Well I ignored my fear, got my mother in law to fork over 85K (60 to get in and 25 to comp the "rehab") and closed the deal last Friday. A rehabber/contractor friend of mine got his crew there today and we already have framed in two of the rooms. I figure I can spend up to 35k and still not get hurt no matter what. Realistically I will clear minimum 60k on this deal within 2 to 3 months.

This is my 5th house deal but it is my first actual rehab deal. It is really scary but it is really fun too. Oh and don't forget that you can't do this in southern California.

Dean Glosup

While enjoying the party at "Ray's on the River" during the MOS Boot Camp in Jacksonville I was talking with Cam and thanking him for this site because it netted me one of my sweetest (and easiest) deals yet. The deal came through a referral from Thomas Dalton III in Alabama. I posted about it here in mid December but Cam asked me to run it by you again since it is now a "done" deal as they say. I hope this story is encouraging and lights a fire under our butts! By the way Thomas - keep your eye on the mail. My $Thank you$ is on its way!

This may get a bit long but hang in there; I think you will enjoy it. Here is how it went. It is a great illustration of the power of networking. A New York investor got a call from a motivated seller who had moved to NY from North Carolina and still owned a house in NC she needed to sell. The NY investor knew Thomas and contacted him in Alabama hoping that being in the South he could help somehow. Thomas called the seller, got the information on the house from her and said he would try to find an investor in NC who could help her. Thomas posted her info here on Cam's site and that is where I became involved because I check this site almost daily if not more than once. So I got the info and contacted the seller.

Here are the numbers of the deal. It was a 2 yr old 3/2 house with a 2 car attached garage in a nice subdivision with a market value about $110,000. Mortgage balance of $106,500, 8.25% int, $970 PITI. They had it listed at $112,900. They didn't get it sold and had to move to NY. They are both schoolteachers and had new jobs to go to. I used their listed price of 112.9k (even though it was a little high) and explained to them what all their selling costs would be, and even at that price they would have to come to closing with cash. 112.9k selling price minus (6% commission, 3% closing costs, 3% negotiations = 12%) totaling ($13,548) = $99,352 net. Which means they have to come to closing with $7,148. I explained that I could take the house but they would have to pay me that amount or I would be putting myself in their (negative) position and being a businessman that couldn't do that. She didn't like that much but understood it to be true. She complained about the $7,100 a little so I said, "Tell you what, I'll let you pay me only five thousand to take your house if you'll make the next four payments, that way you don't have to come up with all the money right away, and after that, I'm making the payments and this house will be out of your life forever. Fair enough?" "Fair enough", she said. "I'm just so glad you will take our house, we don't know what else we'd do!" We did the deal.

Let me break it down. Seller paid me $5,000 to take the deed on her house. She made the next four payments of $970 PITI. I filled the house after two months. (Two months is a long time, but its the Holidays give me a break) I sold the house on L/O for $119,900. $2,000 down and $1,000 per month. My front-end profit from the SELLER: $5,000, plus my front end from the buyer: $4,000 (2K down and first two months payments of $1,000 each go into Hip National Bank since seller is making payments until March) Totals $9,000 cash. My contract specifies my buyer pays all closing costs so my back end profit is $11,400 and he is going to buy in April (we only wrote his lease for 4 months, January through April)- He already had it lined up with his lender before he moved in! (That is why I let him in with a small down payment).

So lets see... 5 months time and $19,400 profit on a house with $3,000 equity (if you can call it that). I'll take all of those I can get!!! Let's go get em!!! I would not have had this deal if Cam did not have this site or if I was not involved with it on a frequent basis. I also would not have it if TWO other investors were not looking to help a seller find a solution and help a fellow investor win. The seller of this home is elated with this deal, so am I, so is the buyer, everybody wins. I love this business!!!

Thanks to Cam and to Thomas, To our SUCCESS!!!!

Scott B.