Hello my friends and welcome to another episode of Ask Marco where I love answering your investing related questions.

Today's question is kind of simple, but I feel bad for this person. Her name is Grace and she writes in and says, hi Marco. Thank you for your amazing podcast. It is very informative and educational. It's been a few weeks now since I started listening and I gained a lot from it. I am new to real estate investing and this is my first adventure. Not sure why she called it an adventure. I took some friend's advice and bought some vacant properties in Baltimore with a price range of 10,000 to $20,000 hoping to rehab and sell or rent out in the areas that are expected to grow. I don't have any real data, but it is possible in a couple of years maybe, but that was a year ago. Unfortunately or fortunately maybe I need to be educated first in brackets.

I was not able to do any of that due to finances and other circumstances. Now since I started listening to your podcast, I thought it would be wise to seek advice before I go too far with it. The area will be considered a class D neighborhood. I think my question is how should I proceed now? Should I try to sell them as is even if I lose money and use the cash for a down payment for a turnkey rental property or should I try to rehab and rent out or sell the properties? Thank you for your suggestions and keep up the amazing work you are doing in educating everyone who is interested to learn kindly - Grace.





Grace, thank you for writing in. I appreciate the question. This is a difficult question to ask in a harder question to answer for two reasons. One, I feel bad for your situation and two, I don't actually have enough information to give you a complete answer but I'll make a few assumptions and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

First and foremost, this friend that gave you the advice to buy these two vacant properties, is she really, are he really a friend? In some ways, I'm thinking that this is a way to uh, punish your enemy. But it really depends on what you bought because they could be two great properties with minimal work in a decent area, although I don't know if decent and D class neighborhoods go hand in hand in the same sentence. But anyway, you did what you did and you have what you have. So on the surface, this sounds like you made a mistake, but smart investors, intelligent investors, good entrepreneurs have the ability to turn lemons into lemonade. It's just finding the opportunity in a situation where others don't see it. And that's really the skill of great business owners and entrepreneurs and dealmakers is they're able to identify opportunities in things, situations that others, most people don't find or don't see.

So let's just assume you did make a mistake, but here are your two options. This is really the broad answer to your question. I think you have two general answers here. Maybe three. First is, I don't know if you bought these from a wholesaler or through the MLS through a real estate agent, but option one is since you're sitting on it, and I assume you probably just bought these with your own cash, you didn't borrow other people's money so you're not accruing interest on the funds that you use to purchase these properties. If that's the case and you can just ride it out, you might want to try selling them on your own, on the MLS and just, you know, Mark them as investor specials and just sell them for enough to cover your costs, whatever you know that commission is and your carry costs.

That's one option. The other option is you can find some wholesalers in your area. Uh, maybe visit a real estate investor club meeting. Probably have more than one in the Baltimore market, but go there with some information. You don't need to tell them what you paid for it, but just ask them if they'd be willing to take them off your hands as a wholesaler and sell them to the investors that they know because they will have a li...