How great does this sound: “No Money Down – No Bank Needed”?
There have been so many times in our twelve years of real estate investing that we’ve been drawn to that phrase. Banks are impossible to deal with sometimes – asking for everything but your Blood Type to fund you. Raising money is always an option, but it’s a lot of work. Working with private lenders is possible but it can cost you more than you want to pay and you’ll usually still need money for a downpayment. If only you didn’t have to qualify for financing or need a big downpayment, right?
We’ve invested almost $40,000 into learning the no money down and no bank needed investment strategies. The first time we went down that road I was in school – so not only did I not have a job; I also didn’t have any money at all. I was living on loans. The second time was after the bank rules changed in 2009 and we were self-employed (aka, not financeable in the eyes of most banks).
We learned a few lessons that I’d like to share with you now.
The biggest lesson is: Just because you can do deals with no money down doesn’t mean you won’t need money.
In this video, I explain that lesson and two others.
Real estate is a way for us to create location and time freedom. We always expected to work for the money, but we wanted to be able to work when we wanted to and wherever we wanted to. We found that when we did “creative” deals, we ended up with problem properties and challenging tenants. In other words, we basically created a full time babysitting job for ourselves. The kind of deals you can do “creatively” are generally not the good properties in good areas. They don’t attract the best caliber of tenant and they don’t have minimal maintenance requirements.
The creative no money down and no bank needed strategies can work, but for us they weren’t an effective way to create the life and business we wanted. (Read More about the Costs You’ve Never Considered as a Real Estate Investor)
Image Credit: © Stokkete | Dreamstime.com
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