How long can prices rise before no one can afford to buy? In a nutshell, that is the basic question that is niggling at the back of our collective subconscious when we talk about the real estate bubble.

Real estate is appreciating at staggering rates – as much as 19% in some counties in Florida according to state officials. Meanwhile, on the financing scene, interest rates are low – and staying there. Low interest rates mean lower monthly mortgage payments – which means that many people are able to borrow MORE and afford larger mortgages and more expensive houses. Couple the astronomical increase in real estate value with the continuing trend of low interest rates, and you have a sizzling hot real estate market that just keeps getting hotter as investors jump on board to get their piece of the real estate pie.

Which leads people who know finances and the market to question how long it can last. A major part of that answer is in the question that opened this article. Prices will continue to rise until they reach the point where most people can no longer afford to buy.

Another part of the answer is in the fact that the real estate bubble is extremely localized – and it’s localized in some of the larger media centers around the country. Massachusetts, New York, Florida, California – those states are seeing unprecedented rises in housing and real estate prices. According to national reports, the median price for a home in the United States rose 14.7% over the last twelve months. That percentage is deceiving though. Take a look at some more local figures to get a clearer look at the reality.

If you live in Nevada, the median price of a home rose 31.2 percent. In California, home appreciation rose up 25.4. In Hawaii, the figure was 24.4 percent, in Washington, D.C., 22.2 percent and in Florida up 21.4 percent. Most of the rest of the country is NOT seeing those sorts of astronomical increases in value, though. If you’re buying in Mississippi, for instance, home prices have appreciated at a more reasonable 4.9%. Even in the Northeast, where a two bedroom home in Boston can easily sell for $400,000, if you take a short drive outside the city to the western half of the state, you’ll still find 3 and 4 bedroom homes selling in the low $100′s – and less.

What’s it all mean? Among other things, it means that the dangers of a real estate ‘crash’ are as localized as the effects of the real estate bubble. It means that the foreseen losses are more likely to be smaller profits rather than actual losses. To quote a Florida economist, “The people who think it’s a big bubble see a big crash. We just see deceleration. You don’t have to worry about house prices going down.”

The bad news may be for those who see real estate as a get-rich-quick proposition. One of the most popular investment ‘schemes’ of recent years has been ‘flipping houses’ – the practice of buying a house, then reselling it within a six to twelve months for a profit. When real estate prices are rising at 20 – 30% per year, there’s a great deal of money to be made that way. A down payment of $10,000 can effectively double or triple your money in less than a year. According to conservative estimates, though, real estate prices need to rise by at least 15% a year to even cover your closing costs if you sell in less than a year.

Does that mean that you’ll LOSE money on your purchase if real estate prices stabilize and drop back to their more usual 5 – 8% per year rise? Of course not! It simply means that real estate goes back to being what it has always been – a good, solid, long-term investment. It means that speculators looking to make a quick buck will have to re-adjust their expectations – and either find a different ‘product’ – or hold their properties longer before selling.

Either option is good news for the ‘classic’ real estate investor, or the average home buyer who is looking for an affordable house for himself and his family. Prices will stabilize and even drop a little – but the bottom won’t fall out of the real estate market. The typical real estate owner/investor will still end up with a house and land that’s worth more than what he paid for it. And all the naysayers and panic mongers can stop predicting the resounding crash of the real estate bubble falling to earth.

Is this a good time to buy a house? Andrew is the web owner of Home Buying and Home Selling Tips: How to buy a house and sell house fast!, a website that provides informational guide on home buying, selling house, home mortgage loan, foreclosure home, real estate investment, and more. Find the answer at his website: http://www.buy-and-sell-house-fast.com/

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How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers dispensing real estate investing information, but really selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple (“not easy”) concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker?

Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there? Like, “Yes Mr. Ker we do take traveler’s checks. Yes, cash is OK too. “HEY BARNEY DO YOU HAVE CHANGE FOR A HUNDRED??” There’s your kit Mr. Ker. Good Luck!”

I have to admit that’s where I began. I attended a “conference” and dropped over a grand in two days. What I ended up with was a very funny course about Paper (i.e. discounted mortgages) and a more somber account of making a million five in eighteen months buying and rehabbing multi-units.

I listened to tapes for about four days straight, then went out and bought an HP12C financial calculator. I loved paper (the units can wait a while). I really got my head around it. I loved discounting on the calculator, I loved calculating yields. And the guy on these tapes was so funny!

I spent a fun couple of weeks learning the courses and I knew more than most bankers because the guy on the tapes told me so. I wanted to get started and get a note-closing-sweatshop going just like he described. I knew this stuff inside and out.

Two deals a week would be OK with me you know, I’m not greedy. Now where was it in the book that it showed how to find the deals. OK…here we go … Look up names at the courthouse, call Accountants, call Contractors, call Attorneys……hmmm.

To cut a long story short, I looked up five hundred names at the courthouse and sent letters to them, I made about five hundred phone calls to Accountants and Lawyers (setting up my “network”), and finally I found one note holder who was interested in selling. I made an offer, he said “no”, and I went home and went to bed for two weeks… too depressed to function.

All that work, and this guy just said “no”.

That was my introduction to the wonderful world of real estate investing. From there, I got into low income apartments and completely flushed myself down the toilet!

Five years later, after buying and giving back about 50 units, newly penniless, I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property – not your cash.

I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive, and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful real estate investing information, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started.

The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they don’t know any better.

That is: “I know all this real estate investing information inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. But I’ve got to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold-calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell.

This is a crossroads. The proverbial “brick wall” for most of us.

And this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really “get” here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day.

Now, that’s obvious isn’t it?

Well it can’t be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I’m trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

And what is this shift? It is: Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That’s what it comes down to.

If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without a lot of customers.

Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute.

Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first, and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you’ll finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you (although this is not what is taught in how-to-do-it real estate investing information).

And this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

Look at Domino’s. A marketing machine! Very average pizza. But aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market.

Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you’d know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical “techies” who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing he rode Microsoft up over IBM to the $243B company it is today.

Of course this doesn’t mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You’ve got to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too.

After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. But more importantly, doing what you do so well that people can’t resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself.

Remember, it doesn’t matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to.

Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

OK, so, marketing. Really fabulous! But, what does it mean? So far it’s just a word I’ve said 10 or twenty times, right?

Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They haven’t been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their “problems” will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as “the solution” for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

I don’t want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here.

Pick up just about any book or course with real estate investing information or that is about creative real estate and you’ll find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any.

What you won’t find anywhere in those books, courses or real estate investing information is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing.

Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:

- A benefit-telegraphic headline

- A true marketing message

- An offer, or offers

- A reason to respond immediately

- Precise response instructions and mechanisms.

With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor: make offers to motivated sellers!

Hopefully you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It sifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you. In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals.

Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They don’t offer sellers anything more outstanding than you, do they? They are not privy to any real estate investing information that you are not. They certainly don’t offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They don’t have any better phone manner than you.

Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is: Create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That’s it! That’s the difference.

So did you get the message here? I hope so.

If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you’ll make the change.

Ben Innes-Ker is a father, best-selling author, and real estate investing warrior. He has developed the “Motivated Seller Magnet” to help real estate entrepreneurs attract more motivated sellers with less effort and increase profits. To receive your 23 page special report that reveals real estate investing information [http://www.motivatedsellermagnet.net] anyone can use to achieve this too, visit: [http://www.motivatedsellermagnet.net]

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If you’re deterred by the roller coaster rides of the stock market, then real estate is the best place to invest your hard earned money.

But real estate business is not an easy one. It calls upon concrete strategies to realize your goals and turn your business into a lucrative venture. If you’re an aspiring real estate entrepreneur, then have a look at the five strategies given below that will help you in having a successful real estate investment.

Buy and Hold strategy

Under this strategy, you buy a property and lend it on rent. Hence, this strategy is usually known as rental properties. Buy and hold strategy of real estate investment opens three paths of income for you:

amortization–you lower the amount of debt while paying your mortgage,

appreciation–you increase the value of your property over the years, and tax incentive–as a landlord you’ll get a chance to cover up your investment costs within a few years. Even if the rent doesn’t break even your entire mortgage payment, it’s not disheartening, as you still have a positive cash inflow.

But before entering into a contract with your tenant, you should make yourself aware of your rights and duties to avoid trouble later.

Flipping strategy

Flipping involves buying and selling real estate property without taking its ownership. You sign a contract with the buyer of your property and earn a commission for your services. There are no credit checks or down payments involved in flipping. And the bright side is that you don’t need to go for a mortgage, as you’re not the actual owner of the property that you are selling.

However, there are two conditions for successful flipping of a real estate property: the property should be able to attract buyers within no time and you shouldn’t keep hold of the property for a long time, i.e., not more than 15-20 days. Under this strategy, you simply buy the real estate property, flip it to a buyer, and collect your money as commission.

The strategy of Rehabs

Here, you buy a ramshackle property at a cheap rate with the expectation that your rehabilitation cost estimates will be highly rewarding at the end. This strategy looks good only on paper. The truth is that such kind of real estate investment involves a high amount of risk and usually end up in loss. This happens because you either fail to find a worn-out property that is cheap enough to give you a profit, or worse–the rehabilitation costs end up being higher than the cost of purchase.

Commercial Real Estate Investment strategy

Commercial real estate doesn’t always mean magnificent shopping malls or office complexes. Any building larger than a 4-unit apartment is regarded as a commercial one. The big advantage of commercial real estate investment is that your property value is calculated in terms of the income it generates through rent and not in terms of bidding on residential real estate.

New Construction strategy

This strategy involves selling your new home during its construction phase. Most of the investors find this strategy to be the most affordable and the easiest one. The important thing here is to keep yourself updated with the market trends. However, there’s a limit imposed by the construction companies on the number of homes you can buy.

A smart way to make an optimal use of this strategy is to have one or two homes under construction continuously. But this strategy brings profit only in a sellers’ market. If you find the local real estate market to be highly fluctuating or to be on the buyers’ side, then it’s better to avoid this strategy.

The above five strategies will help you to reap rich harvests in real estate investment provided that you select the most suitable one. The choice is yours.

This article is brought to you by http://www.mortgagemall.com.au

Naomi Warne of Around the Corner Real Estate Dealers, Sydney, has helped her clients with profitable property investments and numerous tax benefits. Having started as a Real Estate Agent, Naomi has established herself as an analyst and Property Consultant. She now works for Sydney based realestate firm [http://www.mortgagemall.com.au] Mortgage Mall.

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