Agents offer wheels, deals, meals to bargain-hungry buyers
By Glenn Roberts Jr., Wednesday, March 12, 2008. Inman News”

The shuttle bus tours typically draw about 10-12 folks, he said, and many of the interested buyers are first-time buyers from outside of the area who had previously been priced out of the market. He launched the tours at the end of December.

While many of the real estate brokerage-led home tours are free, a pair of real estate investors in Michigan are charging passengers for guided tours of foreclosed properties.
Rodney Townsend and Ralph Claxton, real estate investors and co-founders of Foreclosure Bus Tours, offer full-day tours for $97 that includes real estate investment tips.

Townsend said that they show their own properties during the tours, and have also worked with real estate agents and other investors to open up their properties to the tours, which they are offering in other parts of the country.
Investor bus tours are scheduled in Phoenix, Ft. Lauderdale and Boston, he said.”

by Broderick Perkins
February 27, 2008 Realtytimes.com

“The special focus on marketing foreclosures is not surprising, especially in California where the number of foreclosures exceeded the number of sales in January, according to foreclosure figures from ForeclosureRadar.com and sales numbers from DataQuick Information Services.

Other bus tours are driving into Florida, Las Vegas and other hard hit housing markets that have been flooded with foreclosures.

Driving a bargain on a bus isn’t new, but using the strategy as a vehicle to move foreclosures is part of a current trend in special marketing designed to help turn the housing market around.”

The Grand Rapids Press
by Cami Reister
Saturday February 23, 2008
Many in other areas have turned to foreclosure bus tours as a marketing tool, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada and Tennessee.
Two investors from the Detroit area started ForeclosureBusTours.com about eight months ago as a way to market their own properties.
When Goetzka heard of the concept, he launched WestMichiganForeclosureTour.com, what appears to be the first one in West Michigan.”

Nicole Hamilton
July, 2007 -Blog Entry

Today I had the opportunity to serve as the Credit Expert for ForeclosureBusTours.com, which is a real estate venture here in Michigan run by of a couple of really great guys - Ralph Claxton and Rodney Townsend. I initially met each of them through our mutual real estate mentor, Mark Ijlal.

Ralph and Rodney are both active real estate investors that are making a killing in the current Michigan real estate foreclosure market. Maybe you remember seeing them on WDIV Channel 4 news a little while ago?
Well anyway, they specialize in buying and selling residential foreclosure homes in the Detroit metro area.
They buy some homes directly from distressed homeowners that are facing foreclosure through a process called a “short sale,” and other homes they buy directly from banks after the foreclosure process is completed, which are more commonly known as “REO’s” (real estate owned by the bank).

Once they buy the homes, they rehab them - quickly and nicely, and then sell them to homeowners or to other real estate investors.
Now I dabble a little bit in real estate myself, but I only put a drop in the bucket compared to what these guys are doing!

To keep pace with the demands of their business and all the people wanting to know how they do what they do, they formulated ForeclosureBusTours.com. And just as the name implies, they literally take groups of people on a bus tour of Detroit metro area foreclosures.
Lots of valuable real estate information was given on the tour today. They talked about how to buy and sell foreclosures, issues related to rehabbing a home, how to make offers and crunch the numbers, and some of the closely guarded techniques they use in their own businesses.

They even had one of the best and most thorough property inspectors I’ve ever come across, John McAuliffe of Quality Home Inspection, give some crucial inspection pointers while walking through one of the foreclosures featured on the tour.
And then, of course they had “yours truly,” do a little spill about personal credit and business credit. And I was absolutely delighted to do it. I really enjoyed mingling with the group of about 20+ and answering their questions about personal credit, business credit, and how both impacts their real estate investing business.

I might have been there today in a professional capacity to share a little of my knowledge about credit with their group, but I had a really good time.
For those of you who were on the tour today that may be reading this… again, it was a pleasure meeting you.
And remember, if you need help with improving your personal credit, building business credit to fuel your real estate investing, or improving the credit of potential home buyers for your properties, I’d be more than happy to help.

To get a glimpse of what went on today, check out the video below. Ralph is the one you see talking and Rodney is the narrating camera-man extraordinaire!”
www.JustaskNicole.com