Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

I set up all of my single family home rentals on a lease option to purchase basis. Columbus, Ohio is a great market, so typically, a three-day ad is all I need to rent a place. I’ll receive an average of 35 to 40 calls per day while the ad is running. I make it a point to call back each and every person responding to an ad, even if I’ve already rented the advertised home.

I wanted to let you know about my first deal. It started when I spotted an ad in the Sunday paper with the words “Land Contract.” I called the owner and asked if he would do a lease option rather than the land contract, and he said: “Yes.” So I made an appointment to look at the property.

My partner Mark and I (I call him legs, he’s the young one and does all the running around) have been very active this past year. On January 1st, 1998 we had one three-unit apartment house and two tenants.

I have completed my first creative real estate investment, and I am very grateful to all of you as I have learned so much from the site. Here is the outline of the deal…

I called on an ad in the “for rent” section and believed to have a on the other end. I went to see the house, which was located in a nice area. The home was a three-bedroom/one-bathroom that need some updating. The owner had another home and was paying two mortgages because this home used to be his grandmother’s, but she was moving in with one of her sons.

Several months ago, I was talking to an owner facing a foreclosure on his home that had considerable equity. He was hoping to refinance and get cash out. However, he was self-employed and could not substantiate any income, so refinance was just not possible.

One year ago, my wife and I were living paycheck to paycheck. I was working a job I didn’t want to be at while she was attending college. On January 10, 1998 I quit my job (family business) out of frustration. Having no job and no income gave me the motivation I needed to dive into real estate investing.

It all started about a year and a half ago when I decided it was time to own my own home. I did not want to pay a lot. I am a painter by trade and know many people in the other trades.

I went to a local real estate auction where about 30 mobile homes were being auctioned off. Before the auction, I previewed 27 of the 30 mobiles. Some were dogs, but many were very nice. This was an absolute auction.

I read JP Vaughan’s How-To Article, several times to really understand what she was saying.

On Christmas Eve, I did my first lease option deal on a beautiful single family that I will be living in myself. I gave them contract, and they signed it, no problem. They were actually happy that I saved them the attorneys’ fees! The deal worked out like this:

January 31, 1999 – I called a manager of a local mobile home park to see if a certain mobile home could stay in the park. I had talked to the owner and he said, “Sure, it can stay.” I asked him if he knew of any others that might be for sale. He said the park had one for sale for $500.

In less than three years, we have gone from nothing to owning 26 mobile homes that are owner financed and a mobile home park with another 25 units. We have done all of this using less than $2500 of our own money. The rest was OPM–other people’s money. We also did this part time because I am a full-time paramedic, and my wife works full time for the state of Alabama.

First I would like to thank everyone who shares their secrets and ideas on this incredible site. I have found a wealth of info almost every day.

I received a call one afternoon from a woman named Leanne. She was married with three grown children. She wanted to sell their house, so I went through the process of screening the call and getting the relevant information about the house, the mortgage balances, and what they wanted. It was a nice house, 3/1, 1300 sf, basement, on 2.5 acres, no repairs needed, just outside a town called Spencer, Indiana.

Just had to send another “thank you” for all the assistance I’ve gotten from this site. I have a purchase contract and a sell contract signed and escrow was opened today on another deal.

As many of you already know, I started my real estate investing venture on June 21, 1998. At that time I had not done one deal. I was going through a very difficult time in my life and went for broke. I quit my job, I had no money, and I had bad (but improving) credit. I had my bills covered for one month.

I have always wanted to invest in real estate ever since I had to sell my New Hampshire home during a divorce and made $51,000.

I can’t believe the deal that fell into my lap a couple of months back. I was helping my parents sell their home “for sale by owner.” At the open house, an interested buyer said he was interested in the larger home, but they needed to sell their house first.

Susan and I recently attendedBig Profits wtih Lease Options Workshop. I thought you might like to have an update on what we’ve done in the few months since these workshops.

This is a deal that many of you here on Creative Real Estate Online helped me with, so I wanted to submit it as a success story. This deal actually took about two weeks to put together. It started when I called an ad for a house for rent in our local paper.

It’s been a while since I have visited the site, and it looks great…I have been busy working my full-time (and then some) job while always hunting for good real estate investments here in the Houston area.

Thanks to Lonnie Scruggs, Ernest Tew, Bill Bronchick, Terry Vaughan, and lots of others for an education I couldn’t have bought in school. I’ve been using ideas from all of you for several deals.

While fellow CRE Onliner, John Holt, and I have graduated from college, we thought this title was appropriate since we both went to the same college, graduated at the same time, and even roamed the halls of the same science building. However, we never met until CRE Online and a mobile home brought us together.

In January 1997, I found myself on the streets without a job and very disillusioned with the prospect of going back to work in corporate America.