Real Estate Investing

People are very entertaining if you just take time to listen to what they say and observe how they act. After all, that’s why reality television shows are so popular. Now you can watch people from the comfort of your living room chair.

The things they do and say are so highly entertaining because people so often react based on emotion. Often, that emotion is fear. Throw in a little laziness and a willingness to believe whatever they hear that justifies their fear and there you have them—the two most wealth-preventing myths about real estate investing that were ever conceived. And those two are the parents of the third.

In real estate investing, leverage is simply using borrowed money to increase your return on investment.

It is the key to almost all real estate investments and is based on the assumption that the borrower can earn more in income from borrowed money than what he or she pays to actually borrow the money (interest).  This of course is a fairly easy and simple concept to understand - and a wonderful investment vehicle when it works.

No hard and fast rules exist for the describing and labeling of undeveloped land, but to understand land investment adequately, you need to become familiar with the investment categories of land and their respective attributes.
Land is usually categories by either its location or its use - this way the descriptions are broad enough to encompass most land and clear enough to differentiate its use among parcels.

Some commonly used categories of undeveloped land are…

Real estate investors are often nervous about buying real estate property at a good price during a seller’s market and even more anxious about trying to sell a property in a buyer’s market. However, with proper knowledge and the right strategy, a creative real estate investor can make money on their properties in any market, whether buying or selling. They just need to have the correct advertising agenda and reach the right target audience.

When you begin to seek out investment properties, you need to be aware of your potentials and not waste money when properties are overpriced or being sold by an individual who is not highly motivated to sell their property. Instead, you need to find what is referred to as a motivated buyer, who will agree to your terms rather than making demands of his or her own for the sale of the property. With six forms of aggressive advertisement, you can be relatively assured that you will have motivated sellers seeking you out in no time.

Real estate investor marketing starts with, gathering as many contacts as possible. You should be marketing to find other investors in your area that are looking for houses to rehab and resell. Make sure you attend your local real estate investors association, or REIA, to meet and network with other investors. There you can find out who is looking for what and who the real investors are.

There are basically three main reasons land is an excellent long-term investment. If you’ve read our article entitled “The Rising Cost of Real Estate” you already understand the Law of Supply and Demand… the first reason. This Law states that the less of something there is, the more demand there is for it. Since they stopped making land a long time ago, and because the world population is constantly increasing, the demand for land increases daily.

Investing in land is not an exact science.

Success and failure have come to all types of people and organizations that have tried their hand at real estate speculation - especially where land is concerned.   Sometimes land investment results from not much more than a hunch - or gossip - without any research being conducted beforehand.  At other times the investment only happens after exhaustive research and due diligence.

Some transactions have been executed with a handshake or on the back of a napkin, while others have had contracts so lengthy and cryptic that it might take an army of lawyers and judges to decipher them should a disagreement arise.

There is no correct method to investing in land and there is certainly no shortage of formulas for determining the probable success - or failure - of a speculative real estate investment.  Yet that hasn’t stopped people - or countries - from trying.

One of the best things about current market conditions for real estate investors is the abundance of motivated sellers.

A motivated seller is someone who is desperate to part with their property.  They may be over-extended on their mortgage, they may need to move due to a job or family situation, maybe they invested in a property themselves and they’ve decided it just isn’t for them.