Real Estate Investing - Maximum Leveraging of Your Money

At this moment, you have access to some amount of money, from the extremes of only pocket change to the reserves of Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.

Suppose you want to invest your funds into some vehicle that will multiply the return.

You look around for the Return on Investment of various investment instruments. For every investment tool, varying deposit amounts of your funds are required. You must either put up your cash or guarantee payment from specified resources.

Real estate investing offers the maximum leverage potential possible for your funds.

I found a large house for sale 25 years ago. It was listed for $150,000, but had been on the market for an extended period of time because of its large size with an awkward layout. But when I walked through the house for the first time, I immediately envisioned how the layout was conducive to three living units instead of the single family home as it was constructed. I offered $10,000 down payment for the house for a reduced sales price of $100,000, and my offer was accepted. The upscale house is now worth $500,000 and has been refinanced numerous times to pull out cash. Yet, the three units have consistently returned a cash flow of much more than the mortgage payment for 25 years. Leverage from the $10,000 down payment is astronomical.

But leverage available from real estate investing gets even better.

I started a practice years ago of submitting zero down purchase offers to motivated sellers with a $10 earnest money deposit. I bought $1 million in houses during my first year of real estate investing. I bought another $1 million in property the next year, and $10 million worth of properties by the 4th year. Yet, all of these purchases were made without any cash down payment and only $10 in earnest money deposits. (Even the $10 was in the form of a check attached to the Purchase Contract, and seldom even cashed by the Seller!)

But the real estate investing professional can take leverage even another step.

The earnest money deposit check for $10 could be equally legal as a check for just $1.

And in most states, so I'm told by my friends who are experts in legalese, a verbal agreement is just as binding as one accompanied with cash or check. Now that's leverage!

Don't let 'em tell you that buying real estate investments without cash or credit is impossible. My first four years of buying $10 million in properties for zero down is proof that prompted an editorial in the Wall St. Journal featuring my real estate investing. And I have packaged that information in a huge Guide for the would-be and veteran real estate investing professional.

Phil Speer, Ph.D., started his real estate investing career 25 years ago. Without the availability of credit and using only a $10 bill, he purchased $1 million in properties in his first year, and had accumulated $10 million in properties by his fourth year. He was featured in a Wall St.Journal editorial as most successful investor in the Nothing Down Real Estate Movement, and was honored with a Caribbean cruise as top investor of the year. In his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, he has been a businessman and Human Resources Consultant for 30 years. He is an author, speaker and seminar director. To learn how to profit in real estate investing, even without cash or credit, read his report at http://www.CashinHouses.com/. Subscription is free to his Fix-up Ezine. He and other contributing authors provide free articles and resources on real estate investing at his online "Academy of Advanced Real Estate Investing Techniques" - http://www.AAREIT.com.

There is something emotionally charged about the buying and selling of New York high-end real estate. How else to explain the juggernaut of reality TV shows about high-end brokers?

After 30 years of marriage, Sharon and Michael Newman decided it was finally time to move from the Catskills to New York City.

On blocks near Kissena Park streets are quiet, houses are small, and the electricity that charges the atmosphere in downtown Flushing is nowhere to be found.

A five-story, seven-bedroom house in Brooklyn Heights has sweeping views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline.

Demand is so intense that there are waiting lists in some buildings, and a few landlords report that eager renters are even bidding up rents.

Sales at the very high end of the market barely missed a beat in the recession. But that prosperity hasn’t yet trickled down.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

For a century, Roosevelt Island housed a grim penitentiary. It was demolished in the 1930s.

More borrowers are opting for fixed-rate loans with terms other than the standard 30 or 15 years, especially when it comes to refinancings.

Two more glass skyscrapers are added to a group of towers on the waterfront of Long Island City.

Insurance coverage for a co-op unit; when a tenant is ‘blacklisted’; a co-op is smaller than estimated.

The market for $500,000-to-$600,000 houses in Westchester has become especially active.

A shaky real estate market means more sellers are providing buyer concessions, from gift cards to help with paying property taxes.

Houses of worship are adaptable to residential and other uses as congregations dwindle.

Nearly two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks, as part of a broad government settlement to be announced on Thursday.

A cold war-era satellite relay station is for sale in California after a Silicon Valley mogul gave up on plans to turn it into a weekend home.

How can I make my front porch more appealing to buyers?

Court hearings meant to protect New York homeowners from foreclosure are hopelessly slowed by endless paperwork and requests for additional information.

The Bay Area and Silicon Valley expect the windfall from the Facebook stock offering to make their in-demand region even hotter.

The house, designed by the architect Eric Fisher, looms over the street like a big industrial arm.

A town house in Dallas, a midcentury modern in Rhode Island and a Tudor in Denver.

Prices in some parts of the country are still off by as much as 25 percent from their 2007 peak.

Trinity Church is the largest landlord in Hudson Square and is part of the effort to rezone the area to residential from manufacturing.

Rising oil prices and a boom in shale exploration are leading companies to add office space in the Houston area, most notably Exxon Mobil.

Ms. de França is the president and chief executive of Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, which focuses on new residential developments.

Meet the real estate broker’s interns: an ambitious group willing to do anything, earn nothing and wake up early on a Sunday to fluff the couch cushions at open houses.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

Homes in Dallas, Rhode Island and Denver.

Compare the cost of renting and buying equivalent homes.

For recently divorced men, a new breed of decorators offers help navigating a strange new world.

Plants that light up the winter garden can be found at Broken Arrow Nursery in Connecticut, which has long been a favorite of gardening geeks.

A sister in need drew the painter Beverly McIver back home to North Carolina, unaware that a new beginning was in store for both of them.

A jewelry designer finds striking new objects for storage.

Timothy Sakamoto and Jochen Repolust are part of the small but growing niche making mobile apps focused on specific works of architecture.

To promote an auction of 20th- and 21st-century design, the interior designer Stephen Sills has created a preview exhibition in an apartment at the Apthorp.

Fishs Eddy now sells plates acquired from the archives of the now-defunct Syracuse China Corporation, many more than 100 years old.

The designer Russell Greenberg creates custom baby rattles with ends shaped like profiles of mom and dad.