The new Global economy has brought with it many lifestyle real estate investors. As an old school investor looking first for capital growth and second for cash flow, I was not even considering the lifestyle end of it.

Having worked with real estate investors for the past 15 plus years, I have learned that many people have lifestyle as their number one objective. This has surfaced as buying real estate far from your home has become much easier and more desirable. Many of you invest in second homes and may be looking for a place to come visit while the real estate market appreciates in value.

Your first objective as a lifestyle investor is to be located in an area that can provide you your desired lifestyle.

• Water front communities for fishing, boating, skiing and water sports
• Golf course communities for (of course) golfing
• Mountain communities for those panoramic views, hiking, horseback riding etc.

The lifestyle real estate investor wants, first and foremost, to have an investment where they can enjoy their lifestyle enjoyments. As the purchase relates to investment, your second objective typically is the capitol growth potential. To obtain a lifestyle investment with a good solid chance for the best capitol growth you will want to read the previous post on capitol growth investing.

Florida is a great example of a lifestyles investment location. About one third of the properties sold in Florida are sold to overseas investors. They can get their lifestyles accomplished in Florida for cheaper than most other areas, which makes it a prime target for you lifestyle investors!

So, as you narrow your locations down to areas like the US and then to a state like Florida, where then will you want to invest within the state? First, you will want to narrow it down to markets within a state that provides your lifestyle and then cross reference those areas with the attributes of a capitol growth investor. If you plan on renting your investment out for cash flow while you are away, you will want to check out the attributes of the cash flow investor.

As you can see, whether you are investing for cash flow, capitol growth or are a lifestyle investor, the purposeful real estate investor has many avenues to help insure they are securing the best investment and it all boils down to one common theme: location, location, location.

We KNOW that the biggest problem investors have is finding current, active listings that are available for sale RIGHT NOW. Our list is updated weekly and has ONLY currently listed US Investment Properties for sale.

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The capitol growth real estate investor’s number one objective is appreciation or (capitol growth). If this is your goal you are in good company.

It is the belief of many seasoned investors and very wealthy people, such as the Trumps and Buffets of the world, that appreciation is one of the best wealth building principals an investor can obtain. Cash flow is awesome and you MUST have positive cash flow within your investment. Cash flow is one of the wealth building principles but I believe it comes in second.

Capitol growth is basically your equity build up. Now, the past few years have not been indicative of average returns, however the 50 year national average appreciation on single family homes in America has been 6% per year. For every one hundred thousand dollars of assets you have earned 6% (or $6,000) in capital growth. This now totals $106 thousand in assets that will compound again next year. It is very hard to find cash flow of that magnitude in any other investment vehicle.

So you want capitol growth as your number one objective. Your next question just has to be where you get the BEST capitol growth. Here are a few things you will want to look for to help insure you are investing in an area with the best possibility for growth.

The market you invest in must have good job growth: this job growth will help provide a need for more housing and housing demand will drive capitol growth.

You will want a market that is undervalued: as an example, you will want an area where it takes less than 30% of the median income to pay for the median price of the home. This is considered an undervalued market. Markets that are undervalued at the time you purchase have the best and safest possibility of growing. Once a market becomes over valued, the capitol growth diminishes.

You will want a market that has baby boomer appeal: this will contribute to population growth.

You may want to look at their local government’s long term vision. (Do they have a long term vision) are they trying to attract new businesses and jobs. Jobs create population growth and population growth creates housing needs. All these growth words are wonderful for capitol growth.

You will want to look at current acquisition costs of buying a property versus the current building cost: you will want to invest in a market where the building cost has a large spread between current acquisition and the cost to build. As a market becomes balanced and even becomes a seller’s market, the current selling price of a home will be close to that of the cost to build it. A great indicator of how much capital growth potential is in a market is by looking at the spread between current acquisition and building cost.

I could go on and on, but I believe you get the picture. Today’s real estate market can provide capital growth in most any city. However, real estate is all about location and there are many indicators that can help you ascertain which markets will better be suited for your capitol growth potential. Not all markets will have every element going for it. However the markets that have the most elements identified in the above bullet points will represent your best capitol growth markets.

Looking deeper within the best markets, what product will represent your best and highest growth. The answer is simple. It is the product that is most highly sought after. The properties that are in the path of progress within the market and the properties that most people want to live in and can afford.

In The U.S., the 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom, 2 car garage homes will usually represent your most highly sought after property. This is where you will find the best representation for capital growth. The capitol growth investor can reach his goal of appreciation if he is willing to take the time to study the markets and make informed decisions.

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If you are among the Cash Flow Real Estate Investors, your number one objective and the first thing you will want to determine is, “will your cash flow be sustainable?”

None of the so-called investment gurus ever talks about this so it bears repeating! “WILL YOUR CASH FLOW BE SUSTAINABLE?”

When investing in cash flow properties the following types of properties and locations will represent your search. It, of course, starts with the obvious, a well-priced property. BUT your search should continue far beyond a low priced property! Here are some attributes that should be incorporated into the makeup of a cash flow property:

• The property is structurally sound and priced to match the condition of the property
• The property should be located near places of employment
• Located near bus stops if it is an inner city property (inner city properties can be great for cash flow)
• Cash flow properties are typically within a medium social economic (or what one may call a C Class neighborhood – find out more about neighborhoods in What Is Your Real Estate Investment Style?)

These attributes within a property will help you to gain good cash flow. BUT, cash flow is only great if it is sustainable.

Here are a few areas that you, as a purposeful real estate investor, will want to incorporate into your search for a great cash flow property. These things are almost never discussed and represent the difference between a GOOD cash flow property and a GREAT cash flow property.

• Landlord expenses come right out of your cash flow so you want a property that has each rental unit separately metered (utilities) and the tenant to pay for all utilities
• Located within the best locations, not just best location within the city but within markets that will produce the highest NET RETURNS
• Markets with high percentage tenants (this insures low vacancies and higher returns)
• Markets with low housing insurance costs – insurance costs are tied to probability of an area for making insurance claims, so low risk areas with little to no, earthquake, tornado, hurricane type of activity represents lower insurance bills and that leads to higher cash flow for you
• Markets with low property taxes
• The properties should offer high landlord controls such as a single family house or an owned multifamily building – condos and town homes may produce good cash flow but have few landlord controls over the association fees and therefore may not be a sustainable cash flow

In today’s economy, you can find cash flowing property in any U.S.A. city. Do not be misled into thinking these are all great investments. The investments need to not only have great cash flow the day you buy it, but also need to be sustainable over time. Again, this is an item NEVER discussed by most people and is the difference of a good investment (that may go bad) and a great investment.

For a property to be able to sustain a good investment, you need all the items listed above AND you need to make sure the property is not suffering from deferred maintenance. Nothing will attack your cash flow faster than a property that has deferred maintenance. In fact, often deferred maintenance is what may make the property appear to have great cash flow.

When a property has not been routinely maintained and/or updated, the expenses tend to be very low. The low expenses make the numbers of the pro-forma look great, when in fact you need to make large capitol outlays of cash to update it. This will kill your cash flow faster than you will even see it coming.

These deferred maintenance properties may be good investments when purchased correctly and you’re looking for a value play. Often, however, these value play properties that should be sold very inexpensively are disguised as a great cash flow property with great returns. It takes a trained eye to tell the difference between a great cash flow property with a great price and an overpriced value play disguised as a cash flow property.

Be purposeful – maybe you want to use this post as a check list so you can determine if indeed your next purchase will be a Great (SUSTAINABLE) Cash Flow investment.

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What is your Real Estate Investment Style?

Regardless of what you do for a living, when you invest in real estate it is imperative you run the investments like a business. You want to be able to build a real estate power team and to be effective with your team, you need to share a clear investment vision.

Having a clear vision starts with identifying what type of investor you are. Most real estate investors never give their investment style any deliberate thought. Having worked with hundreds of investors, I know that those who do not create clarity within themselves find that they are all over the board when it comes to investing and as a result do not become an effective real estate investor. To be effective in real estate investing, it is imperative that you focus your attention on what you want from your investment.

You most likely fall into one of these 3 investment categories.

• The cash flow investor
• The capitol growth investor
• The lifestyle investor

You may be thinking that you want all of these things (who wouldn’t), however one of these categories most likely comprises your first and most powerful objective. Of course, it is important to have realistic expectations.

Many people want to buy a pristine property in a pristine location and expect to get pristine cash flow and pristine capitol growth returns. I too would love this, but here is where you must become a realist. Understanding what each investment class truly looks like will set you up for success.

Before we look into the 3 different investment strategies, let’s get clear on the neighborhoods that will make up most US cities. To illustrate this, we will talk about properties within locations. We will break them down to A, B, C And D neighborhoods within any city that you are anticipating a purchase.

A neighborhood – is where everyone wants to live. There are typically white collar workers living here and most homes are owner occupied with very few tenants. They are the expensive pristine homes that often are within a highly sought after community. Even a gated community perhaps.

B neighborhood – is where you typically will find your middle to upper middle class family living. A mix of white collar and blue collar workers. These neighborhoods will have a higher concentration of owner occupied properties with a mix of tenants usually 30% or less.

C neighborhood – these are your middle to lower middle class neighborhoods. Hard working blue collar workers and owner occupied properties may be 50 to 70%.

D neighborhood – these comprise the rest with typically a lower concentration of owner occupied properties.

With this clarity in hand we can focus on attributes for each investment strategy, where within an area you will find each one of these and how to best capitalize on them. Let’s start in our next post with the cash flow investor.

We KNOW that the biggest problem investors have is finding current, active listings that are available for sale RIGHT NOW. Our list is updated weekly and has ONLY currently listed US Investment Properties for sale.

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I learned a number of years ago that when I started investing in real estate, my first investment was indeed a speculative real estate investment. The fact it took me many years to actually be aware of the fact, sheds a big light as to why so many investors struggle to make money in real estate investing.

It is about managing the type of investment to the current market conditions that makes for a successful purchase. Based on my many conversations, I felt there was a big need to create clarity as to the types of investments that are best suited to accomplish particular goals. To do this, of course, requires understanding of the different investment types. The one we are talking about speculative real estate investing so let’s break it down.

Speculative investment: to speculate+ to anticipate a great return. This is the most risky and possibly the most rewarding investment and as the saying goes, the bigger the
risk the bigger the reward. This statement gives fuel to the greedy as well so beware…in absence of a successful set of circumstances the opposite can happen.

The bigger the risk the bigger the loss. Speculative investing works best when a market is positioned at the rebound stages of a seller’s market. After a market goes through a buyer’s market phase and the market is transitioning to a seller’s market will provide the upswing necessary to capitalize on as speculation. This is where location comes in AGAIN. At any given point in time, there are markets that are better positioned to accommodate this speculative investment than others. It is imperative to find markets that are transitioning from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market.

Things you will want to watch for:

• new construction is starting to get abundant
• financing is easier to obtain
• businesses and jobs show signs of a slow down
• demand and prices of construction is edging upward
• speculators are buying

When a market is positioned correctly, the speculator has the best chance of capitalizing big-time on a speculative investment. These speculative investments can come in many forms and all of them are betting on one primary objective. Buy a property at a low price with anticipation of selling in a short amount of time for top dollar.

Here are a few samples of speculative investments that seasoned investors find lucrative:

• Buying new construction at the beginning of Phase 1 to the new development. When a large development is underway, speculative investors cash in big by buying early. They rent for a short amount of time, 6 to 12 months, and as the development builds out into its second, third and possibly fourth phases, everyone now wants a new house in this subdivision. Prices have gone up considerably from Phase 1 and new buyers are eager to get moved in. Many do not want to wait for a new house to be build and will find your home to be of great interest to them.
• Purchasing raw land is another favorite of the speculator. Using the above example, if the developer allows the purchase of a plain vacant (unimproved) lot this can be huge. Often a seasoned investor will purchase the land. This is a much smaller investments and as the lots get sold off, the demand will become stronger and stronger for the remaining lots. The Investor can then sell his/her lot at an increased price. This, believe it or not, was my first investment strategy at age 15. It worked like a charm and I made a 50% increase to my purchase price in 3 years time.
• Of course, buying acreage that is sought after by a developer can be even more lucrative. When you acquire a larger parcel of land and the demand for new housing is strong, you will want to market this to a developer. To increase your payout, you will want to do the legal work of getting zoning approval and change the use of the land from its existing status to the status of multiple residences per acre. This is a tactic that is highly profitable and one that should only be done with proper guidance and experience. If this sounds interesting you, you will want to do your diligence and learn more about the process of zoning changes. The diligence upfront may generate massive rewards.
• Another popular speculative investment property is the infamous fix and flip. Many investors do well by buying s distressed property, repairing the damages to the house and selling for a profit. Where most new investors go wrong on this strategy is when they try to perfect the house to the standards they would want to live in. The fact is, you will not live in it so do not waste your money putting in the extras that will not generate a large return on the investment. You want to make the home move in ready. Start with the outside to make it look great and grab the attention of the people who frequently drive by the property. Then put a for sale sign on it. Finish up the inside to make it move in ready, and by the time you are finished, you should have found a ready willing and able buyer that can give you a nice profit.

There are many examples that I could give on speculative investing but I believe this illustrates them well. When being purposeful, you can see how the proper location at the proper market positioning is key to capitalizing on the speculative investment. All too often, investors want to invest month in and month out doing these same types of investing. The most dangerous aspect of real estate investing is NOT paying attention the changing tide. Real estate markets are always changing and the risk comes from not changing with the markets.

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My personal real estate investing favorite is the Value Play. I always say my favorite is Capitol Growth and the Value Play accelerates Capitol Growth quicker than anything. The Value Play generates quick equity – and equity build up is the number 1 tool to create wealth. When you are purposefully investing, you can create quick equity build up by creating the Value Play.

What Is A Real Estate Value Play?

Making a quick change to the property that will generate more income and or increase its value. A couple of value plays to consider.

Buying an improperly managed property: During real estate markets like we are currently experiencing, it is easy to find properties that have been improperly managed. Many people are stressed right now and they tend to lose perspective as to effective property management principals. They do not keep up on current rents and therefore the property, which is valued on the income it generates, is held back.

Value Play: Purchase the property, manage the property correctly and bring rents up to current market rents. The increased rents will not only give you more cash flow, but will also increase the value of the property because the value is in direct proportion to the income it generates. Things to watch out for, DO NOT get caught in the trap of paying comparable prices for the property. You should only pay the value based on current rents. Too many investors pay on future value, thus eliminating the Value Play all together.

Buying a property that needs repair: the quintessential fix, lipstick and hold.

Value Play: You buy a property that is in good repair but dated. You put a coat of lipstick on it (paint, maybe some carpet and clean it up) and rent it for fair market rents. Most tenants want a clean place to live with things that are working and taken care of, but do not expect new appliances or remodeled kitchens or baths. Hold the property for a number of years and until your local market turns into a sellers market. You can then do some capital improvements. Update the kitchen, baths, roofs, whatever may be needed. Your target here is to sell a “move in ready”, fresh and updated product to the end user. You have just created the ultimate value play. You bought the property at a low price; you kept your expenses low while generating great cash flow and preserving your cash. You then put in your capital improvements and instantly turned it for a huge profit.

Turning a property into its highest and best use

Value Play: There are many ways to obtain this, but a great example of this is the condo conversion (this is better strategy in certain locations that are in need of condo, so do proper diligence). I once turned a 50% profit in 6 month using the condo conversion strategy. You can read the details about this real estate value play by clicking the link!

In essence, a value play is the easiest way to make big money, because you are working SMART instead of working HARD. The ultimate leverage is when you take something of little value and then use some creativity and diligence to convert it into something of big value. Pay attention to what is going on around you, and read between the lines in local news articles. For example, when your read that a big company is moving in and will generate lots of jobs, are you reading just that OR are you reading an article that says NOW is a time to buy the distressed house down the block from this new company? Soon you will be able to convert the low rents to higher rents by sprucing the place up and charging more as this will be a highly sought after location to live as many people will want to work near their new employment.

Keep your mind open to the possibilities, be a purposeful real estate investor and capture the value play.

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That’s right, I have over 35 YEARS of real estate investment experience under my belt! As some of my readers may know from a previous post, my first real estate investment was when I was 15 years old. I bought a city lot. 3 years later I sold the lot for a three thousand dollar profit (later learning that this was known a speculative investment.)

Next, at age 18 I took the profits and bought a duplex and then a year later I added a double garage to it, living in it while letting the upstairs tenant pay the mortgage payment (later learning that this was considered a value play). I virtually lived in the property for 5 years for the cost of the utilities. After 5 years, I sold this property for a $13,000 profit and moved into the big city of Minneapolis where I was suddenly met with a completely different spin on real estate investing.

My First Lesson On Location

Moving to the city was huge learning lesson for me. I had reached the big time, alright. I found a 4 plex with great cash flow and I was able to assume the mortgage with no down payment. I was on cloud nine until I told my friends about my great find. They all laughed at me. I learned from them that in the city, life is different.

The property I bought was located in what they called “a drug infested war zone”. Coming from a small rural town, I did not know what this looked like at all. No worries I thought, I am a landlord and I am a 21 year old real estate tycoon and I will learn the easy way or I will learn the hard way. My Number 1 objective was to learn how to be the best real estate investor I could be.

I owned the property for 11 years. Yes, I learned a lot. Tenants were brutal to me, they made every excuse in the book for being late on rents. I had police calls frequently. I had many tenant caused break downs, but I learned the tricks of the deviate tenants and I persevered. (I learned that the war zones are NOT for the faint at heart, they are NOT for the absentee landlord, they are NOT for the person who needs to hire a property manager, they ARE however, ATM machines. What I mean by that is I could buy properties in the inner city very cheap and rent them out for top dollar – they produced very good cash flow.)

The so called “war zone” is indeed a interesting and challenging reale state investment to manage. Tenants are ungrateful and will try every trick in the book to challenge you. (What I learned here was to create a managing system. To set boundaries and teach the tenants and especially the new incoming tenants that we have certain rules and boundaries that need to be adhered to, there is no room for negotiations. Once I stopped letting the tenants create the rules and took control of this, things got much better).

As I mentioned the cash flow was incredible and after a few years the rents continued to climb. Because the value of the property is based off the income that the property generates, it did not take long for me to have a substantial amount of equity, so I pulled some equity out to buy a single family home and then another and then another.

Next, using the equity from this four plex, I bought another four unit complex in the suburbs of Minneapolis. This was a much nicer complex in a B class neighborhood. Each unit had its’ own entrance door, garage, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. I paid $455,000 for this property. I got an 80% loan and convinced the seller to carry a note for the 20% down payment. I actually convinced him to give me a moratorium on the payment for one year (which simply stated, meant that I did not have to start making payments for 1 year on the 20% note) this allowed me to have a much stronger cash flow. While I raised the rents on the property, (you see the big reason I loved this property is it was not managed properly, rents were about $100 a month lower than they should be for each unit) raising rents by a total of $400 per month allowed me to execute my next strategy.

Now, with the property in my possession, I instantly hired a surveyor to survey the property, an architect to give an architects opinion and an attorney to draft the paperwork and I converted the property into 4 individual condos. Total cost of this was $7,800 (you see what I learned here is that the 4 plex had a combined value of $455,000, but as individual condos they were worth $175,000 each).

So my next step was to get 4 individual loans on the property and pay off the initial loan. As individual home loans, I received a better interest rate, I also was able to finance 80% of the appraised value, allowing me to finance a total of $560,000. With this money I paid off the first loan, the second loan that the seller held for me (that I had not made any payments on yet) and, after closing costs, put better than $90,000 into my pocket. I reduced my interest rate by about 1.5% and was able to raise the rents (as they were not rented to market rents based on bad management). I actually come out of the deal with a small cash flow increase, granted it was only $20 per month, but keep in mind I have better than $90,000 in my pocket as well. In addition to the cash in my pocket, I went from having a 100% leveraged property to having a 20% equity position in my property. That’s $90,000 in cash and $140,000 in equity. Now, in the lending world, I was considered a better credit risk as I had more equity in my assets.

(The lesson I learned from this is, if you put your mind to it you can be very creative. When you are creative you can do incredibly lucrative deals. When putting strategies in place, you can change a property’s value by converting it to what is called its highest and best use value.)

OK, I bet you can now guess what I did with the $90,000 in my pocket. You guessed it! I continued to reinvest in real estate. So what I learned was I was able to acquire a 4 plex with no money down, continue to reinvest the equity, which continued to build more cash flow and more equity. The portfolio, when properly managed will continue to grow almost by itself. Additionally, with the tax and depreciation benefits, the more properties I had, the more write offs I had – and the less taxes I paid. Also, the more properties I had, the easier it was to get loans as lenders like people with large amounts of assets.

I share this story not to impress you, but hopefully to impress upon you and inspire you of the importance of taking the first step by being very purposeful. When you are purposeful you can and will accomplish anything you want.

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Real estate investing gets under your skin and keeps you coming back for (WAY) more!

2012 is a nice milestone year for me. I celebrate two very important anniversaries. The first is the anniversary of my first investment property purchase. 35 years ago at the age of 15, I bought my first real estate investment property.

The second anniversary is my 30th wedding anniversary. This year I will also be celebrating 30 years of marriage to my childhood sweetheart (Laurie). Yes, I had a crush on this gal since the second grade. Years later I was fortunate enough to make her my wife. Having the loving and loyal support of a spouse is paramount to not only a great relationship and family life, but also to the success of a real estate investment career.

My First Real Estate Investing Purchase

This was actually more exciting for me than buying my first car and we all know how cool that was. Believe it or not, my first real estate investment came BEFORE buying my first car, which is why I found it to be more thrilling.

Growing up in a house with three older brothers, I watched them one by one purchase their first house. Yes, I had envy, I too wanted to buy my first investment property. I could not wait until the day I turned 18 and I could make the big purchase.

At age 15, in May of 1977, I was mowing a new sub division for a local real estate company. Each week when I went to mow this development, I watched surveyors out there putting stakes in the ground and dividing the property into individual lots. One afternoon, after finishing up on the mowing of the whole subdivision with my 18 HP garden tractor, I headed for home. I was in heavy thought and decided to stop at the office and talk to the developer, Jim Donahue was his name. Keep in mind, in a small town in a rural community in Minnesota in the late 70s, times were much simpler. I asked Jim what he was selling the properties for and he told me each lot was $6,700 and the premium lots went for about $500 more.

Long story short, I arranged to pay him $6700 for a premium lot and I would make monthly payments to him directly. No down payment, just start making payments and the lot was mine. Of course, I had to get my dad to sign for the property and make it all legal. I knew my dad would not have a problem doing this as he was always teaching us to be financially responsible.

I was so excited. I bought the very first city lot of what was known as the Waseca North East subdivision. One of the first things I did was to research to see what some of the fastest growing trees were. You see I wanted to hold the property for a few years and wait for the rest of the lots to be sold. As I had one of the most premium lots in the subdivision, I knew my lot would sell fast as supply and demand became more in my favor. I knew that having nice trees under way would add even more desirability leading to value.

Three years later I sold the property for a $3000 dollar profit. I was now positioned to buy my first house. I had over $3000 from the sale of the property, as well as some money I had been saving from all my high school jobs. Also I was now 18 years old and old enough to make a legal purchase. I went out and bought a duplex. I remember it like it was yesterday. My mortgage payments were $308 per month and my rent from the upstairs unit was $325 per month. I was living in the nicer unit on the main level virtually for the coast of the utilities. How cool was this?

Then to up the value of the property I found a 1 year old double garage that someone needed to have moved as it was built on rented land. I paid $200 for the almost new 24 x 24 garage. I paid $800 to have the concrete slab prepped and poured and now I only had to get the darn garage 4 and a half miles across town to the new location in my back yard!

To accomplish this I hired a family friend who ran a backhoe business. We jacked the building up on a couple of big beams, put it on the trailer and scheduled a police escort for Mother’s Day morning. We knew the traffic would be quiet then so we could get this beast across town before most people went to the streets. So, at 5 A.M. on a crisp cool morning, off we went. Taking the whole road up but with the police escort we were legal (back in 1980 anyway). I was riding on the back of the truck watching my garage rolling across town when it happened – crack, bang, cluck. As we approached the bottom of the hill and the weight of the garage shifted onto the front support beam it snapped. The front of the garage instantly dropped to the street.

Did I panic, hell yes I panicked! Beams that are 24 ft. long in a small town population of 10 thousand in the year 1980 were nowhere to be found. I had no idea what I was going to do. You see the story gets worse. Where it fell was directly in front of the emergency entrance to the Waseca Hospital.

Fortunately for me the policeman had a good sense of humor. He jumped out of his car and said “son you cannot leave that there, the ambulances need to get in through here.”

OK now, my brother who worked for the city water and light department, had a telephone pole that was over 25 ft. long and it served as my beam. Within an hour and a half, we were back up and running and down the road we went. Now I had a double garage with a total investment of $1500 and my real estate investing career was underway.

Over the past 35 years I have learned much more about real estate investing…hey that sounds like a great lead to another post. So watch for it – 35 Years of Real Estate Investment Experience

We KNOW that the biggest problem investors have is finding current, active listings that are available for sale RIGHT NOW. Our list is updated weekly and has ONLY currently listed US Investment Properties for sale.

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The best locations will reap the best returns for the investor and minimizing risks, and we feel that one of your best locations right now are Atlanta Investment properties. As you know from past posts, the key to be today’s global investor is to recognize opportunity throughout the world and take action while minimizing risk. Location is the way to minimize the risk.

Widely considered as the business and travel center of the Southeast United States, Atlanta ranks as one of the most affordable housing markets in the country. Low housing prices and a robust rental market create an unusually profitable combination for cash flow investors. Parallel to all this is a very low acquisition cost compared to building cost which adds to the massive appeal for the capitol growth investor. As inventory gets absorbed and builders resume building, the current price points will rapidly adjust to the price point of building cost. This always has and always will continue to be the case.

Seasoned investors understand this, which is what gives these investors a piece of mind knowing prices will eventually be going up. Adding to this, Atlanta is one of the fastest growing metropolitan centers in the country with a population of 5.5M; and is expected to double the national growth rate through 2020.

What the masses are saying about Atlanta:

• Forbes Magazine ranked Atlanta as the #1 rental market
• Forbes magazine ranks Atlanta the 4th most affordable US market
• CNNMoney.com says Atlanta is 4th best city in the US to invest in

Interesting fundamentals when considering Atlanta Investment Properties:

• 1.1 million people relocated to Atlanta from 2000-2008
• Atlanta is the transportation hub of the Southeast
• 3rd in job growth
• 3rd for most Fortune 500 company headquarters
• 2nd best American city to relocate to
• 1st most affordable major US city for business
• 6th best state for total tax burden
• Business center for the Southeast, U.S.
• Low Cost-of-Living (94% of Nat’l Avg)
• Comfortable, year-round climate

Economic and Business: Location Drivers in Atlanta are:

• Deep talent base
• Sustained population growth
• Center of the Southeast economy
• Central location
• Mild weather
• “The Southeast is the fourth largest economy in the world, and Atlanta is
• Atlanta projected to DOUBLE the U.S. population Growth rate from 2010 to 2020 (2010 – 2020 Population Projections by MSA)
• Atlanta produces high cash flow
• Atlanta has low property taxes
• Atlanta has low insurance
• Atlanta is a Pro-business state

All of this equates to the inevitable: Atlanta should be considered SMART INVESTING – find out more about Atlanta Investment Properties!

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Dallas investment properties are without question one of the best markets for those looking for a mix of cash flow, growth and quality of investment. While the US averaged an over inflated 53% increase in home values during the past 5 years, Dallas home prices have maintained a modest 17% increase and as a result did not suffer the bubble the rest of the country suffered.

This has positioned them nicely in the eyes of the businesses that are coming to Texas as it shows stability to the market place. Consequently this also shows stability to the investor.

Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) is one of the spikes in the global economy, claiming the 12th largest metro economy in the world. DFW posts a gross metro product exceeding $300 billion, supported by a local workforce of three million and more than six million residents (2009). source: dallas-ecodev.org

The south as a whole continues to be strong and continues to bring in businesses and a growing population. In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that eight of the top ten growing metropolitan areas are in the southern states. Texas is suggested to grow by over 14 million people over the next 25 years. This growth means there will be a pent up demand for additional housing units.

The Dallas area is home to 24 Fortune 500 companies including Exxon Mobil, JC Penney, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, Texas Instruments, RadioShack and others. The Dallas area is also home to seven of the world’s most admired companies.

What Dallas investment properties offer:

• Continues to outperform the rest of the country on the most pertinent economic indicators showing great stability
• Runs a very strong job market which supports stable house prices and strong housing demand.
• Leads the nation as one of the top ten markets for job growth
• Offers rising employment opportunities with attractive lifestyle
• Maintains some of the most affordable housing in the U.S.
• Also maintains a low cost of living and a low cost of doing business
• Continues to be a draw for businesses which creates new jobs and brings in people who eventually become homebuyers and property renters
• Dallas maintains user friendly zoning regulations and has an abundance of land which affords ease to builders to keep up with the housing demand
• The world’s third busiest airport, offering nearly 1,750 flights per day

Investor’s will want to pay close attention to Texas and of course Dallas as it is at the leading edge of growth. By virtue of area’s robust job growth, its abundant land resources, as well as its central location, Dallas has managed to avoid those major housing problems that have affected so many other U.S. markets. Dallas is positioned to carry on its strong economic growth as well as its housing market growth for a number of years to come.

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We KNOW that the biggest problem investors have is finding current, active listings that are available for sale RIGHT NOW. Our list is updated weekly and has ONLY currently listed Dallas Tx Investment Properties for Sale.

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