In any case, I suggest staying in the upper layer of the lower-income areas. Venture into the middle layer if you like, when you become more experienced.You’ll work a little harder for your money, but you can make it work.

The reality is, in these lower-income areas, you’re going to have the greatest ratios in your favor of cash flow per cost basis of the property.

Keep this next technique in your back pocket for now, but a favorite strategy of mine is turning around a neighborhood on my own, or with the help of other investors. What I mean is, you begin investing into a lower-income street—maybe even on the lower end of the lower income—but based on information of the surrounding area and maybe what government money is doing,one which you believe is a good area that is ready for a turnaround.

It’s called gentrification. And I’ve done it. I’m not afraid to do it now, though I was when I first started. It’s better if you can find an investor or two to team up with and you go in together to buy multiple properties in a street. When you fix them up and raise rent to the next level,you will be amazed at the impact you can have on the surrounding houses on the street, and in the area.

People will start trimming the shrubbery more regularly, planting more flowers, washing their cars, and cutting their grass more, even painting their houses. You can literally turn a street, okay? And you can make a lot of money doing that. There is much more risk, so I do not advocate it when you’re first starting out, but I want to make sure you know it’s a future possibility.

I’ve seen entire streets get turned, even entire neighborhoods. It’s amazing and a wonderful sight to see. Sometimes you can even convince the municipality to kick in a little bit of money. Maybe put in new sidewalks and street lights. I’ve seen that. It helps to be cooperative and participative with your community.It’s good old-fashioned kindergarten logic.You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.

Any way around it, you want to buy rentals in areas where you see foot traffic. Look for people out walking, jogging, or walking their dogs. Look for children playing in the yards. You can get that in the lower income areas where people are decent. But you may not get it in the war zones.

I do not ever advocate going into war zones. I know people who do, and they take their chances. I was never comfortable with that because here’s the deal. I’ve studied this statistically. They may make as much money as you and I make in these upper lower-income areas, but they’re working a lot harder. I want to make the most amount of money, with the least amount of work.

Hopefully, you want to do the same thing. So my suggestion is, if you’re in the war zones, trust your intuition.If you see multiple homes boarded up, cars up on blocks just get out of there. If you hear any of the old pop, pop, pop, need I say more? You just get the heck out of there, okay? Don’t ask questions, just go. You’ve obviously ventured into the wrong area.It’s not worth it. You won’t make any more money, and as a matter of fact, you’ll probably get burned too many times to make any money.

So, any case, everything I’ve said applies to two-, three-, four-unit buildings, and multi-unit properties, even larger such as 10-, 20-, and 30-unit buildings you’ll find in residential neighborhoods.

When you get to apartment complexes,those are generally in 50 or more.They’re usually going to be all main streets and not so much back of the neighborhoods.I teach a separate class on purchasing larger apartment buildings, so we won’t cover it here.

Within the municipalities, you should have identified specific neighborhoods.Next I’m going to show you some places to research to identify specific properties. You’ll learn how to identify them and where you get the data.

The first one is the HUD website: hudhomestore.com

Here you can pick any state, price range, and property type. You can insert county, city, zip code, street, or if you know a case number, put in a case number. This is an awesome resource, and it’s available to every person on the planet. HUD always lists for homes with realtors though, so you will have to line yourself up with a realtor.

I suggest you call Beverly at my office at 1-800-931-2605, and let her refer an agent to you who knows how to work in the world of investing—someone we’ve personally trained. These realtors are all over. We have them everywhere.

You can begin a search by selectinga state. Generally speaking, when HUD puts a property up for sale, for the first few weeks, it’s only available to non-profits and government entities.If the property is still available after that period, then it becomes available to owner-occupants for a couple of weeks or maybe a month. If it’s still there at the end, then they open it up to all bidders, which means, “Come on in, investors!”

You’ll see listing information, property information, but more importantly addendumslike disclosures, EP forms, notices, and lead-based paint.

You’ll be able to see the Property Condition Report. It’s not very elaborate, but you’ll get a nice neat little home property inspection report available to you on the website.

HomeSteps: www.homesteps.com

Next one is HomeSteps, from Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac is the government, quasi-government agency that helps you finance properties on your first income. All these properties that you’re going to see on the HomeSteps website, they’re going to be Freddie Mac foreclosed properties.

Awesome data for finding properties.But again, generally speaking, you’re going to have to go through a realtor to buy these.

VRM: listings.vrmco.com

So let’s go for the next one: VRM. This is where you’re going to find the VA properties. These are properties that the Veteran’s Administration has foreclosed on. Active duty and veterans have VA eligibility, and can finance properties up to 100%. Pretty awesome deal for military personal and they deserve it. But sometimes things happen and those properties get foreclosed. You can buy them. Anybody can buy them. You don’t have to be active duty or a veteran to buy a VA-foreclosed property.

 

In this module we’ll view some different resources for determining rental properties to purchase. We’ll see county records online, HomeSteps, and the Multi-List System (MLS). There are actually 400 multi-list systems in the Continental United States, and you will have access to those through your real estate agent.

If you’ve been taking other classes, and you should, you know we train the real estate agents we want you to work with. You don’t have to use them—it’s your choice—but I will tell you, the agent you choose can make the difference between you prospering today, and languishing in frustration for a long time.

There are many agents out there who will tell you they want to help you,and they do.But let’s face it, if they don’t buy or own rental properties, and they haven’t worked with a number of investors, there’s no way they’re going to be able to help you without you investing a significant amount of time and energy to train them on your needs. We cover that in another class, but here I’ll show you what data you should be expecting from real estate agents, and how to use it.

So, in any case, hopefully you did your homework, and you’ve narrowed down your target areas. In other words: municipalities,cities, towns, boroughs, townships, whatever the case may be.You should have narrowed that down even to the zip code level. Right now, we’re going to focus on choosing the right neighborhoods, and a little later we’llzoom in on choosing the right properties.

I’m sure you have questions and concerns. I know people want to be told what they want to hear, but I’m here to tell you what you need to hear. Okay? For most of you, this is going to be common sense. But the bottom line is, there are three different types of neighborhoods:high-priced, middle-priced, and low-priced areas.

The bottom line is, when you’re in the multi-unit rental business, your primary objective should be return on investment—cash flow. You need to have cash flow. The banks want you to see cash flow.Out of the four C’s, there’s four C’s of lending(Cash, Credit, Collateral and Character),cash is king. Banks certainly prefer to lend in the A-grade areas, and not to lend in the below C-grade areas.

However they’re required by law to lend in some of the below-C areas, in what they call the red zone. The law was a reaction to what banks called red lining. Banks would say,“We won’t lend

money to properties in these areas, beyond this red line.” Well, it’s illegal to do that now. But regardless, the number one characteristic that banks look for in rental properties is cash flow.

They want cash flow. They look at your character, of course, and they look at your collateral, but they want to see cash flow.Never forget that. Cash flow is number one. Cash is king, always has been, always will.

So if you’re in these A-grade areas, you may only be getting $1000 per month for a $100,000 unit. There’s bunches of them out there. But that’s essentially a 1% gross monthly rent multiplier. In other words, every month you’re making $1000, 1% of your purchase price, which is $100,000. So, if that’s what your game is, more power to you. But I can tell you, you will not cash flow very much with a situation like that.

I know people who invest in areas like that and sometimes, they’ll plunk out all cash. As a matter of fact, they’re just looking for a parking place for their cash. Cash flow is not king to them. They don’t care about the lenders. They’re in a different situation than most people. Usually, people getting into rental real estate need cash flow because they’re looking to build wealth and income—in order to grow to the levels of the other guys we’ve just described up there. Okay?

In any case, I have seen rental properties in Californiathat run for $75,000 a month. And guess what? People there will pay it. But that’s not the case in most areas of the country.

Middle-class areas are generally best for flipping real estate.Throughout most parts of the country right now,it’s not a good time to be flipping high-end properties. People took a bath on that in the last couple of years.But middle and upper-middle class? You better believe there are areas of the country where the bidding war’s going on already.

But when it comes to rentals, you won’t cash flow very much in those either. You want to be on the very low rung of the middle-class, or the middle-upper rungs of the lower-end neighborhoods. If you look at the monthly gross rent multiplier, and your cash on cash return versus the cost basis of your property, you’re going to see that in those areas I just described (the lower-end areas, not poor, not blighted, not war zone), you’ll find the best cash flow.

They may be lower income areas but they still have good people. Those folks just happen to have lower incomes than you or me. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people in fact they’re often very good people. And they’re very responsible. But those are the neighborhoods where you’re going to find the greatestrents compared to the cost basis of the property.

I know a lot of people will say, “I never want to go in those areas,” and I know plenty of investors who say, “I had kind of a hard time in there.” But that’s because they were probably not buying the right property, and probably not renting to the right people.Now I will remind you, we’re looking in the upper rungs of these lower-income areas, not the lowest end. Not areas where there are multiple houses boarded up and cars up on blocks. You all

know those signs mean trouble. You don’t want that. You want neighborhoods where people are cutting the grass. They have shrubbery. They have decent cars out front. Those are the areas I’m talking about.

It doesn’t mean you have to live there. You probably don’t have to live there,but you should be renting there. What I’ve discovered is when I buy the right property in the right neighborhood I can rent to the right people.Generally yes, they’re lower income, but they’re good people.

I’ve discovered in my life, and I’m sure a lot of you will too, that there are plenty of good rich people and plenty of bad rich people. In the same way, there are plenty of good poor people, and plenty of bad poor people. You have to use tools for screening that I teach in Turning Rental Problems into Profits.

A compelling story on how working with investors can increase your profit 10 fold and how much not doing so cost you!

Working with investors is probably the greatest single improvement I made in my real estate business. It not only made earning commissions easier for me, but it also opened up doors for creating massive wealth and income that produced profits far exceeding what I was previously making. There are seven basic benefits that I gained by working with investors. They are:

1. Build a funnel of clients who not only call you they wait in line to work with you.
   1. Typically, real estate investors are at a loss as to how they should work with investors and even if they should at all. The rules of engagement for real estate investing are completely different than the rules of engagement for working with owner occupants. Since most agents do not understand the rules of engagement for working with investors they by default use the only rules of engagement they know which are those for working with owner occupants. As a result, the relationship between investors and agents is strained because it is not fruitful. It doesn’t have to be that way.
   2. With the knowledge, you gain from books like “Path To Profit – Investors Vs. Agents” you can now operate by the rules of engagement that are specifically developed for working with investors instead of what agents are taught by their brokers. Once investors learn that you know these rules of engagement the word will spread. Just like any other line of business, when you walk the talk, the word spreads. Your reputation precedes you and you will spend virtually nothing on marketing to attract new clients. They will find you. There are at least a dozen marketing techniques you can learn from the Path To Profit, the best of which work in any market anywhere and have virtually zero costs associated with them.
   3. The bottom line here is that because almost no other agents know what you know about working with investors and they make the conscious choice to not work with investors anyway, you work in a virtual vacuum with little or no competition!
2. Build relationships one time that pay you multiple time
   1. This is one of the greatest benefits of working with investors. With owner occupants, you work very hard to just to get a client and then you earn only one commission. If you’re lucky you may have the opportunity to earn another commission in ten years. With owner occupants when they sign the settlement sheet at the closing table they want to get the keys to the house, unload the truck and jump in the pool. You are now a distant memory. When you work with investors and they sign the settlement sheet at the closing table, the very next thing they want to do is have you set up a search to find their next investment property. Unlike working with owner occupants you don’t need two or three hundred investors to make a living, you can do just fine with 6 active investors. I had an average of thirty at one time and a total of more than 170! The bottom line is that investors typically by anywhere from one to several dozen properties a year. The average for my investors is about six. During the height of the recession, I was doing over 100 deals a year with no assistants and no admin help. And that was part-time! That’s because I understood and followed the investor rules of engagement.

3. Use rules of engagement that not only result in more profit for your investors, they result in more profit for you.

By following the correct rules of engagement for working with investors you control your own schedule and your investors work with you on your schedule and on your terms. You give them a choice of days and times that you decide. As a result, you are in control and they still have a choice. You also work in such a way that unlike working with owner occupants, the investors do much of the legwork. You are more of a guide. You don’t get involved until they have already proven that a particular property is worth the use of everyone’s time, including yours. This process is the difference between the shotgun approach to investing and the high percentage shot. It works like a charm. Your clients are more successful and so are you!

4. Develop an owner occupant business without the time, effort, energy and expense of traditional agents.

Every agent wants the million dollar listings. Most of them work their entire lives and maybe get one if they’re lucky. They spend an extraordinary amount of time, energy and money competing with every other agent in town for the few good listings that are out there. You, on the other hand, wisely choose to work with investors with little or no competition. Furthermore, investors also need to buy and sell their own homes and so do some of their tenants. They, of course, call you when that time comes. Therefore, you didn’t have to spend time, energy or money getting these owner occupant deals. Rather, they came to you. You also don’t have to compete with other agents for this business. Statistically, the same percentage of investors live in million dollar homes as the population at large.

5. Quickly develop an additional six-figure system that provides wealth and income in any economy anywhere. The world of possibilities is almost limitless here! It all starts with you using your license to serve your fellow investors. For example:
   1. Use your license to work with Flippers. You earn a commission when they buy the property. You earn a commission when they sell the property. And you may even earn a commission if you find the buyer for their property. This essentially could give you three commissions from one client and one property! Let’s say they bought the house for $100,000. Then after they remodeled they sold it for $200,000. Assuming 3% commission per side (listing side and selling side), you would earn $3,000.00 ($100,000.00 X 3%) on the first transaction as the selling agent, $6,000.00 on the second transaction as the listing agent ($200,000.00 X 3%) and possibly $6,000.00 again on the second transaction if you are also the selling agent who brought the buyer. That’s a possible $15,000.00 in your pocket from one investor and one property. This is a very average deal. Can you use an extra $15,000.00 right now?
   2. Use your license to work with rental investors. Rental investors, like me, typically grow from buying small rentals to buying larger and larger buildings costing more and more money and therefore earning you larger and larger commissions! And there’s more.
   3. When you work with rental investors, at some point they will require property management. And you’re just the person to provide it! Assume they had ten units with an average rent of $1,000.00 and you charged 10%. You could earn $1,000.00 residual income per month for coordinating rent collection and maintenance calls – maybe 5-10 hours per month. You could also earn a leasing fee equal to one month’s rent every time you fill a vacancy. Assume that is one per month (turnover rates are actually higher). Now you’re up to $2,000.00 per month. That’s only 10 units. Imagine if you had 100 units. Get the picture?
   4. Working with wholesalers can also produce substantial income. There are some basic rules to follow if you are an agent who wholesales or who serves investors who do. I dive into that in little more detail in my book “Path to Profit, Investors Vs. Agents”. For now, suffice it to say that you can profit handsomely by doing this the right way where everybody wins.
   5. You get far more referrals from investors to other investors and owner/occupants than you ever will form owner occupants alone. Think about it. When an owner occupant signs the settlement sheet, they only want to get the key to their new house, unload the truck and jump in the pool. You are now in their past. Now imagine your investor after closing. Later that day that investor will be hanging around with his neighbors, co-workers and/or family members and proudly showcasing his latest exploit. They invariably will ask him how he is doing all of this and he will invariably say “Oh, I have this awesome Investor-Agent who knows how to help me get the best deals”. Can you see now why I always got so many referrals from my investors – without me even asking?
   6. As a result of working with investors, you will by default get their owner occupant business and that of their tenants who are looking to buy their own homes. If you don’t want to be a traditional agent (and I didn’t either), you can refer these deals to traditional agents and earn a 25% referral fee for doing so!
   7. Before long you will find yourself needing to build a team around yourself in order to keep growing and profiting. This will be expanded upon in the next two sections.

If all you did is what I just described in #5 above you would be able to live life in the lap of luxury. But it doesn’t end there. That is only the beginning. This is where things really get interesting.

6. Quickly build and grow your own brokerage business to a 7 figure income stream.

Assuming you have made the wise decision to implement what I did and is described above you may now be ready to go from linear growth to exponential growth. It may now be time to create your own brokerage business. The details of this endeavor are well beyond the scope of this book. However, just imagine if you had 5, 10, or how about 50 agents doing what I described above and you as the owner of this new brokerage company got a piece of every pie that came through your agent’s respective doors. I grew my brokerage company from 8 agents at launch to 50 agents in less than three years. This all occurred during the great recession when all other brokerage companies were shrinking. My brokerage company, Win Realty Advisors, was the fastest growing brokerage company in Western Pennsylvania during this time. I focused on investors while all others who were focusing on owner-occupants were going out of business. I actually grew a pretty profitable owner occupant business as a result.

7. Follow the clear path to creating a Property Management business.

What will soon follow is the next logical step in your growing empire. Start your own property management business. Your investors will want it. You can provide it. Start small and develop the skills and systems necessary to create and grow this rock solid profit producer. I started with my own units. When I had systems and people in the place I added about 40 of my client’s units. When I mastered the business of managing other people’s properties at the level I started to take referrals. In less than three years I grew to almost 700 units. I spent almost no money on advertising. It was virtually all done by word of mouth. This is a very stable business because your income comes off of the top of your client’s income. You can earn income from charging the vendors who you hire to serve your clients a fee. You get to keep late fees. You get to keep application fees. I haven’t even described what happens when you start marketing. Suffice it to say that you can grow quite rapidly when you grow properly.

8. In conclusion, it’s not an “OR” world, it’s an “AND” world. Investors should get their real estate license and serve other investors, thereby, opening up a very relevant and easy to implement a line of business that compliments and leverages their already existing investing activities. I was able to leverage my license as an income producing asset just like a rental property and run it like a business because I saw an opportunity and I seized it. I walked the talk. I produced results because I am an investor and I leverage not just my investing activities but my knowledge and experience to serve other investors and I have been amply rewarded for this and so can you.

About the Author:

Gary Wilson is widely considered the leading authority on teaching Real Estate Investors and Agents alike how to leverage what they’re already doing and create massive new wealth and income.

Gary has been investing in Real Estate for nearly 30 years building a rental portfolio worth millions of dollars, flipping other properties and even wholesaling. He has been a licensed Real Estate agent for more than a dozen years and Broker for more than half of that time, creating the fastest growing Real Estate brokerage company in Pennsylvania during the Great Recession, while others were shrinking by 50%. Gary also went onto creating an Appraisal business, a Title Closing business and a Property Management business that grew from 40 units to nearly 500 in less than 3 years with virtually no marketing costs.

Gary has grown into a sought-after speaker, writer, teacher and coach to investors and agents across the world. Fortunes have been made by those who follow Gary and implement his systems of creating massive wealth and income by using their Real License as an income producing asset to serve the Real Estate Investment community

Gary spends his personal time participating in high adventure activities, visiting friends and family far and wide and promoting his greatest accomplishment – The Healing House Foundation. A portion of all proceeds from Gary’s business ventures goes towards the support of the Healing House Foundation – a Non-Profit venture that serves families who are healing and rebuilding their loving relationships after suffering from the wounds caused by the illness of addiction of a loved one.

Getting my real estate license was probably the greatest single improvement I made in my real estate investing business. It not only made investing easier for me, but it also opened up doors for creating massive wealth and income that produced profits far exceeding what I was making on my investments alone. There are seven basic benefits that I gained by getting my real estate license. They are:

1. Direct access to information and properties.
   1. It gives you direct access to real estate information related to the properties themselves. Zillow, Trulia, Realto.com, etc. are all leech systems. In other words, they get the bulk of their data from the one true source, the MLS! What’s even worse is that their data isn’t complete and they don’t have adequate systems in place to keep the data current. For example, have you ever seen Zillow attempt to display a multi-unit property correctly? They can’t get it right because their systems are designed to focus on single family homes! And when a property gets sold it looks like it still active for sometimes months! What’s most important is that when you are an agent data from the MLS is available to you in abundance and much of it just can’t be gotten anywhere else. This can broaden your investing activities and achievements. One of the best developments recently is that a lot of MLS systems are now integrated with the local tax records.
   2. You also get a keypad that allows you to have direct access to properties that are for sale. You can make arrangements to see properties yourself without being dependent on another agent to gain access.
2. Access to a new world of tools.

Getting your real estate license makes it possible for you to participate in further education that you wouldn’t get otherwise providing you with even more tools of the trade like hundreds of contracts, disclosures, notices, addendums, spreadsheets, calculators, checklists, and marketing tools and techniques you can use to attract more sellers and buyers of your investment properties.

3. Grow your network

Getting your real estate license opens up a whole new world to you allowing you to develop a prosperous, vibrant, and robust network of colleagues on a global scale. Every one of your new contacts could be a new source of properties, funding for your investments, sellers and buyers not just in your hometown but literally anywhere!

4. Make and keep your own commissions.

Even if all you did was get your license for yourself you can now earn and keep your own commissions, you could use those commissions to buy more properties. You could use those commissions to offset the sales price or expenses related to the purchase or sale of properties. It not only gives you a source of income it gives you another tool in your arsenal of negotiating strategies!

5. Quickly develop an additional six-figure system that provides wealth and income in any economy anywhere. The world of possibilities is almost limitless here! It all starts with you using your license to serve your fellow investors. For example:
   1. Use your license to work with Flippers. You earn a commission when they buy the property. You earn a commission when they sell the property. And you may even earn a commission if you find the buyer for their property. This essentially could give you three commissions from one client and one property! Let’s say they bought the house for $100,000. Then after they remodeled they sold it for $200,000. Assuming 3% commission per side (listing side and selling side), you would earn $3,000.00 ($100,000.00 X 3%) on the first transaction as the selling agent, $6,000.00 on the second transaction as the listing agent ($200,000.00 X 3%) and possibly $6,000.00 again on the second transaction if you are also the selling agent who brought the buyer. That’s a possible $15,000.00 in your pocket from one investor and one property. This is a very average deal. Can you use an extra $15,000.00 right now?
   2. Use your license to work with rental investors. Rental investors, like me, typically grow from buying small rentals to buying larger and larger buildings costing more and more money and therefore earning you larger and larger commissions! And there’s more.
   3. When you work with rental investors, at some point they will require property management. And you’re just the person to provide it! Assume they had ten units with an average rent of $1,000.00 and you charged 10%. You could earn $1,000.00 residual income per month for coordinating rent collection and maintenance calls – maybe 5-10 hours per month. You could also earn a leasing fee equal to one month’s rent every time you fill a vacancy. Assume that is one per month (turnover rates are actually higher). Now you’re up to $2,000.00 per month. That’s only 10 units. Imagine if you had 100 units. Get the picture?
   4. Working with wholesalers can also produce substantial income. There are some basic rules to follow if you are an agent who wholesales or who serves investors who do. I dive into that in little more detail in my book “Path to Profit, Investors Vs. Agents”. For now, suffice it to say that you can profit handsomely by doing this the right way where everybody wins.
   5. You get far more referrals from investors to other investors and owner/occupants than you ever will form owner occupants alone. Think about it. When an owner occupant signs the settlement sheet, they only want to get the key to their new house, unload the truck and jump in the pool. You are now in their past. Now imagine your investor after closing. Later that day that investor will be hanging around with his neighbors, co-workers and/or family members and proudly showcasing his latest exploit. They invariably will ask him how he is doing all of this and he will invariably say “Oh, I have this awesome Investor-Agent who knows how to help me get the best deals”. Can you see now why I always got so many referrals from my investors – without me even asking?
   6. As a result of working with investors, you will by default get their owner occupant business and that of their tenants who are looking to buy their own homes. If you don’t want to be a traditional agent (and I didn’t either), you can refer these deals to traditional agents and earn a 25% referral fee for doing so!
   7. Before long you will find yourself needing to build a team around yourself in order to keep growing and profiting. This will be expanded upon in the next two sections.

If all you did is what I just described in #5 above you would be able to live life in the lap of luxury. But it doesn’t end there. That is only the beginning. This is where things really get interesting.

6. Quickly build and grow your own brokerage business to a 7 figure income stream.

Assuming you have made the wise decision to implement what I did and is described above you may now be ready to go from linear growth to exponential growth. It may now be time to create your own brokerage business. The details of this endeavor are well beyond the scope of this book. However, just imagine if you had 5, 10, or how about 50 agents doing what I described above and you as the owner of this new brokerage company got a piece of every pie that came through your agents’ respective doors. I grew my brokerage company from 8 agents at launch to 50 agents in less than three years. This all occurred during the great recession when all other brokerage companies were shrinking. My brokerage company, Win Realty Advisors, was the fastest growing brokerage company in Western Pennsylvania during this time. I focused on investors while all others who were focusing on owner-occupants were going out of business. I actually grew a pretty profitable owner occupant business as a result.

7. Follow the clear path to creating a Property Management business.

What will soon follow is the next logical step in your growing empire. Start your own property management business. Your investors will want it. You can provide it. Start small and develop the skills and systems necessary to create and grow this rock solid profit producer. I started with my own units. When I had systems and people in the place I added about 40 of my client’s units. When I mastered the business of managing other people’s properties at the level I started to take referrals. In less than three years I grew to almost 700 units. I spent almost no money on advertising. It was virtually all done by word of mouth. This is a very stable business because your income comes off of the top of your client’s income. You can earn income from charging the vendors who you hire to serve your clients a fee. You get to keep late fees. You get to keep application fees. I haven’t even described what happens when you start marketing. Suffice it to say that you can grow quite rapidly when you grow properly.

1. In conclusion, it’s not an “OR” world, it’s an “AND” world. Investors should get their real estate license and serve other investors, thereby, opening up a very relevant and easy to implement a line of business that compliments and leverages their already existing investing activities. I was able to leverage my license as an income producing asset just like a rental property and run it like a business because I saw an opportunity and I seized it. I walked the talk. I produced results because I am an investor and I leverage not just my investing activities but my knowledge and experience to serve other investors and I have been amply rewarded for this and so can you.

About the Author:

Gary Wilson is widely considered the leading authority on teaching Real Estate Investors and Agents alike how to leverage what they’re already doing and create massive new wealth and income.

Gary has been investing in Real Estate for nearly 30 years building a rental portfolio worth millions of dollars, flipping other properties and even wholesaling. He has been a licensed Real Estate agent for more than a dozen years and Broker for more than half of that time, creating the fastest growing Real Estate brokerage company in Pennsylvania during the Great Recession, while others were shrinking by 50%. Gary also went onto creating an Appraisal business, a Title Closing business and a Property Management business that grew from 40 units to nearly 500 in less than 3 years with virtually no marketing costs.

Gary has grown into a sought-after speaker, writer, teacher and coach to investors and agents across the world. Fortunes have been made by those who follow Gary and implement his systems of creating massive wealth and income by using their Real License as an income producing asset to serve the Real Estate Investment community

Gary spends his personal time participating in high adventure activities, visiting friends and family far and wide and promoting his greatest accomplishment – The Healing House Foundation.

A portion of all proceeds from Gary’s business ventures goes towards the support of the Healing House Foundation – a Non-Profit venture that serves families who are healing and rebuilding their loving relationships after suffering from the wounds caused by the illness of addiction of a loved one.

A Path of self-discovery exploding the myths while building massive wealth and income

I learned early on in my real estate investing career that virtually all real estate agents were only educated for and interested in helping you and I buy and sell our own homes. They really didn’t know or understand the investing side of real estate.  As a result, within my first year of investing, I decided to get my own real estate license to make my investing life a little easier. Consequently I learned some valuable lessons about the rules of engagement for real estate investors and agents! More about that later but first I want to share with you the biggest problems I saw and myths that I busted. For example:

1. Investors think they are saving money by not using and even avoiding real estate agents as much as possible.
   1. This is such a limiting belief and is easily busted. When we step back and look at our investing activities and they are focused solely on FSBO’s (For sale by owner), owner financing, expired listings (They didn’t sell using a real estate agent), people going through pre-foreclosure, divorce, bankruptcy, etc. and we don’t use one of the greatest information tools available – the MLS (multi listing service) available through real estate agents, we are missing the majority of the investing opportunities that are out there. So, on the acquisition side of the business, we are leaving a tremendous number of potential opportunities untapped. Furthermore, any commission due is customarily paid by the seller.
   2. On the selling side of an investment, by not using a real estate agent, who provides the MLS, we are not marketing to the majority of consumers who are using real estate agents to find properties for them to buy. The truth of the matter is that when you sell your investment property though as real estate agent, that agent is actually marketing to the thousands of other agents who are then providing the information to their buying clients. So instead of you trying to do it all yourself and maybe tapping into 1% of the potential buying marketplace you can now have not one but potentially thousands of real estate agents working to sell your property! Furthermore, who do you think would be inclined to pay more for your property? People looking to buy For Sale By Owner or people who use a real estate agent? Statistics conclusively show that on average, properties sell for closer to list price and in less time using a real estate agent than without. In fact, it’s not even close!
2. Real Estate agents believe that real estate investors are cheap.
   1. While there are many investment transactions that are small in price there is no law that says an agent has to take a relatively small commission. Actually, a good agent, an agent who really knows the investing rules of engagement and how to work with investors, is worth their weight in gold and as such should ask for and receive a minimum commission. The wise Investor Agent, asks for and receives, minimum commissions based on an assumed 3% of the medium sales price for the area. I did this when representing other investors. But this pales in comparison to the true value of building long term relationships with investors.
   2. The real beauty of this Investor agent relationship is that many investors, including mine, evolve and grow their portfolios to include bigger and better properties with bigger and better list prices and therefore bigger and better commissions for you. When you read my Investor Agent you can see that I have made some pretty substantial commissions, in the 10’s of thousands, on a lot of these transactions.
3. Investors think they don’t need agents because now everything is online through systems like Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com, etc.
   1. First of all, these systems, Zillow, Trulia, Realto.com, etc. are all leech systems. In other words, they get the bulk of their data form the one true source, the MLS! What’s even worse is that their data isn’t complete and they don’t have adequate systems in place to keep the data current. For example, have you ever seen Zillow attempt to display a multi-unit property correctly? They can’t get it right because their systems are designed to focus on single family homes! And when a property gets sold it looks like it still active for sometimes months! Ridiculous.
   2. What’s most important though is that when you use an agent and data from the MLS you make available to yourself an abundance of tools and information that just can’t be gotten anywhere else and can broaden your investing activities and achievements. One of the best developments recently is that a lot of MLS systems are now integrated with the local tax records. How do you like them apples!
4. Agents think investors only buy run down pieces of junk.
   1. Actually, Good investors, the kind you will work with, look for the best property at the best price and needing the least amount of work relative to perceived value after repairs are made. In other words, while there are investors who focus on war zone properties because they think that’s all they can afford, the better investors focus on moderate income areas for rentals, particularly multi units, and middle class, and in some areas, upper middle class and even luxury neighborhoods for flips.
   2. I personally have made a ton of money working with flippers because I earn a commission when they first buy the property. I earn a commission when they sell it for profit. And I can even earn a third commission if I bring the buyer! How about that – one client, one property, three commissions!
5. Investors believe they can do much better investing without agents.
   1. The bottom line is this; you can make good money investing in real estate. You can make incredible money with a team of rock stars working on your behalf. You spend time to build relationships for financing, title work, insurance, remodeling, inspectors and appraisers. Add one more, real sate agent, more specifically, Investor- Agent, and watch your wealth and income go form linear growth to growing exponentially!
6. Agents think investors are crooked and/or are breaking all the rules.
   99. This is simply a case of lack of education and information. As agents, we are trained by our brokers and other providers to focus virtually all our energy on owner occupants, who 99.9% of the time use traditional contracts, negotiating strategies, deal structuring. As a result, they are never exposed to the whole wide world of techniques and strategies available in real estate. While real estate is the only body of contract law that is required to be in writing in order to be supported in the court of law, there can be an infinite number of variations in how sales agreements and negotiations are structured. Plain language laws do come into play now so I have a solution for investors and agents.
   100. Use the pre-approved real estate agreements that are provided by your state’s board. Then add addendums to present the language that you require to make your deal work for you. Addendums override the agreement they are amending. I do this and it works every time. Agents, remember, when an investor wants something out of the ordinary, it isn’t crooked its creative!
7. In conclusion, it’s not an “OR” world, it’s an “AND” world. Instead of operating in a world that is mutually exclusive, the worlds of investors and agents intersects in a way that can and should be immensely profitable for both. Investors should get their real estate license and serve other investors, thereby, opening up a very relevant and easy to implement line of business that compliments and leverages their already existing investing activities. Agents should further leverage the use of their real estate license to serve investors, thereby leverage what they are already doing and as a result they will learn how to invest themselves – the right way and really expand and grow their wealth and income!

About the Author:

Gary Wilson is widely considered the leading authority on teaching Real Estate Investors and Agents alike how to leverage what they’re already doing and create massive new wealth and income.

Gary has been investing in Real Estate for nearly 30 years building a rental portfolio worth millions of dollars, flipping other properties and even wholesaling. He has been a licensed Real Estate agent for more than a dozen years and Broker for more than half of that time, creating the fastest growing Real Estate brokerage company in Pennsylvania during the Great Recession, while others were shrinking by 50%. Gary also went onto create an Appraisal business, a Title Closing business and a Property Management business that grew from 40 units to nearly 500 in less than 3 years with virtually no marketing costs.

Gary has grown into a sought after speaker, writer, teacher and coach to investors and agents across the world. Fortunes have been made by those who follow Gary and implement his systems of creating massive wealth and income by using their Real License as an income producing asset to serve the Real Estate Investment community

Gary spends his personal time participating in high adventure activities, visiting friends and family far and wide and promoting his greatest accomplishment – The Healing House Foundation.

A portion of all proceeds from Gary’s business ventures goes towards the support of the Healing House Foundation – a Non-Profit venture that serves families who are healing and rebuilding their loving relationships after suffering from the wounds caused by the illness of addiction of a loved one.