Weekend Millionaire’s Tips for Real Estate Investing

This is a guest post written by Corey @ 20’s Finances. He writes a personal finance blog where he provides valuable information for those new to managing their finances. Corey offers advice on investing, as well as providing creative ways to save money.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to invest in real estate? Perhaps you would like to know more about it before committing a lot of time and money. That was my approach when it came to real estate investing. One of the books that I read in learning about real estate investments was The Weekend Millionaire’s Secrets to Investing in Real Estate by Mike Summey and Roger Dawson.

Real Estate Giants

I don’t expect you to be familiar with real estate investors, but if you do any basic search, you will find that Mike Summey is one of the biggest real estate investors in the U.S. As the back of the book details, “he retired at age 50 with a seven figure annual income from his properties.” If there is anyone that I want to learn from about rental properties, this is one of the few people. The other author, Roger Dawson was a president of a large real estate firm. In this book you not only have the advice of one real estate guru, but two!

Weekend Means Weekend

I have read several books on real estate investments and this is by far the most informative. Their strategy for investing in real estate revolves around the idea of becoming an owner (not a landlord) on the weekend. They strongly believe that anyone (with enough practice and commitment) can become successful by following their plan. As a result of this being a ‘weekend gig’ they do not want anyone to have to be bogged down with the responsibilities of taking care of a rental property. The fact of the matter is that repairs are needed on days other than Saturday or Sunday. Their motto is that rental management firms exist for this very reason. They admit that this is not a ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme, but instead is a way to build wealth slowly over time. Why get burnt out in the beginning, right? For a nominal fee you can pay someone to manage the day-to-day things. This allows you to focus on the biggest way to make money: buying houses at wholesale prices.

Making the Impossible Possible

Summey and Dawson team up together to provide valuable tips to make this dream a reality. They recognize the difficulty of finding homeowners that will sell at wholesale prices, but also explain various circumstances that might motivate sellers. They also give creative ways to format offers on houses. Because they are primarily concerned with having a positive cash flow each month, they focus more on getting your mortgage under the ‘Net Operating Income’ (Income – expenses, including taxes, maintenance, etc.). One of the creative ways they suggest to write up an offer is to ask for financing through the seller at a lower interest rate than what could be obtained at banks or lenders. This can allow you to pay a higher asking price for the house (an incentive for the seller) while keeping your monthly payment low. You’d be amazed at how much the interest rate affects the payment.

Giving You the Tools to Get There

One of the other things that they do well is to give you practical tips to get started. Reading Section 4 (‘How to Power Negotiate’) will turn you into an expert negotiator. The negotiating tips are so basic that I am sure they will prove useful in other instances, like when I go to buy my next car. If that weren’t enough, at the end of the book they provide a timeline of 8 consecutive weekends filled with the steps to get started in real estate investments.

If you are interested in getting started today, the first step is to survey the market. Find out what houses are selling for and before you know it, you will be on your way to becoming a weekend millionaire.