3 Real Estate Investing Strategies

Friday, June 12th, 2009 Mark Walters

The Fast Cash Strategy…

Have you asked yourself why you are getting into real estate investing? Well, you may have answered that you need money and you need it fast.

If you are doing this because you need to make money and you need to make it now, this is your strategy.

The Fast Cash Strategy begins by finding a house at a bargain price and then selling it to another real estate investor. One of the best ways to get involved in these type transactions is to join a real estate investing group.

These groups are designed to help you find investors that want to pay you for finding good deals on properties.

The Income Property Strategy…

You might be looking for more stability and regular income. If this is the case, you will want to find an income property that returns a net profit each month. You can start with finding a single family home.

Look for something that is listed below market value. You can then fix up the home for a minimal price so that you can ask for a higher rent. The idea is to rent the house for more than your mortgage payment. You’ll need to research different locations that are more apt to support this kind of return.

So, if you buy a home for $200,000 and the mortgage is $1,200, you can ask for $1,500 in rent. The goal is to get a loan with good interest rates so that you are paying a minimal mortgage. With each year, you can increase the rent.

If you’ve got multiple properties, you can enjoy profits from each of them. By choosing this avenue of investing, you will need to be prepared to deal with tenants and act as a landlord.

The Investment Property Strategy…

With this strategy you don’t worry about rental income. Instead you are looking for an investment property that you can sell or a property that will appreciate in time. This can result in larger profits, but in a longer amount of time.

By fixing up or changing the property you can increase its value. If you invested in a commercial building, like an apartment building and you transformed them into condominiums, you could then sell each condominium instead of renting each apartment.

You might also research land and developments in the area and invest in the land and hold onto it until the area develops more and the value of the land increases.

Depending on your financial situation and your long term goals, this strategy can prove to be very lucrative. The best way to start is by flipping properties. From there you can invest in income properties, and then move on to investment properties.

Many investors will use all three strategies. You’ll find such investors to be quite successful.