BREAKING NEWS… Recession can’t stop entrepreneurial spirit.

This article was published about me on the front page of my local paper Courierpost.com. I wanted to share it with all of you. Hope it inspires you!! If I can do this so can you!

Recession can’t stop entrepreneurial spirit
12:39 AM, Apr. 3, 2011 |

In a home market buffeted by foreclosures, Carol Stinson has found a way to turn misery into money.

She is a wholesaler, an entrepreneur who finds distressed properties for investors at bargain prices.

“We are helping people who can’t bear the burden of trying to hang onto their homes any longer,” she says. “We deal with the banks and make the problem go away.”

In the past year, Stinson has begun buying houses herself, fixing up properties and selling them at below-market rates in order to generate a quick sale.

She was broke, raising seven children and in foreclosure herself in 2008 when she read “Be A Real Estate Millionaire,” a book about wholesaling, a system in which a third-party bird dogs real estate for buyers.

“I was inspired, excited, energized,” she says. “I found a way to make money and do something good for my family.”

Stinson deals in short sales, in which the bank agrees to accept less than the amount owed on the mortgage in order to get the property off the books. In the past two and a half years, the pert, 43-year-old redhead has wholesaled more than 50 bank-owned properties.

Stinson doesn’t expect the pipeline of homes to run dry any time soon. New Jersey has the nation’s largest shadow inventory, meaning the supply of foreclosed properties that banks release in strategic numbers to avoid flooding the market.

CoreLogic, which gathers property statistics, estimates that inventory will take 51 months to sell. The normal sell rate is five to six months, according to PNC economist Robert Dye.

“That is a tremendous inventory overhang,” Dye says. “And when those homes do sell, it will be at a discount of 30 to 35 percent, compared to homes that are not in foreclosure.”

Still, banks aren’t giving away houses, says Mike Eagan, who specializes in short sales at the RE/MAX office in Turnersville. In the past four years, he has handled more than 250 short sales, an average of one a week.

“My sellers are underwater and need someone to help them,” he explains. “My buyers will get a bargain but they won’t get a fire-sale price.”
The exception is homes that are damaged.

“Mold, kitchen stripped out, leaky roof,” Eagan says. “If it’s in horrible condition, the buyer can’t get a mortgage.”

Stinson’s stock in trade is seeing beyond the mess and identifying properties investors can buy for cash, rehab and flip. In the last year, she and a partner, real estate broker Lou Pinto of Collingswood, have purchased three properties of their own and are looking for more.

“We love termites and mold,” Stinson says.

“Cat pee, too,” Pinto adds. “They are the easiest fixes.”

There are only two renovation hurdles they won’t take a run at: unsound foundations and underground oil tanks.

Their most recent buy is a rancher built in the 1960s near Timber Lakes in Williamstown. The elderly owners had fallen deep into debt due to medical expenses.

“You have motivation to sell on everyone’s part,” Pinto says. “Motivation on the part of the bank and motivation on the part of the homeowner.”

The partners bought the house for $40,000. Stinson figures she can put on a roof, install a larger kitchen, replace the bathroom and turn a family room into a third bedroom for about $30,000.

She hopes to spark a quick sale by listing the property for $149,900, well below the anticipated appraisal price of $169,000.

“It’s about buying low and selling low,” she says. “Buyers want a cushion so they won’t go underwater if the market drops.”

The previous owners are now in a one-bedroom apartment in an assisted-living community. Stinson boxed up their family photos and the kids’ high school diplomas and delivered them to the couple’s new home.

“They are not well and packing was difficult for them,” she says. “I couldn’t bear to throw away these things that might have sentimental meaning to them.”

To renovate the house, she tapped into tradespeople who work with her husband, a contractor. She also sent her two oldest sons to school, one to train as an electrician, the other to learn HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning.)

“This is our new family business,” she says.

For more than 20 years, Stinson was a homemaker. Often, the family lived paycheck to paycheck.

Then the bottom fell out of the housing market. Stinson’s husband had little work. They soon fell behind on the payments on the house in Williamstown they share with seven children, who range in age from 24 to 4.

The five oldest are the Stinsons’ children; the two youngest are their grandchildren.

Stinson had no formal training in real estate. What she did have was time on her hands and the willingness to devote long hours to identifying properties for investors who were busy rehabbing houses or making money in small businesses to funnel into real estate.

She scoured Craig’s list looking for leads. She joined an investment club. She responded to “We Buy Homes” flyers posted on telephone poles.

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