One of the biggest fallacies that I hear many new investors talk about is how much money they are going to make by buying a C-class property in a B-class area and then reposition the property and cash out. Or it could be a B-class in an A-area. Regardless, they never understand what repositioning really means because the most important part of repositioning is never explained properly to them.

Just like with fixing and flipping single family homes, any problem can be fixed with money. You can take a C-class property and drop $6,000 per unit in rehab expenses and make it absolutely gorgeous with granite countertops and hardwood floors but that does not make it a B-class property. Remember what brings value to a multi-value business –  the contracts.

The only way to get more valuable contracts is to get higher-paying customers/residents. The fact that a unit has been completely rehabbed and is absolutely beautiful does not mean that a new tenant base is set to move in.

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If you have been following any of my articles or have seen me speak before about multifamily investing, you know that one of my favorite lines is “Loopnet is where deals go to die”. You also know that I feel that Loopnet is not where new multifamily  investors should be spending much of their time.

But that does not mean that I do not use Loopnet as a tool in my business on a daily basis.

It’s how I use Loopnet differently than every other investor that makes the difference. Here’s what I mean. Most investors use Loopnet to search for properties in a specific geographical location. Everyone is quickly schooled in the search feature for Loopnet to drill down on that location that is supposedly the next emerging market.

But instead of searching for properties based upon the geography, use the search feature to find properties based upon certain keywords.

Here’s what I mean.

Go to the Search Properties for Sale link. Instead of typing in a location,...

I was working with a multifamily investing client the other day when he started complaining about how there is no good way to find multifamily deals because all the "good places" have been picked over. That's when I realized that he did not know how to use Google to find multifamily deals.

I asked him what he considered was a good place and he proceeded to lay out there the usual suspects - Loopnet, Costar, blah, blah, blah. I asked him have you ever just tried using Google to find deals? He had no idea that you could do that. Well, you can, provided you know how to use Google correctly.

So I decided to lay out a few pointers as to how you can search for deals on Google. After I showed him these tools, he totally changed his tune as to how to look under every nook and cranny.

[caption id="attachment_134" align="aligncenter" width="310"] multifamily investing using Google[/caption]  

Here's what you should do. In this example, I am using 'multifamily investing' but you can use...