|
Creative real estate – Top 3 Creative Real Estate StrategiesI love creative real estate. I agree 95% with Robert Kiyosakis quote “If you do not like real estate, all you have to do is make hamburgers, build a business around that hamburger, and franchise it.” The 5% difference in opinion comes from the fact that I applied a combination of both ideas and folks, the fun just gets intense. Before we get going into the details, allow me to analyze the word creativity. Creativity is an expression of the creator. When you are creative, your spiritual core experiences expansion. Can you name a few creative people on earth? Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, Beethoven, Mozart all of them had one thing in common: they were creative. Look at mother nature. Can you spot creativity and innovation?
True creativity comes from the spirit whereas you can get synthetic creativity from numerous sources including:
When you apply creative real estate technique, the game becomes almost like scoring in an empty goal post. As the other party will not be ready for this, you will get maximum leverage out of it. Since the age of gold rush is gone, now a days whatever we want to achieve, we have to achieve it from some one else. And creative real estate here becomes much more fun as it involves challenges in so many ways. The sectors I found most challenging were:
The definition of creativity is a bit different when it comes down to real estate. The definition of creative real estate according to me is
The capacity of thinking of human beings is endless and so is the list of creative real estate techniques. However, I have listed the top three creative real estate techniques here according to their ranking in my simple scale: CRI= LEVERAGE X FUNWhere the term CRI represents creative real estate index. Creative Real Estate Idea 1: Buying Your First Home
You are ready to buy your first home. All the home visits are done, your wife is ready, mum smiling and your dog is excited. Say the house price was $400,000.00 and the bank granted your loan, but conditionally. The condition was you have to pay 20% deposit
If you are working in similar salary as I was working initially ($50-60,000 pa), it would take about 4 years of time to save this money. In the meanwhile, the house price would appreciate, your family would get bigger and you will need a bigger house. When you come back in 4 years time and buy this house with a big smile, “Honey, we got it”, how sure are you that you will get the same enchanted response? I would say the chances are very slim. I have seen numerous people living a dull and boring life, trying to save for the first homes deposit, and thus more and more people enter into the rat race. I have seen families falling over and lose attitude, I have seen a few number of divorces regarding this. I call this obvious solution as its no fun and not creative at all. Actually, you will just have to start asking for the solution to your brain by asking- “How can I buy my first home within three months time from now?” I did so, studied a lot, researched internet, asked for solution to Almighty, even for creative dreaming. Came up with ten brilliant ideas, and even before I went halfway through the list, I bought my first house.
My better half took a week off of her job. We called almost all banks and all mortgage brokers. We discovered a market inside the market. But within two days of the exercise, another bank in the south island said that, they will lend us the money with 5% deposit.
All of a sudden we needed only 20k compared to the 80k. I already won 75% of the battle. Then for the rest of the money the list looked like:
Although I love vendors to put the deposit, this deal was not the appropriate deal for it. From my strategy you could see that I was pretty desperate. Finally I borrowed 22k from mom and bought the property. I did some minor renovations, did another valuation on the house. The bank allowed me to borrow 30,000 more dollars. I returned mom’s money and never had to turn back. As everyone’s situation is different, combine a few creative ideas for the specific situation. Get out of your comfort zone, get the first property, and believe me the wheel will start rolling almost by itself.
Creative Real Estate Idea 2: Converting a Big Property into Multiple Units
If I only say I love this idea, I will do injustice to this idea. The beauty of this creative real estate idea is it is time proof. It works during the property boom, it works during the bust, it works if you want to buy and hold, it works if you want to flip. Sounds too good? But its actually simple. All you need to do is:
If the big house was renting for 500 dollars per week, you could easily rent the two houses at 700pwk, you will find the tenants more easily, if one of them leaves you will still have some cashflow. It gets more interesting when you are trying to sell it. Let us look at one of my property deals:
The new rental appraisal was 700 pwk. I literally had buyers fighting for this property, and sold it for 450,000. Bottom line is:
Creative Real Estate Idea 3: Repair PartyI got this idea first from the student learning centre in the University of Auckland while I was struggling to get someone to proof read my thesis. The student advisor advised me to invite a few other post grads to a party, where they will proof read, have a few drinks and have fun together. I was amazed at the results. I invited nine postgrad students, nine of them turned up. The party lasted till two in the night, but the end products was massive. The lesson I learnt is cumulative action is much powerful than individual action. In this process, we could turn an apparently boring piece of work into a fun filled stuff.
I bought my second house. It was big, and it needed quite some renovations, including new carpets, painting and landscaping. I tried to get some quotes from trades people and they were as usual very expensive. What else could I have done? I started doing it on my own, but it was too big a task and would take few months to complete the work. The work was repetitive and boring. Something hit my mind. I sent an email around the office asking if anyone was interested in helping charities. People are generally good, you just have to turn the goodness on. I had a huge group of coworkers. We agreed on an hourly rate, a highly experienced project manager set small sub teams. Within the weekend, we laid new carpets, painted the whole house and did the landscaping. I paid them on an hourly rate, and we donated the money to a local charity. My colleagues keep on asking when am I going to do the second one. I know I will do the next one very soon. These were the top three creative real estate ideas according to my ranking. I hope this article gives you a taste of the creative real estate ideas. Its fun, it’s fantastic and it takes you to your destination. Before I finish, let me invite you to flare your creativity in real estate investment. When you start your real estate investment, you will find lots of goose bumps. I can assure you if you stick to your goals and take leverage by using creative real estate ideas,your real estate portfolio will be looking great in no time.
|
