Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

After posting my first real estate success story: $60,500 Profit on a Short Sale Foreclosure, I started working on my first wholesale deal.

Hello, my name is Angel LaBell, and I am a 25-year-old real estate investor in Philadelphia. I love CRE Online, and thank you guys for giving me the information to begin a life of financial freedom. I went to my first CRE Online Convention in March 2002. I loved it, and learned so much to get started in real estate investing.

I have purchased several “nothing down” seminars and books, including Robert Allen’s, Carleton Sheets’ No Down Payment course, and two courses from Joe Kaiser, including The Mechanic’s Lien System. None of these worked in my county, Marin County, California.

After a three-month mentoring program with an experienced investor and asking many questions, I have gotten enough courage to find the following deal:

When it comes to real estate investing let me tell you that nobody is a bigger procrastinator than me. I first found Creative Real Estate Online in 1998 while doing a search for “creative real estate investing.

In June 2004 finally sick of the working class existence and an extended layoff in the construction industry. I wanted to find a way out of the rat race. After a lot of research, reading all the information from Lonnie Scruggs and Ernest Tew I could get my hands on, and along with hours of pouring over the Mobile Home Discussion Forum, I went for it.

Although I have many others to tell about, I’d like to tell you about my favorite success story. I found a property that had a county code enforcement lien on it, which was for initiating demolition proceedings. The lien was for a little over $1,000. I sent a letter to the owner only because I couldn’t find her phone number. She called me, and we met at the property.

Four years ago, I was renting a small, one-bedroom house for $250 per month. The owners informed me that they were seriously thinking about demolishing the houses and building two large rental cottages. I live in a resort area on the North Carolina coast and $250 was dirt cheap for a rental.

I’d like to share my first mobile home deal with you guys. I had started advertising for rental homes, not even thinking about mobile homes, when I got the first call from my advertising:

When I hit my forties, I figured my wife and I had better start building a retirement account. I figured I’d start with mobile homes because they are inexpensive and provide fast pay-off. I love the idea of someone else paying for my property, in effect giving it to me free of charge.

I had purchased a course on buying real estate “subject to.” I had it for three months before I decided to do something with it. After I stopped procrastinating and decided to take action, I was rejected twice before I found a deal.

Today, I went to the escrow office to pick up the check for my first flip. I got the property under contract for $100,000 and flipped it (double close) to my seller for $123,000. There were a lot moments where I worried a lot about not being able to close the deal.

We made our first real estate investment about six months ago. We bought a two-family foreclosure for $5,000. It was a mess: holes in the wall, broken windows, the gas lines running to the house had been cut–you name it. My husband put a few weeks’ work and about $6,000 in it. We now have a fully rented home for $425 per unit!

My name is Brad Hawley. I am a Specialist in the United States Army. As a soldier in the United States Army, I have not had a lot of free time lately, but I wanted to share my first no money down deal.

Thanks for all the hard work that goes into CRE Online. The info you provide has enabled me to change my life! I’ve been investing in real estate full time for nearly four years. I had always read about investors finding great deals on houses and selling to other investors for a quick profit (wholesale flipping), but I had never really searched out these opportunities.

I wanted to thank Creative Real Estate Online for being a extremely good source of information and motivation. We thoroughly enjoy reading through all the information here and learning from it. We finally made it and have our first success story to share.

I’ve been visiting CRE Online for about a year now, and I can’t tell you how motivating it is to me. Last year, we finally decided to take the plunge and buy our first real estate investment.

My minister at church gave a sermon about how we should do what we are good at and what has worked for us in the past. Duh. The light bulb went off and I realized that over the past 20 years, what few real estate investing deals I did always turned out good. So I decided to begin to look for possible rentals.

Thank you all here for giving me enough support to “get off the fence” and to get out there doing it. I’m just a young guy recently out of school busy playing the rat race. I got into the corporate world working 70 hours per week and traveling around the U.S. making someone else very rich. It didn’t take long to realize there has to be a better way.

Hello! I wanted to briefly share my first experience with you in an effort to inspire others, as I have been inspired by this wonderful website!

I have wanted to get into single family homes, but they just don’t have the bang for the buck that multi-units do–or so I thought. I sent out a first mailing of letters to people with a Notice of Default on May 21st and decided to drop in on a couple of the people. I found several people who might be interested, if I follow up over the next few weeks.

I just wanted to tell you about the deal that I got yesterday. A motivated seller has a house in great area in my community.

What a RUSH! After starting my investing career back in 1998 and acquiring 13 properties, which I still have, I was recently introduced to a real estate agent that lived in MY BOX! He understood almost everything that I wanted to do. Finally!

My wife, Deb (who has sold real estate for over 15 years), and I have had so many “light bulb” moments over that past six months reading CRE Online and www.RichDad.com that we just about can’t stand it. But we’ll try.

Over the past ten years, I had “successfully” built up an aviation facilities management business. After ten years of hard work, in February of 2001, my wife and I decided it was time to “start taking money off the table.” That is to say, after ten years of reinvesting in the business, it was time to take some money out and put it into other investments like real estate.