Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

I started my business by using banks, savings, credit cards, lines of credit, creative techniques with sellers (like land contracts or lease options), and partners. But, once I was self-employed, I was concerned that it was going to be harder to get loans to purchase properties.

They’re often called recession-proof: steady investments that are inexpensive and easy to maintain with consistent profit margins. Not to mention, they’re an area of real estate that seems largely unaffected–if not helped–by current rough market conditions.

When you start out wholesaling houses, one of the first things you want to do is build a list of potential buyers. Don’t make the mistake many beginners make by waiting until you have a house under contract. If you do, you put yourself under pressure. Scrambling to find a buyer could put your other profitable activities on hold.

As I wrote in June 2007, (see Long-Term Outlook for Investing in Mobile Home Parks) the worst that could happen for mobile home parks occurred long before the collapse of the housing markets or the onset of recession.

Short sale flips (the process of shorting a property thenreselling it for a cash profit in a simultaneous closing) have been taking heat lately from title companies and real estate brokers.

The #1 question my students are asked by distressed homeowners is: How does a short sale affect my credit score? Let’s define what a credit score is first before we embark on how a short sale affects your score.

For the past two years economic stories resound with metaphors more often heard in weather reports than the financial press.

Getting lenders to say “Yes!” to your short sales require that you know how a lender approves a short sale offer.

Getting lenders to say “Yes!” to your short sales require that you know how a lender approves a short sale offer.

When investing in real estate, you want to focus your efforts on motivated sellers. This is true especially when you are just starting out. Dealing with motivated sellers makes the process go even faster, which means cash in your pocket sooner rather than later.

The biggest mistake you can make in this time of this “late recession” (in some areas already “post-recession”) is to assume that all of the sellers out there are over-leveraged and that the ONLY way to make money is to work short sales. That is a HUGE mistake!

As we covered in How to Get Paid to Buy a Great Deal (Part 1), there are a lot of opportunities in this current economy in addition to working with foreclosure deals.

For the last several years, I have been saying that the foreclosure epidemic would be a good thing for real estate investors. Real estate investors have such a great opportunity when foreclosure rates go up.

The real estate short sale is a phenomenon that has taken the real estate industry by storm in recent years. Not to be confused with selling a publicly traded stock “short,” a real estate short sale involves a mortgage company accepting less than their full payoff in order to get rid of their defaulted loan prior to having to foreclose on the property.

I’ll cut right to the chase, the biggest mistake short sale investors make is the way they determine the amount of the short sale offer they make to the lender.

Three years ago you would not have been able to find a single article in any newspaper or online publication about short sales. Today, there is an average of 5-10 new pieces–each and every day. Over the course of a year, that translates to nearly 3,000 different articles on short sales published every 12 months.

I hear from a lot of people that you just can’t do zero down investing in real estate. Realtors will tell you that you have to have a down payment, so you can get a mortgage. Mortgage brokers tell you the same thing. Even some real estate investors who have had their opinions clouded by naysayers will say that zero down investing deals just aren’t out there.

If the vacating tenant has been a long-term tenant, and you had a good relationship, simply ask him. I bet over the years he’s followed the neighborhood and knows from friends and fellow renters. He can tell you if he thinks you should charge more or less. Feedback from your vacating residents should be ONE piece of the info you assemble to determine.

Real estate markets across the world are suffering right now. Sellers can’t sell their homes, and buyers can’t get mortgages. For real estate agents, it’s a lot harder to earn a living now. Gone are the days of listing a home and expecting it to sell; it’s time to get creative to not just survive, but actually thrive in this economy.

In real estate, there is a saying that you don’t make your money when you sell, you make your money when you buy. The name of the game is finding amazing deals and then either keeping them for the long term or turning around and flipping for a handsome profit.

Let’s face it, the reason most investors don’t have any private lenders is fear. It’s as basic as that. It’s a fear of the unknown.

Yes, there is, in fact, a secret to short sales. And once you learn it, you will open up your finances to an entirely new tax bracket. As you have recently seen, short sales have become an integral part of the real estate industry as a whole. Some 20 Million homeowners are upside down in their homes right now, that’s 1 in 5 borrowers.

Phil Pustejovsky has been leading everyday people to financial freedom for nearly a decade through the power of real estate. He is a best-selling author, legendary investor, national speaker, and highly-sought-after mentor and real estate coach.

As you start doing more and more real estate deals, as an investor (unless you have unlimited resources–the consummate deep pockets), sooner or later you will reach the limits of what you can do on your own.

I’d like to compare hard money to private money, which are in ways similar, in ways different, but definitely confused with one another when investors discuss them.