Presented by Lorenzo Myer, Real Estate Investor,Entrepreneur, and Consultant

Four Key Issues You Must Research Before Choosing Your Next Investment Home
by Chris Le Roy


In the investment property industry, it is a common story shared about the new property investor that thought he had done the right research on his investment home only to find that the investment homes he had been comparing were not of similar specifications and the consequence was that he lost out financially in a big way. There are four key features that your research must assess before you take the step in purchasing your next investment home.
All investors can be prone to making poor decisions and suffering a financial loss, but you can avoid this by simply researching the investment markets and the properties you are interested in.

Not only do you need to take the time to research (research ....... and then research some more) every potential property, but you must ensure that your research is comparing 'apples with apples'.

Once you have decided on the appropriate estate for your investment, the most important facts to check are the building specifications of every potential investment property.

Key Issue 1: The most obvious issue that you need to be aware of are the size of the block of land and the square meter area of the investment house.
Advertising descriptions need to be read carefully and all aspects of the advertising carefully analysed and understood to minimize confusion. Let us take two real world examples and assess what they are offering:
HOUSE A: Bellevue Estate - $430,000 Location - Lot 21 Grandview Drive
This expertly designed 200 m2 home on a 720 m2 block in the Parklands Estate is an ideal family home. With an outstanding family room and an additional alfresco dining area off the family room, this will give your family lots of living space.
HOUSE B: Bellevue Estate - $400,000 Location - Lot 30 Petite Court
All hands up who want a massive 15 sq m outside dining area. If you live in the tropics, then who wants to live inside. This spacious 184 m2 home, situated on a 460 m2 block, is designed with this fantastic outside dining area, this is the Number One tropical home for the family.
Q1. Do These Descriptions Describe The Same Investment Home?
Q2. Will both of these Investment Homes Offer The Same Rate of Return?
Q3. Do they contain the same Features?
Well in reviewing the two descriptions you do find that they have common factors:
They are both in the same estate and have four-bedrooms, a main bedroom with ensuite and a double car garage, but these properties have very different rental appeal and financial growth potential.
When comparing these two properties and taking into consideration that one is a 200 sq m house on a 720 sq m block, priced at $430,000 and the other is a 184 sq m house on a 460 sq m block, priced at $400,000 - it's easy now to see the REAL value!
Yes, it may cost you $30,000 more but look at the extra land value and house space you're getting with HOUSE A compared to HOUSE B!
With this information on board, it is up to you to decide on your price point and investment philosophy.
I mentioned earlier there were Four Key Issues that you need to research when choosing an investment home and the First Key Issue was to look at the size of the property and also the size of the home.
Whilst there are many issues that need to be considered when choosing the right investment property, there are three other key issue points of comparison that should be considered and they are:

Key Issue 2: Assess the Nominal ceiling height - Be aware of the ceiling heights - do they vary. There is no industry standard and they can be from 2.5 to 2.7 meters. Building the ceiling heights .2 of a meter higher adds to the building costs and also to the aesthetic and practical appeal of your property to potential tenants.

Key Issue 3: Review the TURNKEY inclusions - this area varies a lot from building company to building company. Some of these are:
* Number of Power Points * Number of TV points * TV antenna * Number of Phone Points * Dishwasher * Venetian blinds to windows * Letter box * Remote control garage door * Automated irrigation systems * Security Screens on windows & external doors * Turf & landscaping * Fences * Sealed Driveways

Key Issue 4: Assess the Building & the Quality of the Fixtures and Fittings - The quality, guarantee and warranty vary greatly in today's market. It is essential to ask the question and ensure that you always receive documented evidence of the guarantees and warranties provided by the building company.
With a home investment property, 'added extras' will translate to a higher rental return but always ensure to calculate the value of the extras vs the rental return into your financial planning.

Never rush into buying your investment home. Always take the time to consider all the factors impacting on you potential investment and this will ensure that you will make the right decisions on what to buy and improve your potential return on investment!
About the Author
North Haven Homes is one of Australia's premiere builders of new homes and investment homes. To find out more about buying a new home or an investment home simply visit

Townsville New Home Builder or to see their current range of new home packages, simply visit Townsville House and Land Packages

Presented by Lorenzo Myers, Real Estate Investor, Entrepreneur

Owner Financing? Should You Sell Without a Down PaymentBy Andrea Carangelo

I have been asked many questions with regard to selling a home with Owner Financing.
One typical question I am asked often..."I am selling my home and offering Owner Financing, but having trouble finding a good candidate with a good down payment. Should I take a chance and allow a buyer to put no money down?"

I tell my potential clients that it is never a good idea to sell a home without a down payment from the buyer. You want the buyer to invest some of their own money into the home. If they have their own money involved, they are more likely to take care of the home, keep up with maintenance and pay the bills associated with home ownership.You want the potential buyer to show some commitment to the home.

How many times have you come across a rental property only to see it run down? That renter had no equity in the home. They would not be loosing any of their own money, therefore; might not care about the property or it's condition. What are they loosing? They can walk away and find another place to live, leaving you with the responsibility of upkeep and making any repairs needed.

If you intend on selling this mortgage note down the road, you want the buyer to have some equity in the home from the start. The more equity your buyer has, a contract buyer is more likely to purchase the note.

Example:A home is selling for $100,000 and the potential buyer can put down $20,000. This buyer is already starting with a 20% equity position. A contract buyer likes to see that.
You might suggest that a potential buyer secure a personal loan for the down payment. Can they receive a loan from a relative? Do they have a credit union or can they borrow against their 401 ? In some cases, you can receive a hardship withdrawal from a 401 for the down payment towards home purchase and not have to repay the sum withdrawn.
They then give you the money for the down payment. This option gives you the cash down payment, the buyer has the commitment to the home and a contract buyer will see equity.
Before making any final decisions, please make sure you have a good real estate lawyer to help you. Protect yourself.
AC Associates helping individuals across the United States reach their financial goals.
We offer a free program to Home Owners on how to sell their home by offering Owner Financing and provide the support necessary to become successful.
Purchaser of Owner Financed Mortgage Notes, Deeds of Trust, Lawsuit Settlements, Life Insurance, Lottery/Contest Winnings and Seller Financed Business Notes.
AC Associates has expanded to include Purchase, Refinance and Home Equity Loans on Residential and Commerical property to help people in obtaining the Amercian Dream of owning a Home or Business.
http://www.acassociatesusa.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrea_Carangelo

Presented by Lorenzo Myers, Real Estate Investor, Entrepreneur

Pros of Buying Foreclosures By Raynor James

The buying of foreclosures is a potentially profitable method of Real Estate investment. The pros of buying foreclosures in many cases outweigh the cons.

A foreclosure is the term that is used when a homeowner falls behind on his mortgage loan payments and the lender who holds the mortgage takes legal action to recover the property. Although there are other circumstances that might lead to a foreclosure, falling behind at least two full monthly payments is the most common reason. There are several laws that have been enacted in various states that protect the rights of the homeowner in the case of foreclosures.

However, if the homeowner is not able to make up the amount owed and foreclosure is initiated, he stands to lose any equity he might have in the home. The lender will eventually sell the property to another buyer in a public auction and the homeowner will be evicted. This is, perhaps, the biggest advantage of buying a foreclosure property. The home owner is facing a serious loss if he has any equity in the home at all. He is going to be very open to any type of deal that allows him to cut his losses as much as possible.

It stands to reason that the home owner is not going to be in a very sound financial position. If he were, he would not have fallen behind in his payments in the first place. This means that he is quite willing to negotiate some kind of deal that allows him to come out of the situation without losing everything. The potential buyer will most likely be getting the property at considerably under the market value. This creates an ideal situation for flipping the property.

It is usually better to deal with the homeowner directly whenever possible, but foreclosures can almost be bid on at the public auction. The bids are usually sealed bids and the winning bidder will be expected to come up with the bid price quickly. The homeowner might have to be actually evicted, but despite this, it is often worth making bids as the possibility of getting the property at a price way below market value is good. Another method of purchasing foreclosures is called REO. This stands for Real Estate Owned properties. These are properties that have not been sold at the auctions and are now owned by the lender.

Lenders will be willing to unload the properties at a very reasonable price. They are mostly interested in recovering the loan balance or as much of it as possible. They are in the business of lending money, not managing Real Estate and will want to unload the property as quickly as possible. The pros of buying foreclosures can be summed up by the fact that the properties can be purchased by an investor at a price below market value. This is the perfect situation for a buy low-sell high transaction.

View FSBO homes at FSBOAmerica.org. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Raynor_James

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Real Estate Investing - Control Your Mind, Control Your Success
By Eric Medemar

Most of us live in America, America is the only country on the planet that is followed by the word dream, there is no French dream, Chinese dream, just the good old American Dream yet somehow many of us stop dreaming by the time we get to our 20's or many times even earlier.

So why do we many of us fall so short on our potential?

From my experience, our greatest gift, is also our greatest detriment. Humans are the only living creatures that can think about the future. This is a gift in that it allows us to think about what is going to happen when we do something before we do it. The danger is that we often over think, and "what if" ourselves to death. Even worse than death, a vast majority of people simply become couch weights, passing their time here on earth making sure that our couches do not get up and run away.

If you stop for a moment and evaluate why it is that you have such a hard time with life, most people say that their life is stressful. Stress, Have you ever looked out your window and seen a stress? Probably not because stress is something that we create. Regardless of who or what we try to shift the blame to stress can only be caused by one person. Yes, that person is you.

Stress is simply just an outcome from the gift of future thinking. Stress comes when we try to see what is going to happen in the future, and we do not like what we "think" we will see. More often then not things do not end up nearly as badly as what our minds lead us to believe that it will. Simply put stress is nothing more than thought.

Practically every bad thing in our life comes from thought. If you want to feel bad think bad thoughts, if you want to feel good think good thoughts. Yet our schools, our parents, and our employers never teach us about the intricacies of our minds. We all go through life under this illusion of struggle. When in reality most struggle is created by our minds.

People fail to realize the power that their thoughts. Think for a moment about a white collar worker who has a "stressful job". My guess is their actual job is to show up at work, type something, talk into a phone, and write some stuff. I think you will agree that is what most white collar employees do in a physical sense. The part that everyone seems to struggle with is the inner game. The stress game. "Oh, I make a lot of money but my job is very stressful", I have heard it a million times. Ok, why the stress? Well its my boss, its a huge workload, etc, etc. The real reason that anything including real estate investing is stressful is because we think that our future happenings are not going to meet our satisfaction thereby creating this illusion of stress.

Newbie real estate investors could double and even quadruple there rate of success if they could learn to control their minds. The doubt, the worry, the fear, can all be banished if you recognize that ALL of those things are created solely by you, in your mind.

Eric Medemar is a real estate consultant/investor/realtor with over 35 properties. Eric is considered by many to be on of the countries leading experts in real estate wholesaling. His real estate wholesaling courses include: http://www.InvestorsLunch.com This low cost Introduction to real estate wholesaling has been called The Best Course For Under $30, that I have ever seen by newbie investors from across the U.S. Eric's second course is http://www.TheForeclosureCollege.com this one of a kind real estate course allows you to talk with Eric one-one, use his branded toll free number, plus his profit generating website. You can view Eric's Blog at http://www.TheMillionairesBlog.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Eric_Medemar http://EzineArticles.com/?Real-Estate-Investing---Control-Your-Mind,-Control-Your-Success&id=653536

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Triple Your Income in the Next 12 Months by Ron LeGrand We all have choices in life. We can spend our lives making a living or we can choose to make some real money. Unfortunately, most people choose to make a living. They don't take time and spend their lives walking over the dollars to get to the dimes. Most real estate investors are no different. Oh sure, you've decided to either increase your income on a part-time basis or you've quit your job and taken the full-time plunge. So what! All that means is you've decided to take control of your own financial future and make things happen. I'm proud of you if you have made that choice. But wait! Before you pat yourself on the back and your head swells up like a basketball, answer this question: Are you running your business with blinders on? I mean are you so narrowly focused on one little piece of the business that you're letting the real money fly right on by? Most people get started in real estate and learn one or two ways to make money. Then they spend ten or twenty years doing the same stupid things over and over. Oh sure, most make good money and others do exceptionally well. But what saddens me the most is, in all my years of training in this business, I've only seen a handful of sharp entrepreneurs really grasp the big picture. Most are so content making a good living that they miss the most profitable part of the business. Let's look at the big picture and what you can do to triple your income in the next twelve months. Four ways to profit There are four basic ways to profit as an investor. The way to make the most money the fastest is to use all four. Don't get so narrowly focused on one that you miss out on the real money. The BIG four: Wholesaling Retailing Lease Options Creating No-Qualifying Financing Of course, these ways have several offspring and variations, but these are the big four (assuming you're not holding for the long term). Even if you are, your exit strategy will fall into one of the big four unless you exchange or die. Wholesaling Wholesaling is finding bargains and quickly passing them on to bargain hunters. The house usually needs to be rehabbed and the buyer is willing to do the rehab. The buyer then retails to the consumer or lives in it. The plan is to find the bargain, tie it up with a purchase contract, then quickly sell. The profit comes from doing a simultaneous closing with the buyer who brings to the closing a few thousand dollars more than you agreed to pay the seller. Many of my students do nothing but wholesaling a few hours per week and earn more than their full time jobs. Retailing Retailing is getting these same houses fixed up and sold to owner/occupants through new financing. Most beginners look at investing through this window. Conventional wisdom says the way to make money is to either buy, fix, and resell or to keep and rent. If you've ever heard me speak, you know how I feel about conventional wisdom. It's almost always wrong. However, in this case I agree, there is real money in retailing and renting. But you see, here is something you'll never learn from conventional wisdom that can only come from a battle-scarred warrior who's learned the hard way. This one lesson alone could make the difference between success and failure. Do not do any repairs or become a long-term landlord your first year in business. How does that stack up to conventional wisdom? You've been told by all your real estate courses and investor buddies that the best thing to do is rush out and buy a rental property or a fixer-upper. You know what? Even though that's the last thing I want you to do, I'd still prefer it to doing nothing. However, before you do, let me briefly make my case and see if you agree with me. First, let's look at why you want to do either. Your reason for buying and selling a fixer-upper is to make some cash within the next few months. If that's your objective, why on earth would you want to begin with the hardest way? And believe me, it is. Retailing is a lot of work and takes time. A lot can go wrong, especially for a beginner. You have to buy the house, raise the money, hire a contractor, and then the hard part--find a qualified buyer. If you attempt this without the proper training, I assure you you'll get those battle scars I mentioned earlier. What's my problem with rental property in the first year? The answer is simple: you're not ready yet. The only real reason to own rental property is to build wealth. The real money is in the equity. But what's your rush? The first lesson I learned in my early days was: Take care of today's cash flow needs before worrying about getting rich. Let's get the bills paid and get out of debt before we start building an empire. "I'll create a cash flow I can live on in my early days as a landlord." If you think this is the case, take a current landlord to lunch and ask him/her where all the money goes from rentals. You won't like the answer. I suggest you wait. Learn the ropes before you take an ugly seminar. Give yourself a year to learn which components make a good "keeper." Find out how and where to buy properly. Get a feel for the business. If you don't, your education will come from all those investors who bought incorrectly and are trying to sell you their stupid mistakes. You'll learn the ropes all right. Unfortunately, one might be tightening around your neck. This lesson holds true whether you retail a house or rent it. Both are good reasons for getting in the business, but neither is a good place to start. Back to the big picture. I would like to see you in the business, not just the junker or rental side. You must expand your horizons; take off the blinders. There's more to life than cheap, ugly houses. Lease options Lease options deal with pretty houses in lovely neighborhoods in all price ranges. They have nothing to do with contractors, raising money, and taking big risks. They're fast, relatively easy, and produce just as much money, or more, as retailing houses. Most investors let these go by because junkers are all they can see. No-qualifying financing Another solution is creating no-qualifying financing. Between these two you can literally do many times the deals you're currently doing and probably not need to generate any more leads. Most of your income should come from pretty houses The big money is in the art of creating Multiple Offer Strategies, not fixing houses. That's why you're shooting yourself in the foot every time you let a potential pretty house deal go by because you never learned how to capitalize on it. Your job is to take information you get from the seller and create as many solutions as possible to solve his/her problems and create a profit center for you. When you do this, you'll be in the top 1/2% of those who qualify as "transaction engineers." In the process you'll eliminate your competition. In fact, you could easily make 250,000 per year from their leftovers. So, get out of the box and see yourself as an entrepreneur who truly understands the business, not just a rehabber or a landlord. I don't care how hard you work at the wholesale and retail business, you can never reach your full potential. You must expand your horizons to learn and practice the pretty side--the profitable side. You won't get rich with junkers No matter how good you get with junkers, you'll never make more than 30% of your potential. There are three reasons. The junker business revolves around low-price properties, while the pretty house business has no upper price cap. In fact, I prefer the higher prices. It just stands to reason when you deal in bigger dollars, more of them will be left over for you. When you get paid from wholesaling or retailing, you get one check and you're out. Not true for lease options and no-qualifying financing deals. They create multiple streams of income that keep coming in, whether you're still out there working or not. You do the job once and get paid over and over. There are more pretty houses than ugly ones. Obviously, the part of the market that provides the biggest supply of houses warrants the most attention. When you learn to capitalize on the big supply, not just the uglies, your income will skyrocket. Yes, I know it sounds like I have something against the junker business. But that's not true. I love to make something pretty from something ugly. I began and prospered in junkers and still work them to this day. But I grew up... Taking off the blinders Several years ago I discovered the rest of the story and took off my blinders. I'm only suggesting you do the same. It's just a marginal shift from what you may be doing now. If all you want is a good income and you're happy in your comfort zone, then please don't let me disturb you. I'll allow you to settle with whatever failure rate you want. It's your life, your family, and the income you're willing to accept. At least you have the freedom of running your own business and you're the boss, right? What the heck, you're making more than you did in your old job. When you get out of bed in the morning you're already at the office. No traffic hassles, no time clocks and no lay-offs. Look, you can convince yourself you're doing great. Maybe even your family and friends are fooled, but not this old war horse. I have too many students making too much money to accept anything less. If you're not growing, you're dying. Is it time to get to the next level and start treating this as the extremely profitable business it is? If you've been dealing in junkers for a while, the answer is yes. Become a transaction engineer now buy investing in my Cash Flow Home study System At: It may take a while to learn the business, but it's worth it. Ron LeGrand had to borrow money to attend his first real estate seminar twenty years ago when he was bankrupt and running a gas station. Today, he is recognized as the nation’s leading authority on buying and selling single-family homes for fast cash with no credit, little or no personal investment or risk. Ron has personally bought over 1500 houses and still invests in real estate. Author, trainer, lecturer, consultant and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Ron has earned a reputation as the best in his field. His one-day workshops are routinely standing-room-only and his Boot Camps continue to grow in popularity. Ron’s secret is simple: his programs work -- as evidenced by the thousands of successful real estate entrepreneurs all across North America who call him by the affectionate title, “The Guru”. Ron is literally creating millionaires all over North America. Learn More about Ron LeGrand at http://www.ronlegrand.com/ Real Estate Reading Room Home More Articles in Real Estate Investing More Articles by Ron LeGrand

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