Last month, on the blog over at RalphRoberts.com, I wrote:

“Dontwanner”… a property that the owners don’t want so much that they’re willing to do anything to get rid of it, including offering it for sale at a deep discount. Think of a dontwanner as a “Your Trash Is My Cash” opportunity. As I tell my readers, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

Now, thanks to my good friends at RealtyTimes.com, I’ve been given the chance to share more “Dontwanner” wisdom. From yesterday’s online version of RealtyTimes.com:

Recycling Trash into Cash with Dontwanners
By Ralph R. Roberts, CRS, GRI

Dontwanner (don’t want her) is a term I often use to describe distressed properties — houses and other real estate that the owners don’t want so much that they’re willing to do anything to get rid of it, including deeply discounting it. Real estate investors can score big profits on dontwanners by recycling what the owners consider burdensome trash into cash.

Every neighborhood has its share of these trash-into-cash opportunities, but finding them can be a bit challenging, especially if you don’t know where to hunt for these hidden treasures. In this article, I show you how to spot the dontwanners in your neighborhood.

Cashing in on the Four D’s

When treasure hunting for distressed properties, remember that either the property or the owner can be distressed. Usually it’s both, but some of the best opportunities can be discovered by looking for distressed owners. Follow the four D’s:

• Death
• Divorce
• Desperation (resulting from a job loss or other financial setback)
• Drunkenness

To read the rest of this article, please click here.

Since the National Association of REALTORS® named the week of September 10-16, Realtor Safety Week, I thought I would take the time to encourage my fellow Realtors to implement basic safety measures, especially when they’re most vulnerable — when they’re heading out of the office to show a house.

From my recent article on REALTOR Safety on RealtyTimes.com:

Real Estate Self Defense: Protecting Yourself in the Field
by Ralph Roberts

Headlines across the country prove that a career in real estate can be hazardous to your health. A tragic story is the most recent wake-up call to agents to protect ourselves in the field.

Agents are even more vulnerable to random acts of violence than any resident who happens to live alone. Residents can lock their doors to potential intruders, and they usually have a phone in their house or apartment to call for help. Neighbors are often on the lookout for suspicious activity.

Agents, on the other hand, often drive strangers around for hours looking at homes. By the nature of our business, we willing enter homes to show those strangers around the premises. In an empty house with nobody else within earshot, a violent criminal has almost complete freedom to act on any disturbing impulse that his mind can imagine.

All the police can do is show up after the crime has been committed and investigate, and for the victim, it can be too late.

Click here to read the rest of my article on REALTOR safety, which includes 10 tips for staying safe.

My co-author, Joe Kraynak, recently received the following message from our Project Editor at John Wiley & Sons:

Hooray! You did an amazing job; thanks very much for your hard work. Now that all the files are cleaned and ready for the proofreader, you and Ralph are now officially done with the editorial process. I just want to tell you that it has been an absolute pleasure to work with you. [sic: We] thoroughly enjoyed working on the book, and we’re confident that it will be a big hit! You and Ralph should be tremendously proud of your work.

Flipping Houses For Dummies (ISBN: 0470043458) will be published this November!

In related news, Wiley has agreed to publish another book by Joe and myself, but due to confidentiality rules, I’m barred from talking about it for at least three or four more months. Trust me though, it’s going to be another best-seller!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, 100 percent of the manuscript for Flipping Houses For Dummies has been turned over to our publisher, John Wiley & Sons. Now, thanks to David Hobson, our book’s marketing coordinator at Wiley, we’ve been given a sneak peak at the latest version of what the front cover will look like:

To see a larger version of the cover, click on the image above.

Last week, after many months of hard work and collaboration, my co-author, Joe Kraynak, and I turned over to our publisher the final chapters and elements for our forthcoming book, Flipping Houses For Dummies. Here’s a picture of me working on one of the final chapters (this was taken on a plane ride back to Michigan from a speaking engagement I had out in California):

According to our editors, Flipping Houses For Dummies should be available in bookstores nationwide (and internationally, too) in late-November or early-December.