Richard Lehman, noted investment advisor, puts it this way: "Think about it, what better way to bail out debtors and clear out an excess housing inventory than through inflating the value of hard assets and at the same time diminishing the value of debt claims?" And all the government entitlement programs are keyed to the rate of inflation, so the politicians look like heroes.
There is of course another one of these investment strategies that should not be ignored. This one does not involve you putting money into the investment and may actually be a good idea for some. This is one that is called a REIT or real estate in Marbella. Estate Investment Trust. There are other similar ones, but this is the most common. These involve purely a paper trail and are backed by someone most of the time. This is where a loan is given to buy the property. In this case you will want to weigh how much profit you can make and still pay back the loan. This however may be the best option for some.
You may be wondering how you can start in this trade with a small budget. A lot of investors shun investing in real estate because they think it's too costly. That's especially true in real estate development. However, flipping is a different trade. You place properties under contract and then sell that contract to interested buyers. Since you won't actually buy the property, you won't need a huge capital to make investments in wholesaling.
3 Read 1 or 2 books that deal with personal development and real estate. Everyone's favorite in Chicago, if not the US, is Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. His book is a great eye opener and helps adjust one's thinking about wealth. For real estate, Keller Williams' The real estate company or service. Estate Millionaire, has interviews and bios of many investors throughout the country.
Stop thinking that as an agent you must discount your commission, or pay all the advertising costs for the client just to win the new business. These clients are not the ones you want. In most cases they are the hardest to deal with because their motivation is 'cheap'. Logical decisions are not part of their mindset and negotiations are therefore harder with these clients. More often than not the listing does not sell because the client benalus will not listen to the market trends and choices (they think they know better). Time does invariably take care of these unreasonable clients, with no sale resulting and a distressed property sale or lease later on. You can then move back into the picture to offer your special services.
Don't spread yourself too thin: I know that I am not the only one that has ever piled too much on to his/her plate. Over committing to too many deals at one time (on more than one occasion) has almost cost me my entire bank roll. Unless you have completed more than 15-20 transactions, it will be wise to complete one deal, get it cash-flowing, then move onto the next.
What prompted us to go out of our way to tell our friend about this was an email from Sugar Sync announcing a new feature. Now, you can access all of our data from an iPhone and send it to others via email from the phone! That's remarkable! This feature alone did not cause us to spread the word about Sugar Sync. But, the iPhone feature was the tipping point that prompted the urge to tell others, like you!