Real Estate Investing Is A Better Gamble Than The Lottery

Real estate investing begins when you move to the starting point.

Get ready.

Get set.

GO...

Are you ready to begin a real estate investing career? Or, are you already investing in real estate some, and want to expand your holdings? Or, are you investing in real estate a lot, but want to streamline your operation?

If you prefer real estate investing to a J-O-B, here's a tip on the real estate investing gamble for hitting the jackpot, striking it rich, and quitting that day job!!!

As one of my professors use to say, "Let's commence, to begin, to start, to get ready, to GO."

Do you bet on the lottery?

I am amazed at how many people throw their money away buying lottery tickets with such slim chances at winning!

At the start of 2004, Tennessee cranked up its new state lottery. The news media fanfare went on for months. Tennessee hired the lottery director from Louisiana to set up Tennessee's system, and this media publicity aired every night on the news as the public was whipped into a frenzy. Finally, the kickoff. Within just weeks, the announcement aired that Tennessee had taken in $50 million in lottery sales, and then $100 million in lottery sales. Newscasters quietly mentioned, however, that a whopping $100,000 had been paid out already in winnings. Wow! $50,000 in winnings compared to $100 million in ticket sales. What a windfall. (For the lottery, that is) Then came the subdued mention that some store owners were shutting down their recently-opened outlets out of conscience at seeing so many ticket purchases by regular customers who did not even have enough money to buy groceries! And all this ballyhoo was presented under the guise of lottery money to subsidize college scholarships.

Isn't it great for kids to get a good education, and isn't it greater that I can buy a lottery ticket - not in paying for my own kids' education - but to help other folks' kids get their education!

And in the meantime, I might strike it rich!!!

Come on. (Where is common sense logic?)

Some fishermen friends several years ago liked to boast about how much money they spent every year on lottery tickets in another state. When I pinned them down to their actual winnings, they admitted they spent over $10,000 a year buying tickets, and they CLAIMED they always made more in winnings than they spent for tickets. Funny thing, however, they couldn't show me a tally of their win-loss record!

If you are a gambler who wants to make it big in some game of chance, you need to visit Vegas instead of reading this article.

But if you really want to win the big stakes without taking the big risks, real estate investing is a great game of chance!

Oh yeah, I'm a gambler, too, but I like REAL chances at winning. I want the stats on my side.

Twenty-five years ago I made one of the biggest gambles of my life by starting out with nothing and trying to hit the jackpot investing in real estate. It was a gigantic gamble because I had no cash and no credit. I was able to scrape together a $10 bill and a real estate contract, and I started shooting craps.

No, sellers didn't like my offers. Most threw the contracts back in my face. Success did not come easily. I was often very discouraged and frustrated. I actually did not know at that time of anyone ever who had started investing with a $10 bill, and I have never heard of anyone since. But I never threw in the towel. And within a year, I had somehow bought almost one million dollars in rental properties!

That's a gamble that paid off.

I like that kind of gamble.

Gamble when the odds are in your favor. http://CashinHouses.com/

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://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://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.