Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience

Have you ever seen those infomercials about buying houses with "No Money Down?" They are really well done. They have all kinds of people offering great testimonials about how they have gotten rich, buying rental properties, with absolutely no money out of their pocket. You see this guy, standing on a street corner, talking to someone, and he says, "I own that one," pointing to a beautiful colonial. "I also own that one next to it, and the one two doors down, and I'll be closing on the one directly across the street from it, next week." He then assures us that he has purchased 17 homes in the last eight or ten months, with zero money down on the properties. Plus, in many cases he's also paid no closing costs.

And, let's not forget, this same guy is grossing tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and his net worth is nearly one million dollars. So, he says.

Now, all of this looks wonderful, so when the person selling the course that will teach you how to do this, at a nifty price of just $297.00, speaks, you are glued to his every word. "Real estate is the safest and fastest way to make money, today," the expert will tell you.

So, can this really be done? Can you purchase houses with no money down? Can you become a landlord in as little as one month's time and start raking in the cash from those rent payments? The answer is an absolute "Yes." It can be done, and I am proof positive, because I've done it. The question you should be asking yourself is not can I buy real estate with no money down, but should I?

You see, this is a question that the guy selling the No Money Down course, with all of his people and their great testimonials hopes you never ask. His advertising and marketing strategy would collapse, if he gave anyone a chance to ask this question, because he would be forced to lie if he answered it.

Rarely is the whole truth anywhere to be found in infomercials, especially when the advertising is about No Money Down real estate programs. The infomercial makes the idea and the program look so easy that any child could handle it. It makes it seem like every American should be doing it, and we'd all be millionaires. But every American is not doing it, and many of the ones who are doing it not only are not getting rich, they are actually going broke. The infomercial won't tell you this. That's why I'm here.

The Truth

Now, let's get started with the truth about buying real estate with no money down and the truth about being a landlord. The first thing you need to know is that they are both very bad ideas. Let me illustrate by using my own experience in these areas. I started buying rental property nearly 10 years ago. The first property I bought was a deal orchestrated by some real estate con artist, who told me I needed just $2,000 to take ownership of this home and, in the process, help out a woman who was about to be foreclosed upon.

In two years, she would clean up her credit, refinance the loan on the house, and I would make $10,000. Sounded good to someone who was quick to buy into anything that returned big dollars in a short time.

This worked for the first year, as the woman paid on time, and I pocketed an extra $100 monthly. Later, though, things began to collapse, as the house began to need repairs, all of which the woman couldn't afford, so I had to pay for them. I put nearly $5,000 into the house in a four-year period. When I was finally able to sell it, I didn't quite make back what I had put into it.

Meanwhile, I was eager to overcome this problem by adding many more. A slick mortgage broker got hooked up with an even slicker real estate prospector, and the two of them convinced me that they had a way I could buy houses rapidly, with absolutely no money out of my pocket. Although my experience will probably be enough to enlighten you to the pitfalls of this model and of being a landlord, let me say that I can't emphasize enough how dangerous buying property with no money down is.

In six months time, I had purchased eight houses - many with loans from the same wholesale lender. These lenders should have been concerned with all of the debt I was building, but they kept approving loans, based on my good credit and rents covering the mortgage payments. One of the biggest problems, which I was not experienced enough to detect, was that most of the rents were just $50 to $100 above the mortgage payment.

"Don't worry," the investor/ hustler would say. "You'll make all your money on volume. We'll get you into 30 or 40 houses, and you'll be pocketing $4,000 to $5,000 every month."

As you might imagine, my mind raced. I was making the huge deposits at that very moment. My bank account was fattening up at breakneck speed.

The Illusion

This is what people who buy houses, using the No Money Down plan envision happening. After all, if you can buy one house with no money down, why not five or ten or fifty? For some reason - the vision of the dollar sign, most likely - I failed to seriously consider the maintenance of these houses, the possibility of missed rent payments, and the chance that renters might actually stop paying, altogether, forcing me to evict them - a time-consuming and extremely costly undertaking.

As you may have already guessed, all of these things happened to me, after I had amassed 26 rental properties. In fact, oftentimes, all of these problems happened in the same month. Now, for awhile (when I had about 10 houses), if one person failed to pay rent, I could cover it with the nine other payments. But when two, three and sometimes even five tenants didn't pay in the same month, it was devastating to my business. I had to go to my business account and pay up to $3,000 at a time in mortgage payments, with no income to cover it. Plus, I had to pay a property management company to get my tenants to pay or to evict them.

Soon, this became the norm, not the exception. There were constant problems at my houses. Unhappy tenants led to poor upkeep of the property and even more maintenance problems. About one year, after I had amassed 26 houses, I was having problems with roughly 10-15 houses and/or tenants each week. I was evicting at least two tenants each month, and approximately four to seven tenants were either behind on rent or not paying at all. Promises were made, payment plans arranged and few, if any, ever followed through.

It didn't take long for me to realize that this was no way to make money in real estate. Consequently, I got rid of these houses as fast as I possibly could. There were plenty of buyers, willing to take over my headaches, because they had the ability to make it work, they believed.

In 10 years of being a landlord, I lost thousands of dollars and likely took some years away from my life with all the stress I had endured. So, whatever you do, avoid the No Money Down Trap. There are much better, still inexpensive ways to make money in real estate.

Learn the best ways at Directlendingsolutions.com

Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience   Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience   

Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience

Have you ever seen those infomercials about buying houses with "No Money Down?" They are really well done. They have all kinds of people offering great testimonials about how they have gotten rich, buying rental properties, with absolutely no money out of their pocket. You see this guy, standing on a street corner, talking to someone, and he says, "I own that one," pointing to a beautiful colonial. "I also own that one next to it, and the one two doors down, and I'll be closing on the one directly across the street from it, next week." He then assures us that he has purchased 17 homes in the last eight or ten months, with zero money down on the properties. Plus, in many cases he's also paid no closing costs.

And, let's not forget, this same guy is grossing tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and his net worth is nearly one million dollars. So, he says.

Now, all of this looks wonderful, so when the person selling the course that will teach you how to do this, at a nifty price of just $297.00, speaks, you are glued to his every word. "Real estate is the safest and fastest way to make money, today," the expert will tell you.

So, can this really be done? Can you purchase houses with no money down? Can you become a landlord in as little as one month's time and start raking in the cash from those rent payments? The answer is an absolute "Yes." It can be done, and I am proof positive, because I've done it. The question you should be asking yourself is not can I buy real estate with no money down, but should I?

You see, this is a question that the guy selling the No Money Down course, with all of his people and their great testimonials hopes you never ask. His advertising and marketing strategy would collapse, if he gave anyone a chance to ask this question, because he would be forced to lie if he answered it.

Rarely is the whole truth anywhere to be found in infomercials, especially when the advertising is about No Money Down real estate programs. The infomercial makes the idea and the program look so easy that any child could handle it. It makes it seem like every American should be doing it, and we'd all be millionaires. But every American is not doing it, and many of the ones who are doing it not only are not getting rich, they are actually going broke. The infomercial won't tell you this. That's why I'm here.

The Truth

Now, let's get started with the truth about buying real estate with no money down and the truth about being a landlord. The first thing you need to know is that they are both very bad ideas. Let me illustrate by using my own experience in these areas. I started buying rental property nearly 10 years ago. The first property I bought was a deal orchestrated by some real estate con artist, who told me I needed just $2,000 to take ownership of this home and, in the process, help out a woman who was about to be foreclosed upon.

In two years, she would clean up her credit, refinance the loan on the house, and I would make $10,000. Sounded good to someone who was quick to buy into anything that returned big dollars in a short time.

This worked for the first year, as the woman paid on time, and I pocketed an extra $100 monthly. Later, though, things began to collapse, as the house began to need repairs, all of which the woman couldn't afford, so I had to pay for them. I put nearly $5,000 into the house in a four-year period. When I was finally able to sell it, I didn't quite make back what I had put into it.

Meanwhile, I was eager to overcome this problem by adding many more. A slick mortgage broker got hooked up with an even slicker real estate prospector, and the two of them convinced me that they had a way I could buy houses rapidly, with absolutely no money out of my pocket. Although my experience will probably be enough to enlighten you to the pitfalls of this model and of being a landlord, let me say that I can't emphasize enough how dangerous buying property with no money down is.

In six months time, I had purchased eight houses - many with loans from the same wholesale lender. These lenders should have been concerned with all of the debt I was building, but they kept approving loans, based on my good credit and rents covering the mortgage payments. One of the biggest problems, which I was not experienced enough to detect, was that most of the rents were just $50 to $100 above the mortgage payment.

"Don't worry," the investor/ hustler would say. "You'll make all your money on volume. We'll get you into 30 or 40 houses, and you'll be pocketing $4,000 to $5,000 every month."

As you might imagine, my mind raced. I was making the huge deposits at that very moment. My bank account was fattening up at breakneck speed.

The Illusion

This is what people who buy houses, using the No Money Down plan envision happening. After all, if you can buy one house with no money down, why not five or ten or fifty? For some reason - the vision of the dollar sign, most likely - I failed to seriously consider the maintenance of these houses, the possibility of missed rent payments, and the chance that renters might actually stop paying, altogether, forcing me to evict them - a time-consuming and extremely costly undertaking.

As you may have already guessed, all of these things happened to me, after I had amassed 26 rental properties. In fact, oftentimes, all of these problems happened in the same month. Now, for awhile (when I had about 10 houses), if one person failed to pay rent, I could cover it with the nine other payments. But when two, three and sometimes even five tenants didn't pay in the same month, it was devastating to my business. I had to go to my business account and pay up to $3,000 at a time in mortgage payments, with no income to cover it. Plus, I had to pay a property management company to get my tenants to pay or to evict them.

Soon, this became the norm, not the exception. There were constant problems at my houses. Unhappy tenants led to poor upkeep of the property and even more maintenance problems. About one year, after I had amassed 26 houses, I was having problems with roughly 10-15 houses and/or tenants each week. I was evicting at least two tenants each month, and approximately four to seven tenants were either behind on rent or not paying at all. Promises were made, payment plans arranged and few, if any, ever followed through.

It didn't take long for me to realize that this was no way to make money in real estate. Consequently, I got rid of these houses as fast as I possibly could. There were plenty of buyers, willing to take over my headaches, because they had the ability to make it work, they believed.

In 10 years of being a landlord, I lost thousands of dollars and likely took some years away from my life with all the stress I had endured. So, whatever you do, avoid the No Money Down Trap. There are much better, still inexpensive ways to make money in real estate.

Learn the best ways at Directlendingsolutions.com

Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience   Purchasing Property With No Money Down: My Personal Experience   

How to Stop Junk Email Using Cactus Spam Filter

There was a time when it was a joy to open up your email program and see which friends had sent you a message. Now it's a task many of us dread, thanks to the rise of spam. These junk emails now account for over 50% of email traffic. There are a number of different ways that you can protect yourself including using anti-spam software. One of the free programs that are available is called Cactus Spam Filter.

Cactus Spam Filter is an easy to use program that can help you cut down on the amount of spam that clutters your inbox. It works by identifying messages that it thinks are spam and changing the email subject line. It tags the subject with a message *Cactus Spam*. This tag can be changed if you want.

You then need to set up a spam folder where all the spam messages will be delivered. It is very simple to set up a rule in your email software so that the tagged messages are automatically sent to this folder. Just set it up so that any messages containing "cactus spam" in the heading are sent to this folder.

As you use the software, it 'learns' the emails that you mark as spam and it becomes more proficient at recognizing junk emails. If you already have a folder of garbage emails then you can immediately start training the software, so this learning process will be even quicker.

If you want to stop junk emails with the minimum of fuss, then Cactus Spam Filter is a product that you should consider. As it is free, you can try it and if it doesn't perform to your liking then you can easily uninstall it. Other free alternatives to Cactus include Mailwasher and Cloudmark Desktop (free trial). If you prefer an all-in-one solution, there are ant-ispam components in Norton and McAfee Internet Security Suites.

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Free Spam Blocker For Emails

Just think of the time that is wasted every business day going through garbage emails. Even if everyone just spends 10 minutes each day filtering out junk emails, the cost to industry runs into millions of dollars a day. But there are ways that you can fight back against this increasing tide of spam. By using specialist software packages you can prevent these email messages getting through. And many of these programs are free to use. Here are 3 of the best free spam blockers for emails.

Mailwasher

This is a useful piece of software that has been available for several years. The nice thing about this program is you can delete spam email before you even download it. It has the ability to check what emails are ready to be delivered and gives you the option to download them or delete them. For this to work, you will have to turn off the setting in Outlook to automatically check for new messages every few minutes.

The free version gives you most of the capabilities that you need to protect one email address. If you upgrade to the paid version you can protect multiple email addresses and get access to technical support.

Cactus Spam Filter

If you want an easy to use piece of software, then take a look at Cactus Spam Filter. This program is quick to set up and you won't have to spend ages configuring it. Spam messages are tagged by the software by making a change to the subject heading. It is then a simple case of setting up a rule in Outlook (or your email client) to move all messages with this tag to a separate folder. Before deleting the contents of this folder, make a quick check to ensure none of your legitimate emails have got in there by mistake.

Mozilla Thunderbird

A different approach to tackling spam is to use Mozilla Thunderbird as your email client. This is an open source alternative to Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express. It has built in anti-spam capabilities. It also has the capacity to 'learn' to recognize spam. The more you use the program the better it becomes at filtering out junk emails.

With garbage emails becoming more and more of a problem, using an effective filtering system is now a necessity. Free spam blockers provide you with that all-important last line of defense so that you can reclaim your inbox.

What If You Could Get Paid Everytime You Got Spammed in Violation of CAN-SPAM? Would You Do It? Yes   Track Down the Spammer - Search by Email Address   Which Email Client Has the Best Spam Filter?   Take Extra Precautions and Stop Spam   The Scourge of Spam and How to Tackle It   Secret Techniques to Stop Spam That Work Every Time   

Home Improvement: Why You Should Hire Professional House Painters

When you think about the task of painting something, it might strike you as a type of manual labor that, while time intensive, can be done by pretty much anyone. There is a reason that painting is a profession, though, and several reasons why you might want to go with an experienced company to take care of your exterior paint job.

One reason you might want to hire a company is the experience a group might have with setting up, starting, completing, and cleaning up a major painting job. Painting a house can be an extremely messy job that requires a bit of strategy in terms of what gets painted first and how the job is going to progress. If this sounds overwhelming to you, you might want to save yourself the headache and place the task of painting your home in the capable hands of a professional painting service.

Another reason you should consider trusting your house painting job to a pro painting company is the cost of the materials needed to complete the job yourself. If you don't have the tools on hand and you'll have to go out and purchase them, the costs can start to add up. A company that specializes in painting will likely have the required tools needed to complete the job successfully, and if a tool breaks along the way, the company will replace it and keep on going with no extra cost to you.

If your time is valuable to you, that's one more reason to consider outsourcing your paint job to a company with experience in the area. Handling the task yourself might mean using some vacation days to take off work, or needing to complete the job on a weekend when you'd probably much rather be relaxing. By hiring a company to take care of painting your house for you, the job can be completed regardless of where you are or what day it is. And if the weather isn't cooperating, the crew can wait for a nicer day and get right back to work; a luxury you might not have when trying to do the job on your own.

The reasons given are just some of the ones you should consider when thinking about taking on a hefty painting project by yourself. With the personal time you'll spend and the money you might have to spend on tools and supplies, the cost of hiring a professional painting company might be comparative, and help you gain back some of the time you would've lost otherwise.

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Compare Life Insurance Rates To Get The Maximum Advantage

Life insurance is the best possible way to protect your family when you will no longer be with them. That is why people all over the world want to purchase life insurance so that they can secure the future of their family even after their death. However, it is obvious that you need to compare life insurance rates before you obtain the best insurance policy for you and your family. This comparison becomes mandatory because there is a huge competition in the market and there are lots of insurance houses who offer great insurance policies with lots of other benefits for their clients.

In order to compare the rates of life insurance the first thing you need to do is to select some top class insurance companies who offer the best policies and have good reputation in the market. There are numerous insurance companies in the market who claim to be the best. However you have to depend on the market review while choosing the right one for yourself and your family. While going for compare life insurance rates, it would be best to visit their websites, give a thorough look at their offers, the services they render, their privacy policies and find out what exactly they are providing you and your family.

It is advisable to have at least 5 such websites in your hand while you are planning to compare life insurance rates. By applying for a life insurance quote you can get the idea of how much coverage exactly you can get from the insurance and in that way you can judge whether the offer of the company is right for you or you should try some other sites. After getting quotes from all the companies that you have initially selected you can easily compare their offers and choose the most appropriate one for you.

If it makes you too confused to choose the right option for your life insurance then you can hire an expert insurance agent. He or she can help you in obtaining the best insurance for you. Your agent will understand your need and find out the quotes suitable for you provided by various insurance houses and help you to select the best one for you with their experience and knowledge in this field. Their job is to assist you compare life insurance rates of various companies. Their objective is to save your money and of course get you the best coverage deal of the market.

In order to get the best deal of the market you have to spend some time in searching the most reputed websites who offer the top class insurance coverage for their clients. As an insurance company we offer the right coverage for each of our customers after understanding their needs individually. You can compare insurance rates of our company with the other company rates and we are confident that you will find the best deal with us. There are several factors that determine the key benefits of a coverage and our team is ready to help you in all these aspects in order to provide you the best service of the industry.

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