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If you live in a rented space and you are tired of coming home to a sterile environment that does not feel like home, there are plenty of things you can do to create a home that is unique and all your own. All it takes is a bit of careful planning, a few creative ideas, and a few afternoons focused on personalizing the space. First, you need to find out what you are allowed to do to the space without breaking your lease. Some landlords are very specific about what you can and cannot do in a space. They have no problem with your living in the space but there you are not allowed to do anything to change it. Others allow you to make changes as long as you return them to their original condition before vacating the premises. Other landlords are fine with you making changes as long as they are reasonable changes. You could paint the walls a different color but they would prefer it not be black or blood red. Those living in Cincinnati rental apartments may find they are allowed to make a variety of changes depending on where they are located. Speak with your landlord ahead of time so you do not jeopardize your security deposit, and then set out to make your space your very own. Like other places, apartments Cincinnati will allow you to make changes that make your space more comfortable and more like home.

If you are able to paint your rented space, this is the best place to begin. Paint offers dramatic change and can really make a space personal. If you need to paint over it when you move on, you may want to use lighter colors. However, if you have your heart set on darker, brighter colors, it will just take a coat of primer to hide your handiwork. Next, consider what you can do to the floors to make the space softer and warmer. Obviously you will not be able to rip up carpet or cover hardwoods, but you can get area rugs that are large enough to cover just about every square inch of space. The rugs will not only change the color of the space, it will make it feel more comfortable and warm. Best of all, you do not need to worry about area rugs having an effect on your lease.

Once you have changed the walls and floors, you can move onto the accessories. This will have nothing to do with your lease or your landlord and it is a great way to change a space that cannot be painted. You can set the tone for any space with accessories, so do not worry if you have only a plain white box to deal with. You can turn even the most mundane area into something exciting with brightly-colored, personal accessories. Before you know it, your rented space will feel exactly as if you have been living in it for years and as if it is your home.

Studying real estate investing in Canada is a challenge. The United States has a plethora of Real Estate Guru’s selling their wares. In the north, there are fewer choices, albeit likely teaching more fundamentally solid techniques. Alternatively one can jump on the bandwagon in the US, get a general overview of creative real estate by learning what the possibilities could be, discover if they could be applied to Canada, or perhaps invest in the US from Canada.

You can learn quite a lot from the American Gurus and to a certain extent for free! I will introduce you to Canadian and US courses in this article. Personally I’ve found like most things, the more you know, the more you know how much more there is to know, so one course is probably not enough. Perhaps everyone’s path is very different, gathering information as you go. Here is a snippet of mine.

The More you Know, the More you Know there is to Know.

A uniquely Canadian way of learning is by joining the “Real Estate Investment Network” which is Calgary based, although groups meet across the country once a month. They have a fee to join for a 17 month period. There is an annual weekend with speakers held across the country. I haven’t joined, but I get the impression there are countless seasoned investors to network with, find mentors, support and build your dream team. I like the idea of the monthly meetings, where there is ongoing in person support, whereas with the courses in the US, there might be a take home course, or a weekend boot camp; but from then on, you are almost entirely on your own.

There are some excellent books by Ron Campbell, the founder of REIN, and would recommend “Real Estate Investing in Canada” and “97 Tips for Canadian Real Estate Investors”. The books and club are very strong in fundamentals, although not terribly creative in technique and financing. They have various study at home courses, and apparently they are preparing a course which will be more creative. You can go to my blog for more information and links to REIN. If you go to their website, you can join in some of the forum topics.

Another group, based in Toronto, but in other areas of Canada also, is Preig Canada. You can join the website and become a member for free, where there is a forum and many articles updated daily. I’ve been to a number of monthly meetings, and they are worth the fee of admission. You will be presented with high quality information and people there. Many are very knowledgeable active creative investors, and others who can become part of your team. If you would like to learn creative techniques in how to find properties and financing in Canada, this is probably where to find it. Although, unfortunately the price of the courses has increased exponentially since last year. Perhaps Navtaj Chandoke, the founder, will give a special group rate if a number of people want to learn from him. Contact me and perhaps I can put some people together.

A worthy American Guru to check out is Larry Goins from Charlotte, NC. He has proved himself to be honest, the real deal, and I am comfortable recommending his courses and the team behind him. Unlike many guru’s offices’, if you want an answer to a question, someone will always answer the phone, and it might even be Larry himself. Larry has a new course hot off the press called Filthy Riches. It presents another way to take advantage of the low price of real estate in the US, and do it from Canada. You can watch the webinar about “Filthy Riches” from a link from my blog.

Free Webinars will introduce one to what the possibilities could be.

When you are on one guru’s email list, they will introduce you to other investors in the form of presenting each other in Webinars. Start with getting on Larry Goins list perhaps. This is an excellent and free way to learn seemingly endless ways and approaches there might be to invest in real estate. Like wild fire, you get on more and more people’s lists, and one learns a lot. To tell you the truth, almost the entire gist of a course is given in a webinar, except for a few secrets. However if you feel compelled enough to implement a technique, it’s probably best to buy the course. It will likely include some sort of support too. Often there is a way to get the course for free if you choose to do business with the guru later, or by providing a testimonial if you’ve had success. Most courses will have some sort of guarantee also.

From Canada, one could attend auctions in some areas of the US to pick up cheap properties to fix and flip, just flip or hold,and rent with property management. In Toronto, red hot real estate seems too expensive to cashflow. There is a very reasonable course teaching due diligence, offered by a lawyer named Darius Barazendeh who is based in Houston, Texas. I went to Houston to implement buying property in Tax Auctions, although too many people have flooded Houston with the same idea forcing property to be auctioned for 80% of market value.. I believe the technique could work in Upper State New York, or perhaps Florida.

Another Canadian alternative is RevNue, who offers a similar American Style take home course. They have a website, and newsletter also. The take home course isn’t open to new students all the time, as they provide 6 months of email support, and the husband and wife team can’t support too many people at a time. This might be the most economical ways to learn I’ve found in Canada. The couple are open and honest unlike some of the fly-by-night american gurus. The take home course is only $397!

American and Canadian students, and peers seem to be impressed with courses offered by Dave Lindahl. He specializes in Commercial Real Estate, namely apartments, and multi-family property. He has several courses, a take home course and several types of boot-camps in many aspects of buying commercial real estate and managing the managers. He claims there isn’t much more work in buying very big properties, than buying a Single Family house, and dispells the myth that one needs a lot of money to do it. I’ve read a couple good books he wrote “Emerging Real Estate Markets”, and “Multi-family Millions “.

Using creative techniques one can buy property for a fraction of market value in Canada, although probably not in the biggest cities, but perhaps in an emerging market. You might want to look into taking advantage of the low priced properties in the US also. Where in Canada can one buy a house for $5000? You can be very creative with that! By the time you are well versed, property in the US might hit close to the bottom of the cycle, I doubt it is there yet. I am getting myself situated in terms of a market or 2 in the US, and have my tax and incorporation worked out, so I’ll be ready to pounce.

Creative real estate investing is a term used these days for non-traditional methods of buying and selling a property. There are numerous such unconventional and originative methods that are used today, and some such methods are briefly mentioned as follows:

Become a Bird-dog:

A bird dog is the one who persuades both the buyers and sellers for the best deal and gets paid for his efforts to do so. There is no risk of losing money, since a bird- dog does not have to invest anything. Thus, bird dog is a great method of making money in real estate investing without taking any risk. Persuading skills are all you need to get started!

Enjoy Seller’s Financing:

This method has many advantages and some disadvantages as well. Among the advantages, it is feasible for both the parties specifically for huge properties that cannot find traditional buyers to be able to pay in one go. Also, it lessens the closing costs for both the seller and the buyer. The seller is benefited from giving the loan as he would receive a higher price whereas it is a great option for the buyer if he cannot qualify for any other kind of loan. Among the disadvantages of seller financing, the buyer can end up paying more than the real price of the property as he does not get the mortgage insurance or property appraisal. And the Seller may not be able to get a check on the credibility of the buyer which poses threats of default in the future.

Become a Wholesaler:

This is a type of real estate investing in which the wholesaler receives the task of selling the seller’s property. As soon as this deal is assured, he sells it to an investor. Thus, the property is finally purchased by the investor. Generally, it is related to brokerage since a broker charges fee for finding a property owner who wants to sell off his property and then selling his property to a potential buyer. Nevertheless, wholesalers have a far more difficult task as they have to find both the buyers and sellers for the same property. This work requires a lot of persistence and efforts to find a motivated seller, persuading him to have a deal with you, and then finally selling it to a property investor.

Don’t forget Bank!

Bank is just as good of an alternative in creative real estate investing. In this case, the seller purchases huge pieces of property from bank. He then sells these properties to potential buyers in smaller units. Here you can act clever by purchasing an old used-up property, and then you can renovate it and make it attractive and then make huge profits by selling it.

Leasing the Property Works!

Leasing is for those people who do not qualify for a normal mortgage because of notorious credit rating. In such difficult circumstance, lease options provide an innovative way of making bucks in real estate. It maybe called as a rent-to-own agreement. Leasing is a general term, which means that an individual rents a property or an item for certain duration. After that duration, he has an option whether to buy that item or property or not. Due to the economic slowdown, it has become very difficult to sell a property; therefore, many people are averting towards leasing.

Leasing is very feasible as it gives the investor an option to get control of the property in least amount of cash. If the real estate market goes up, he can practice his choice to purchase the property or he can have someone else buy it.

Moreover, if a person has a lease option and he wishes to make some additional bucks, he can sub-lease the property to other prospective end-buyers.

When I bought my first property back in the 80’s you basically had to have about 20% down in cash and get a mortgage from the bank for the other 80%. Of coarse you could put more than 20$down if you had it but that was about the minimum banks and insurance companies would settle for.

Most people though couldn’t get the 20% down payment so lenders had to become a little more flexible over the years and so now things are quite different indeed.

Today, whether you’re going for your first home or looking at an investment property there are more creative options for buying real estate.

Flipping

If you’re strictly thinking investing for a quick profit, then the fastest method is a quick flip. This requires you hunting around for a great deal, buy it, get the contract and sell it immediately at fair market value. The profits will depend on how big of a discount you were able to get on it, but making $2,000 to $10,000 is doable in many markets.

Pre-construction

If you look at new developments such as planned communities and condos many builders will fund a loan for 5% of the total asking price. Here the deal isn’t in the price but in the financing.

Second mortgage

A more common method is to get yourself a second mortgage on your existing property. This way you can come up with 5% of a down payment and the bank lends you the other 15% using the equity on your property. This second mortgage will have a higher interest rate than your first.

Also keep in mind in this second mortgage case you need to buy private mortgage insurance since the 20% down payment was not all yours. This can be removed in the future when your second property goes up in value. This is called your loan-to-value ratio, meaning when you are at 80-20 again (you now would own 20% of the properties actual value because it’s market value increased over the last year or 2).

Subject-to

There’s many variations with a subject-to deal. In a typical one the seller deeds you the property leaving his existing mortgage in place, meaning you don’t legally assume the loan because it’s still in his name. Nevertheless, you are making payments and the property is in your name so this can work. He is covered too because if you default it’s not his house that will be foreclosed, it’s yours.

Limited partnership

Create more wealth for yourself by investing with someone else. Half of something is better than nothing, and for someone who may be struggling to get that first purchase a partnership may be the only way to get your foot in the door.

Government loan programs

There are various government loan programs the general public is not always aware about, but these are for low income families and military service people and are usually limited for families intending to use the property as their personal residence.

Credit

Secure a credit line from your bank. This is easy if you have built up some equity on your existing property. The interest rate on a credit line is usually much lower than a credit card.

It’s possible to buy a property with credit cards. The downside to this method is the substantially higher interest rates, lenders look at all outstanding debt when deciding to grant a loan on the remaining balance. Taking out a cash advance to cover a shortfall between the needed 5-20 percent down will usually get you turned down.

Family money

If you can get money from family members you will need to convince the bank that it’s a gift and not a loan, otherwise they view it as more debt, decreasing the amount they will qualify for you.

Interest only mortgage

A creative real estate investing mortgage idea that has become popular over the last few years is a interest only mortgage. There are some pro and cons with this one. Your payments are only covering the interest on the loan and nothing toward the principle. This can be great for short term situations.

Years ago I watched a late-night television infomercial selling some course on creative real estate investing. As I recall, the author of the course suggested – among other things – that you could use your car for a down payment and get sellers to finance everything. You could also split a home into a duplex he said. He really did have a lot of creative ideas for investing, but it wasn’t clear that any of them had ever worked for him or if they were just ideas he had. For this article, then, I want to stick to true stories – creative techniques that have actually been used.

An investor I know used to buy run-down houses, fix them up and sell them for a profit. He was always looking for new ways to buy for less or add more value to a home. In a competitive market with many investors looking at the same properties he had to take creative real estate investing very seriously to find the opportunities.

One project that I helped him with was a bi-level home with two bedrooms. Like many homes of this type, the lower level was unfinished, a basement of sorts, but with larger windows than you normally get on a basement. Other investors had passed on the property because there wasn’t enough profit to be made cleaning it up and reselling it. My friend saw the potential of that lower level.

He chose a corner with a window and had two walls built. An outlet, a ten-by-ten-foot piece of carpeting, and a door completed the bedroom. Total cost: $1,500 or so (this was more than fifteen years ago). Now it was a three bedroom home. He made repairs and improved the landscaping, but that bedroom alone probably added $10,000 to the value of the house. Few investors at the time were thinking about adding bedrooms to homes, because they assumed that doing so was a $10,000 project. They didn’t notice that the corners of basements already had two walls, a floor and ceiling – most of a bedroom.

This same investor met his match with a small house that had no place to park a car. When he bought the property he assumed the city would approve paving what little front yard there was. They refused. Between the house and the neighbors fence there was about six feet of space. My friend tried to buy five feet of the neighbors property (promising to pay the cost of moving the fence as well) to create enough space for a narrow driveway. The neighbor refused. A home without a place to park in a town where it was illegal to park on the street at night was a tough sell. He managed to make a couple thousand dollars anyhow after cleaning up the house and wholesaling it to another investor.

The other investor found the solution. A month later I rode by and saw that he had actually removed the living room wall and moved it in four feet. Higher up it angled back out to the roof line. Sure enough, there was a car parked in the space created below. I’m not sure what the engineering challenges or costs were for this, but I do know that he sold the home for more than twice what he paid. That’s a great example of creative real estate investing.

Creativity At Every Step

Many books and articles on creative real estate investing focus on financing. That does seem to be the biggest challenge for many investors, but don’t limit your creativity to how to borrow. As the examples above show, you can also get creative in adding value to the investments you make. In fact, look for creative alternatives at every step.

For example, to save money selling a small piece of land, I skipped using a real estate agent in favor of just offering good terms. I got a higher price in that way too. And then I closed the deal sitting with the buyers in a restaurant (not recommended these days), to save the cost of a closing company.

A friend bought a home and soon after sold half the trees on it (they were too thick for his tastes) to a lumber company for several thousand dollars. It looked the same to me afterwards. It made me wonder if there were some opportunities around to buy land, sell the resources (another local sold the gravel that made up a hill on his land), and then sell the land for as much or more as the original purchase price.

To find properties you might train your kids to screen listings online for you. To help finance deals you might buy a smaller home to free up equity for investment. Offers can include services or things other than money as part of the down payment. Property uses can be changed to increase value (making a duplex into a single-family home sometimes makes it more valuable – or vice-versa). Creative real estate investing is definitely not limited to finding new financing options.

As the internet continues to grow and evolve, people are facing many new opportunities to make a name for themselves. Websites are a great way to get your information out there and show people what you have to offer. However, they are only effective if they are well designed by professional website designers. If you’re looking for the best professional creative services on offer, you need to make sure that you consider all of the elements that go into choosing the right company to work with.

For starters, you need to find reputable services with experience in the industry. Website designers do not become professionals overnight, and the more experience they have, the more they can do for you. Take a minute to look at projects that they’ve done in the past, read customer testimonials, and learn about their company or the individual web designers themselves. Just make sure that you feel that you know everything that you need to know so that you can make the best decision for your needs. Another thing to look at is the cost of the services versus the included features. What you get for the price you have to pay is important.

That said, many people make the mistake of considering cost alone when they deal with professional website designers, and this is not an effective way of choosing. You have to compare the prices to the services that you get so that you can choose the design firm that gives you the most for your money. Once you’ve found a company that has a great reputation and offers you a good deal on the services that you get compared to their costs, you will be much closer to starting your design project. However, you still need to talk to the companies and get a feel for what they can offer you by asking for a consultation or quote of their services.

Getting all of this information about different website designers might seem like a lot of hassle, but it is well worth the effort. When your website turns out to be a top-quality site that gets a lot of interest, you will be grateful that you took the time to figure everything out. You can’t just hire the first person that you find, because you will never know what type of work they are capable of or the quality of their finished products. Always plan ahead and take the time to research your options to find the best solutions for your web design needs.

Traditional real estate investing by definition involves the purchase, ownership, management, rental and/or sale of real estate for profit. Under this definition, real estate is an asset form with limited liquidity relative to other investments, and traditionally is highly dependent on cash flow, but when we look at creative ways of investing in real estate a lot more opportunities are open to us.

So what are some creative ways to obtain financing? There are many but here are some of the most popular to list a few:

Partnerships are fairly common because this is first thing a lot of real estate investors think about doing when they start out. They want to find somebody who can put up the money and split the deal with them fifty-fifty. This is an option but there are better ways to make a lot more.

Hard Money Lenders are individuals or companies that have cash ready for you to borrow. This is usually a much better alternative than traditional banks since it is a good source for getting funds quickly even if you have a low credit score. Many hard money lenders don’t like to lend more than 65% of the fair market value of a real estate property, so the better the deal, the more options you’ll have.

Private Lenders can be an even better alternative to hard money lenders because you can often arrange better terms since you are dealing with someone privately. Remember, a private lender can be anyone even friends or family. Everybody wins because you are offering them a much better rate of return than they will get in their savings or mutual funds and it’s secured by real estate.

“Subject to” Financing comes from the clause “subject to existing financing”. With this strategy you are leaving the existing financing in place and just taking over the payments on the sellers existing mortgage. Your name is not going on the loan. It will stay in the sellers name. There are other ways to do similar seller financing as well. This is an excellent strategy for those who have poor credit to begin investing quickly.

Wholesaling or Flipping are specific real estate investing strategies that are essentially creative solutions to eliminate the need for obtaining any funds at all. This is where you tie up a property at a discount (using an agreement) and then flip the property to another buyer or real estate investor for a quick profit. Because of this, it’s virtually risk free, there is no need for excessive cash, credit or financing, and you do no repairs or work yourself. This is why when it comes to making quick cash in real estate, this method of real estate investing is one the best routes to take not only for avoiding many of the financing headaches, it allows you to make cash more quickly for the real estate market today. I would encourage you to look at as many options as possible, then compare the terms of each. This way you will know what will work best for your individual circumstances.

Most people measure money by time. They believe that by working more hours they make more money.

Not a chance.

And it?s a perspective that?s hard to overcome. I?m telling you though, that the quality of your life depends on you overhauling your mind on this very important matter.

Let me tell you a secret. Once you grasp the true meaning behind these words, you?ll never look at time or money the same way again.

?Only ideas make money, not time.?

So how is it that time is not money? Look around you. What do you see. Lots of people who spend lots of time working. And working. Their income is stagnant except for the occasional raise to keep up with inflation. They are not breaking any ground financially. In fact, these workers are most likely accumulating more debt as we speak. Some of them have to work two jobs just to make ends meet.

But they keep thinking and hoping and praying that if they work hard enough, they?ll make a lot of money.

Nope. It doesn?t work that way.

Now turn your attention to successful writers, entrepreneurs, artists and business people. What do they all have in common.

They come up with a great idea. An idea that excites all their senses. And because the idea appeals to them, they naturally have great enthusiasm to implement that idea. They feel the joy of seeing that idea blossom and flourish. As a result, successful people keep creating and coming up with new ideas. They learn to discern which ideas work and have the confidence to discard those that don?t work.

Soon, ideas become as plentiful as apples on an apple tree. Which one to manifest ? becomes the question.

Let me tell you something Read more…

As our journey towards a simpler life continues we now realize that simplicity makes living frugal easy. We started our journey of voluntary simplicity to a simple life with the following definition in mind:
Simplicity is wanting less, Frugal is living with less

Our simplified lifestyle has resulted in us wanting less, but not going without! We now work at the things we love to do, reducing our stress levels dramatically. Our income has decreased substantially but yet we live comfortably. We went from a 6-digit income to a low 5-digit income, a major change financially. We now think of being frugal in relation to our money?getting more for less.

Before we make a purchase we now stop and think how many hours do we have to work to pay for this purchase? We question is there better ways to obtain this particular purchase. Our time is more valuable to us than money! Working for ourselves is worth more than money.

Being frugal is looking at ways to save money by implementing simple things: making rather than buying, purchasing second hand rather than new, being creative.

Living simply has resulted in us becoming more aware of the environment and the impact we have on it. We have learned more about Read more…