I should have written this a long time ago. I have been reading the CRE Online website for a couple years or so. There are several areas of real estate investing I am going to work on, and all of them I learned about from this site.
I was at a point where I didn’t have the money, but I could FIND good real estate deals. I wasn’t comfortable with the RISK I would be taking, since I am already self-employed and could not afford to make a financial mistake.
After reading the articles and success stories here, I convinced myself that if I looked around, I could find a NO-RISK way of getting my first creative deal going.
Here is what happened: I talked to a friend of mine one day, and he just so happened to mention investing in real estate, that he had the money, and he was interested in buying/fixing/reselling some property, but he couldn’t find anything.
I explained to him, I had the same problem, but in reverse. I could FIND property to buy/fix/resell, but I didn’t have the money. Right then and there, we established a handshake partnership. If I find a property he buys, and fixes/resells it, we would split the profit. Turned out to be the deal I was looking for: No risk to me, and I can still get into real estate investing.
To make this long story a little shorter, I found TWO houses that were being auctioned together, and the owner HAD to sell. We were able to buy for less than $65K for both of them, and after fixing them up, we sold them for a tad over $65K each.
The repairs and TIME to repair them was a little more than we thought it would be, but in the end, he cut me a check for $7,000 for my part of the partnership.
Considering that I put in probably 3-5 hours (at most) for looking around and finding this property, that works out to about $1,400-$2,300 an hour. I don’t know anyone making that kind of money.
I credit CRE Online for motivating me to be “creative” in my outlook at how I could get in this business. Thanks, CRE Online, I hope this success story motivates someone else to GET THEIR FIRST DEAL GOING NOW!