Long post... Going back to your original post on this thread... To source financing, a title company, construction people, etc., click the "Links" button toward the top of this page. Once there, on the right side of that page under "Vendors" is a list of people/companies that can take care of those things. I know you don't know me, but for what it's worth, I can personally vouch for most people on that list; Emerald Dolphin, Hudgins Contractors, Don McCartney, Suzette Teague, YourTexasHomeLender.com, Straightline Foundation Repair, Meyer & Colegrove, Patrick Norwood. I have yet to meet or get to work with the other ones, but I do hear great things about them, and you can't get listed there by just paying the club to advertise you. These are people Robin, Cindy, Greg, and other active members have used on their projects. They are on that list because of first hand experience with their work. So that'd be a good place to start.
I love the "driving for dollars" approach, taking different routes each day. I too have found a number of properties that way. I always tend to have difficulty reaching the owners though. But, as long as the property is still sitting there vacant, I gotta keep at it.
That's really what you have to do in all aspects of this industry; keep at it. Really, in most of life's endeavors. You're going to find attempts at discouragement everywhere. Sometimes it may be in the form of constructive criticism, which can be healthy to give some thought to. (Something I need to work on myself.) As the proverb goes, "A wise person will listen and take in more knowledge." But if you have people telling you you're not going to make it doing this, or saying things to make you not even try... People who have yet to achieve their own goals sometimes cope by trying to keep others down too. You gotta just ignore them. Pray for them, but ignore them.
I don't know what specific situation of 'discouragement instead of help' you were referring to. I've always had good experiences here, but at any rate, I'm sorry you ran into those kind of people.
Mineral rights... I take it you mean the seller wants to retain mineral rights. Don't make an issue out of it with the buyer. Just act like it is normal for the seller to keep them. If a buyer takes issue and wants the mineral rights to convey, then you're going to want to find out why and also why the seller wants to keep them. In Texas, the owner of a mineral interest holds a superior right to enter upon the surface of the property and to extract their minerals. If this is a property that has some land with it, this could come into play.
Even if it is just a city lot, sometimes mineral lease signing bonuses can be significant. I got about $9,000 for a three year lease on a 1/3 acre lot in Arlington with an option to renew for another two years with another $9k payment. If they started producing, it probably wouldn't be over $100 a month in royalties though. So if there is a pending lease or lease renewal, maybe a seller would be willing to convey mineral rights provided they retained right to receive that signing payment.
This is a really popular occurrence in this area now days. TREC has a form for it. Here's a link:
https://www.trec.state.tx.us/pdf/contracts/44-2.pdf
Whatever contract you use, you must make sure the mineral rights agreement is in writing in the purchase contract itself. According to the Texas Business & Commerce Code sections 26.01 and 26.02(b) all other agreements about mineral rights, oral or written (unless part of another contract signed by both parties), will be superseded by a signed purchase contract.
Then you have the Doctrine of Merger, which basically says that after closing, the purchase contract doesn't matter and most agreements made therein are unenforceable because they will be superseded by the deed. So you have to make sure mineral rights are retained in the deed also. The exception to this is any survivable clauses in the purchase contract. So at the end of the mineral rights agreement, have the words, “This provision shall survive the closing," just in case someone in the chain of paperwork gets it wrong in the deed.
