Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

This story has been a while in coming, so forgive me if I tend to be a tad bit wordy. Yes, the title wasn’t just a headline to get you to read this story. Indeed, I am totally physically blind. No, the blind are not magic people. We don’t hear better than others, have better senses of smell, or anything else the media would have you to believe. We live the same lives you live–just in the dark.

I would like to share this success story because it has been six years in the making! I bought the Ron LeGrand “Wholesale/Retail” course in 2001. Prior to that I had done some “research” into flipping houses.

In May 2006, I learned of a property for sale by friends of the family, and I asked what they were looking for. When they told me the price, $180,000, I said I would buy it without looking at it. Since I was familiar with the area, I knew this was a huge deal.

“Low income” doesn’t mean “low profit…”My wife and I got into the real estate investing business with the intention of doing two things: 1.) We want to retire early and see the world, and 2.) We want to teach our 11-year-old son from an early age the value of investing wisely while working hard to achieve his goals.

I have been investing for about 30 years, so I have lots of stories about making money on rehabs. This was an interesting one. It was a four-plex in a good location, but had been owned by a law firm. They had bought it for a tax shelter, but no one wanted to deal with repairs, managing it, or showing vacancies.

When I started four years ago, I got a lot of inspiration from the Success Stories on your site. People need to know that it can be done–even in this type of market. I just closed another wholesale deal which was not as spectacular as my previous Success Story, but I made $7,000 in 33 days with a $10 deposit.

In my state, foreclosures are advertised in the “Legal Notices” section of the local newspaper, and they include the amount owed on the property.

I send out several postcards every month. And in Texas, November and December always seem to be the hardest months to buy foreclosure sales because the holidays and work weeks are so short.

For those of you that think making this kind of profit isn’t possible in your market or that you are too inexperienced–think again!

I hope my little taste of success will help other people get going on their real estate investing career. I was like most of the CRE Online visitors. I slaved over the >articles, success stories, and message boards over and over until I practically memorized them. I took notes and typed up pages of tips, strategies, other wisdom from the pros on the site.

We invested $300 into signs that say “I Buy Ugly Houses” with our phone number. The very first call we got was from a guy with an abandoned house on a street we’d driven down just the week before. We couldn’t figure out how we could have missed the house because we drive around every Sunday looking for vacant properties in hopes of finding the owners.

I have an awesome success story here in San Diego. I have submitted four success stories, but this one is probably the most gratifying.

“You can’t make money having someone else do your work!”

I’m thirty-six years old and bought my first mobile home park two years ago. It is eight acres with thirteen mobile homes and a mini-storage. I told the owner I would give her the full asking price of $200,000. I knew that would get her interest. After checking with the local banks, finding out their terms and the fact that they didn’t want to loan that much money for a small park, I asked her if she would consider owner financing.I’m thirty-six years old and bought my first mobile home park two years ago. It is eight acres with thirteen mobile homes and a mini-storage. I told the owner I would give her the full asking price of $200,000. I knew that would get her interest. After checking with the local banks, finding out their terms and the fact that they didn’t want to loan that much money for a small park, I asked her if she would consider owner financing.

This is my latest success story. I hope it motivates you. This story will be unbelievable to some, unlikely to others, and “I wish I found that one” to those who know it can happen.

Anyone can do this with just a little “want.” I am a full-time real estate investor. In all honesty, against what everyone told me NOT to do I did anyway. And this is where i am now.

Let me start by saying that I paid $3,400 for a “class” in real estate investing that turned out to be nothing more than a 30-minute per week phone call covering the very basics. Thankfully, the trainer mentioned several websites for self-study. CRE Online has been worth well MORE than my initial costs. Thank you for your complete guidance.

I’ve been reading everyone else’s success stories for a long time; I just had to share mine. First, my local agent with whom I have dealt frequently called me about a motivated seller from out of town.

I had a seller call on one of my signs in San Diego. The house was in a “not so great area.” I decided to set up a three-year lease option for market rent and a $30,000 discount in price.

I met with a woman in Fort Smith, AR who wanted to move back home (somewhere in Indiana), and she was very ready to leave. Her time frame to stay in the house was about a week. When I met with her, she showed me the property. It was a fairly small home with some very nice landscaping in the front yard, some rose bushes and other flowers, but inside was a different story. The floor needed replaced, the walls were studs and sheet rock, the counters all needed replaced, and it smelled foul.

In October, I bought a “fixer-upper.” I paid $22,000 cash. I bought it from an executrix (female executor) who had never bought or sold real estate before. I sold it last week for $42,000. I owner financed it with $5,000 down, balance at 7% interest, amortized over seven years, balloon in five years. I’ll collect $558 per month.

Well, here goes! My first trial at real estate investing was a huge undertaking. My partner and I bought a gutted row house that was about 2,000 sq ft. After six months and almost every weekend, we had finally finished it. We paid $55,000 for the property and had about $80,000 in repairs for a total of $135,000 in the house.

My two partners and I raised $60,000 from a line of credit on one of the partners’ homes back in 1998. In 1999, at the age of 25, we bought our first apartment building in Winnipeg, Manitoba with 27 units in almost new condition. A year later, we took our cash flow and invested in an 11-unit foreclosure. (The first time we ever paid above asking!)

This is for all of you lurking on this site. This is a “get off the couch” (GOTC) story for you all. Success Stories like this one got me off the couch, and I hope my story will help you.

I love to talk about real estate. I always say, “If I don’t talk about it, how will anyone know what I do?” If the person you are talking to isn’t selling right now or doesn’t know someone that is selling, they eventually will. I want my name to be the one they remember, so I can get that all important “personal reference.”