If you have started reading this, keep reading. You are about to learn about all the wonderful ways you can invest your time and money in dirt! Not really dirt of course. Although, sometimes you do own the dirt itself.

Interesting enough, when you buy real estate you buy the rights to the the dirt, improvements (i.e. houses, shacks, garages, treehouse), then you also get the air rights. So, essentially you own everything below and above you.

In some cases you may not own the air or dirt. An example of this is when you own a condo where the halls, land, parking are considered common area. A condo does not have to be a high rise building. HPR!!! Also standing for Horizontal property regime. This new investment strategy involves knocking down an existing house to build two on the same lot, thus creating condos. This will be our jumping point into ways to invest in real estate because the key is creativity. The book on real estate investing has been written many times over but there are no real rules outside of the law.

House Flipping

You've seen Chip and Joanna Gains of Fixer Upper do it many times over. The style of flip they are taking on is called a flip and hold. They flip a property that is normally in poor condition and make it into a masterpiece. Thus, this adds value to the home. Now, if Chip and Joanna were to take that same home and the owners where to sell it immediately for profit, it would be considered and Fix and Flip. Fix and Flip, Flip and Hold, and Fix and Rent are among the most common investments in residential real estate.

Rental

Sometimes you Fix and Rent, Buy and Rent, or rent your own home after you purchase a new one, but no matter the strategy, renting is the best way to generate income through all three ways mentioned in Part I of this article. Essentially, as your house sits, hopefully appreciating in value, tenants in the home are paying rent which if evaluated correctly will pay down the mortgage, pay for any repairs, and maybe even give you some extra cash each month. This extra cash is called cash flow. There is no better way to build long term wealth then giving a down payment then essentially having a tenant pay for your home while you get the equity.

Wholesaling

This is the get rich quick way of investing (but not really. It still takes a lot of work). You have heard it advertised and even seen it driving down the street. Ever seen the sign "WE BUY HOUSES"? This is those folks. The process of wholesaling is as follows. A wholesaler (the investor) looks for deals. These deals are in the form of very motivated sellers who will sell their home for usually pennies on the dollar. After the wholesaler has negotiated the deal and has a contract to buy the house, they then assign the contract to a willing buyer for a fee. Wholesalers tend to have a massive database of folks looking to buy cheap real estate. The process of assigning a contract is as simple as someone wanting to take over the right to buy that house. They just pay the wholesaler for their name to be on the contract instead of the wholesaler.

This can be a confusing process at first, however wholesaling can be done effectively from your living room!

These common real estate investment tactics are very common in our market. As we go on, I will be diving into each specifically to give you the details on where to start, where to find deals, and how to make money!