Read success stories about those who buy ugly houses and have made money doing it.
A good success story is one of the things that motivated me to keep going in real estate investing. When things seemed too tough to overcome, I was able to feed off of the fact that other people were succeeding in this business.

Therefore, we've created the 'Success Stories' page to inspire you. The stories listed here are from real people who had success in a real estate investing opportunity. You can read about the fears they had, the obstacles they had to overcome, and the rewards they reaped for their efforts.

Even as a seasoned investor, I am still inspired and get recharged by reading about the successes of others. It helps me remember what it was like when I got started. If you have benefited from the success stories, please feel free to share a story or two about your real estate investing experiences so that others may learn and be inspired by you.

Hi Joshua. You’re right and we absolutely agree that it is important for investors to be educated in today’s market. We believe in this so much that we provide a variety of resources online for those interested in making a real estate purchase.

Don't borrow to invest…you will find the interest paid will offset your gain on the investment, and worse still, if the investment loses money, you will still have the loan.

I will give you some good advice…pay attention.

You are young and that makes a big difference..Save up your money until you have $1,000, and take it to the bank and buy a no-load balanced mutual fund, Figure an amount per month that you can afford to invest and tell the bank to take this amount once a month to buy more shares of this fund,
Then start reading about investments, markets, market psychology, how changing interest rates affect markets, how current events affect markets, and anything you can learn about investing will help you understand.

This amount you invest every month won't be noticed by you (not having it to spend) after a few months…..Increase this amount when you can..if you get a raise, put the take home increase into your fund. As you learn about investing and understand your risk tolerance, branch out ito more diversification, Like a good equity fund, maybe a resource fund, but start with a balanced fund.

Over the years you will get rich following this advice, but don't start spending your fund on cars or trips…otherwise you will have to start all over again.

Cindy – you are right! Everyone seems so terrified to buy property yet real estate investing makes WAY more sense today than it did two years ago when everyone was excited about it. The media is not blameless in this fear and feeling amongst would be investors though. Sure – they are making excuses about why they aren't buying property, but the constant negative news and recession/job loss talks paralyze even the smartest investors. Thanks for your comments!

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You have up to 3 years (exactly) from the time you moved to sell your ex primary residence TAX FREE, assuming that you lived in it for 2 years before you moved away. Price it right and offer a higher commission to a selling agent. It works.

You don't have to manage property yourself. Get a professional manager. It's not a 1039 exchange, it's a 1031 Exchange. You don't avoid taxes forever, you just defer them.

What's wrong with paying taxes if you have a long term gain, the tax rates arent that high. Selling the property could become the biggest mistake of your life. People have made fortunes by holding property long term

When a property gets foreclosed on, and it's the first lien holder that is doing the foreclosing, then the second and third and fourth (etc.) will get wiped out at the foreclosure auction. What an investor will do is to buy/tie up the property from the defaulting owner and see if he can discount the first and second. The second will most likely agree to a small amount (usually 7-10 percent) because they will lose everything once the property gets foreclosed on. The first will usually accept a 20 percent hit.

Now what you quoted is that the second note holder was stating that he will own the property by buying it from the person in default and take over the first position's loan payments and make it current. Therefore, he is not interested in selling his note to the investors. The investors in that example were idiots for not controling the property first or the owner didn't want to sell. The investors were hoping to buy the second note at a discount and bid at the auction and own the property with at least 15 k equity plus whatever the homeowner had in equity.

You can buy any note by approaching the lending institution that holds the note and making an offer to buy it. You will need cash to do so.

Also, to clear up the quoted reference, you can purchase property "subject to" existing liens/loans. Taking property "subject to" means that you will take over the payments, but the old owner is still responsible for the loan(s). So if you stop paying the mortgage/trust deed, the lending institution will go after the old owner and start foreclosing on the property. Buying property "subject to" existing loans is one way where someone with no money and/or credit can get into a home and own it. The second note holder was buying the property from the defaulting owner using the "subject to" clause.

I either confused you or helped you. Either way, I just saved you hundreds of dollars in late night real estate infomercials!

E-mail me if you have any questions.

Regards