When I started in real estate, I thought there was only one way to do real estate: Borrow money, buy property, put my name on the title, rent it, put up with tenants, have the tenants pay off the costs, and make money over time. With luck, I would make money every month.
Then I learned how to flip property, fix it up and sell it, or lease option it. I also learned that I did not have to use my own money or credit to buy homes.
Most people, including myself sometimes, have no hands-on experience in the subject matter about which they are giving advice. You should seek advice only from experts.
Even my mother would say, “Robert, this no-money-down stuff, I don’t buy it; I don’t believe it can be true.” Now, every time I go to my mother’s house for dinner, she says, “Robert, I’ve seen you on TV and [in] newspapers and books.
Why do you keep telling people you can buy property without using your own money or credit? Stop it!” She still will not believe me. She’s an excellent expert at being a mom. However, she hasn’t done any real estate investing.
Yet, for the last 200 properties that I have bought, sold, and made money with, I have not used one penny of my own money or one point of my own credit. That is true. You are going to learn ways to do that, too.
The concepts I present here work for everything: houses, duplexes, land, commercial buildings, apartment buildings, trailer parks, whatever you are interested in. Small properties, big ones, cheap ones, and expensive ones.
There is a big difference between a $1 million property and a $100,000 property, but the process and paperwork for buying and selling them is exactly the same.
As a full-time real estate investor, I have bought or sold about 500 properties in the last five or six years. At one time, I had more than 300 tenants whom I managed for years, and I still manage some. I constantly buy, flip, lease-option, and manage properties.
I decided that working at a job for 50 years and waiting for retirement in a nice place was not for me. I therefore recently purchased some nice places in South Beach, Florida, where a lot of people vacation.
People are flipping expensive properties there. I also have some real estate deals in Costa Rica and in Latin America, where I like to travel. Once you learn how to do this, you can go anywhere.
My students have demonstrated that the concepts in this book work in the two most expensive real estate markets in the world: San Francisco and Manhattan.
They also work in your town. If they do not work exactly where you are, just go 35 minutes up the road.
