Commercial Real Estate Investment Articles

Why the lease option is a better investment… especially in the beginning. I started my real estate investing career in 2005. I had moved out of state to join another investor and start my own real estate business. By 2009, I had partnered with some investors and bought a series of multi-family properties within a small radius of the downtown area of Raleigh North Carolina

One of the most pervasive challenges facing the residential real estate market is determining property values. When it comes to residential property, most end-use buyers think in the same terms as renters: Monthly housing expenditure. In other words the purchase price is most evaluated in terms of monthly payments for principle-interest-taxes-insurance (PITI), home owners’ association (HOA) dues, upkeep, etc. This is especially true when lending standards are lax and required down payments are low. With this in mind, it seems almost obvious that given a particular mortgage interest rate, housing prices should closely track their respective rental market–and until the housing bubble starting in 2001, they did.

The most important factor for real estate values is location, first and foremost. And historically, the #1 location that supports the highest property values is next to a large body of water, such as an ocean, lake, river, stream, or wetlands region.

Obviously, in order to make any real estate agreement come to life and actually close, you need a written purchase agreement. One thing I’ve learned over the years and after closing hundreds of deals is that there are ways to cut down the amount of offers you write and save yourself a lot of time. I used to just fire off written offers to motivated sellers without any type of verbal agreement or negotiation, and it was frustrating when most of them got rejected. Now I only write offers when my seller and I are pretty much on the same page with price (or close to it).

Population trends, job growth, and the access to capital are three of the primary catalysts for any type of boom or bust housing cycle. Money and jobs attract people. People, in turn, need a place to live.

In this short video, attorney and real estate investor, William Bronchick, explains the basics of using a land trust for your real estate investments.

The availability of affordable third-party mortgage capital is perhaps the most important factor determining whether a real estate market is booming, stagnating, or busting in any region nationwide.

One of the biggest reasons for failing to put a contract together with motivated sellers is that they’re not realistic on price. For one reason or another, they feel that their house is worth much more than it is. At the end of the day, you really can’t blame them. They are most likely uninformed and looking out for their own best interest–to get the most money possible.

Many real estate investors are now considering a self-directed Solo 401k plan for real estate investment purposes.

Did you know that Google scans the web every day and is the leading authority on basically everything? Put Google to work for you (for free) by having them scan the web to find any new listings or auctions in your area. They’ll even deliver the results straight to your inbox, automatically. You’ll never miss another listing.

It’s a competitive market, right now. So what do you do to make sure your offer gets seen–and accepted? (No, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the highest offer.)

Whenever you purchase, finance, refinance, or sell real estate, title insurance is required. The difference between a good, clean title insurance policy and an imperfect title policy may be the difference between a profitable investment and a disaster.

If I had the power to make schools teach one thing, it would be this: Trading time for money is the least effective way to earn income. JOB truly does stand for “Just Over Broke.”

In the summer of 2014, I went to look at a property in a nice neighborhood outside Raleigh, NC. It was a 3-bedroom, 2-bath ranch on a cul-de-sac conveniently located near shopping and highway access.

One of the absolute best ways to profit from buying, fixing, and flipping real estate is to buy an older home surrounded by larger and newer homes. This real estate valuation theory is “The Principle of Progression.” It’s defined as “a property of lesser value enhanced through proximity to higher value properties.”

Real estate investor and attorney, Bill Bronchick, dispels the myth that there are “no deals” in your market and shows you seven creative approaches for finding deals right now.

In recent years, interest rates, housing inventory, vacancy rates, and cap rates have fallen dramatically.

I’ve often thought of real estate investing as looking for buried treasure except that in this case, it’s treasure that everyone can see, if they only had the eyes for it.

Technology changes fast, and that’s a great thing for everyone involved with real estate.Web resources and mobile apps make it so much easier for real estate investors to connect with motivated sellers, operate more efficiently, and do more deals.

In real estate investing, “time is money.”

The most common question I get is: “How do I make cash right now in real estate? Oh, and by the way, I have no money to put down and my credit is horrible!”

Most real estate investing strategies are focused on forced appreciation to generate lump sums of cash (fix and flips, short sales, foreclosures), others focus on cash flow (mobile homes, low-end rentals, Class C apartment buildings). While building cash reserves and having cash flow are important, they will not lead to you building any significant wealth over time. Real wealth is only created through strategies that harness the power of compounding. Banks know this. But for real estate investors, the only strategy that can really put compounding to work is buying income property at the bottom of the real estate cycle, when it’s available below replacement cost, and selling at or near the peak of the cycle, while trading far above replacement cost. The real estate investors’ perk, the 1031 exchange, then allows your gains to be transferred from one market to another for the compounding to continue, unmolested by taxes. This is why real estate is so great! The key, though, is being familiar with the real estate market cycle. There are six stages of the cycle:

This video will reveal to you the alternative to transactional funding. It’s such a slick trick, you’ll be kicking yourself for not knowing this all these years. The forms and instructions are laid out in my Creative Financing course.

Buying, funding, flipping, and selling real estate is now easier and faster than ever before. Technology and “real time” data sources are available – at our fingertips – on our computers and “smart phones.” What may have taken months (in the past) to research a specific property may now be found within minutes.

Yellow letters can generate a high response rate because they get opened, and they get opened because they do not look like a normal marketing letter.