A real estate investing career rarely starts and stops at the same place. It does not follow a straight line. There will be twists and turns all along the way. Markets will change. Your needs will change too. Your financial situations will change. The more you learn and the more confidence you get, the more your real estate investing business will evolve down the path to financial freedom.
Below you will see how my real estate business moved along the road to financial freedom. You’ll see how one thing leads to another that leads to another. That’s how most real estate investing businesses work.
Before I started my real estate investing career, more than 20 years ago, I was a stay-at-home Mom for 12 years. With no job for 12 years and completely outdated work experience (I was a long distance telephone operator on a cord board), I thought my choices were to either get a job flipping hamburgers or be a Walmart greeter. The pay at either of those jobs would not be as much as I wanted and needed to make. Plus, I wanted more freedom than a 9-6 job could offer.
But, I did land a job for one year working with a home builder who was building a new home for our family. I started as a part time assistant, which turned in to a full time job, which turned in to a national sales manager for their television show. But my pay was small and the hours were long. Office politics sucked. When you work for someone else, you have absolutely no control over your income or hours.
So, I started researching alternative ways to make money working from home.
That led me to the library where I learned about real estate investing and wholesale flips and options. I bought a course about wholesale flips, but I didn’t know it was flawed.. a lot. The instructor trained his students to go find and negotiate great deals, then we were supposed to bring the deal to him so he could sell it to his “approved buyers”. The catch was that the instructor got HALF of the deal.
After doing one of those shared wholesale flips, I quickly learned how to build my own “approved buyer’s list” (who are advertising “we buy houses” all over the place), so I could keep all the profits.
It worked!
I did 40 wholesale flips my first year with an average profit of $5,000. Sometimes more. Sometimes less.
My second year, the volume doubled because I recruited other stay-at-home Mom’s to go look for properties for me.
Then, sometimes I’d buy the wholesale properties with seller financing so I could rehab it. I thought I’d make more money by rehabbing. Rehabbing was way too S-L-O-W for me. Instead of finding a wholesale deal then getting paid a week later, it could take 3-6 months to get paid doing a rehab. Plus, I had a lot of my cash tied up in the deal with materials, contractors, insurance and holding costs. So rehabs where out! I knew a lot of other rehabbers and none of them had financial freedom. (wrong road to financial freedom) Oops… DETOUR!
When my kids turned 18, I wanted to make sure they knew how to do wholesale flips. So I wrote a step-by-step guide for my two children. That guide helped both of them do wholesale flips. My son made $7500 on his first deal. And my daughter made almost $12,000 on her first deal.
Then friends of my children heard about their successes and wanted to learn how they could to it too. So I expanded the FLIP DEALS guide to include more details. More people had successes! Then I started getting calls from the parents of these kids wanting me to teach them how to do wholesale flips too. So I added more details to the Flip Deals book.
The FLIP DEALS book contains a step-by-step guide for doing wholesale flips. It has been updated many times over the years. The techniques work. I know this because I get success stories emailed to me every month from people who bought the book and used it to make money flipping houses.
This is the FLIP DEALS book which has helped tens of thousands of people get started with real estate investing. It will teach you how to do wholesale flips.
I was getting so many wholesale deals that I had to get creative with ways to sell them quickly. That’s where the Magic Bus came in. I could get options on 10-20 houses a month then sell then all in a day or two using the Magic Bus. I’d advertise that I had 10 wholesale deals that would be sold to the highest bidder in one day. I’d usually get 30 people on the bus. We’d ride around to each house. Everyone was given a bid sheet at the house and had to turn it in when they got back on the bus. The Magic Bus book comes free with all CashFlowDepot.com Premium Membership.
How to get options on 10-20 wholesale houses per month is also included with a CashFlowDepot Premium Membership.
But there was a problem with only doing wholesale flips.
I was rarely creating cash flow when doing wholesale flips. Sure I was making good money doing wholesale flips. But if I was not out there looking for more deals to flip, I did not make any money. I needed to transition in to buying houses and keeping them as rentals so I could have monthly cash flow. But I did not want to buy wholesale type houses as rentals. I wanted a newer house in nice neighborhoods. Ideally, these houses would not need much work to get them ready to rent.
Cash flow is what sets you free! Once you have enough monthly cash flow to support your lifestyle, you can stop working so hard finding more deals.
So, I started doing marketing to buy houses with seller financing or subject to the mortgage. I sent very targeted postcards to find deals. This was a slam dunk!
I also started doing some mobile home “Lonnie Deals” which took very little cash to get in to but created really good cash flow.
If the houses I bought subject-to did not need much repair, I kept them as a rental property.
If they needed more than $5,000 to fix up, I’d sell with seller financing so I could recoup my cash investment. The down payment I got usually more than paid for the repair costs. Or, I’d just wholesale the property, sometimes with seller financing, so I could get cash flow.
Cash flow is the difference between what I paid on the underlying loan and what I collected from by tenants or buyers.
I studied Jack Miller’s CREATIVE FINANCING SOLUTIONS book and learned more creative ways to buy houses without getting a bank loan. I also went to every Jack Miller seminar I could to learn even more.
I’d use the proceeds from wholesale flip deals to pay off houses I’d bought subject-to the mortgage. As soon as the mortgage was gone, the cash flow would go through the roof.
Then another opportunity fell in my lap.
My objective was to buy houses in the median price range to keep as rentals or to sell with seller financing. From my lead generation web sites, I started getting calls from sellers with much more expensive houses. I did not want to buy them or keep them as rentals. I sure did not want to be responsible for a $4,000 or $10,000 a month mortgage… or more.
So, I started getting options on these houses then selling them with a HIGHEST BIDDER SALE. This worked really well. I’d do 7 days of aggressive marketing to get people to come to a 2-day open houses where they could submit a bid. Then I’d call all bidders back to let them know what the high bid was and ask if they wanted to increase their bid. Some bidders dropped out but many more raised their bid. This created a bidding war. The price would go up and up.
I consistently sold houses in all different price ranges all over the United States using the Highest Bidder Sale method.
Sometimes I’d sell to the highest bidder (highest price). Sometimes I’d sell with seller financing to the person with the highest down payment so I could get cash up front plus cash flow.
The HIGHEST BIDDER SALE book will teach you how to do these sales. You only need to control the property with an Option, you don’t need to buy the house. This technique works for wholesale type properties and even better for nice houses in good condition.
All along my path to financial freedom, I was anxious to share what I learned with others so they could also achieve financial freedom. That’s why I wrote the books.
When I met Jack Miller I realized he was one of the most brilliant real estate transaction engineers I’d ever met. But there was no way to learn from him if you did not go to his live events. He was in his 70s when I first met him so I knew he would stop teaching someday then all that knowledge would be gone. It took 3 long years, but I finally convinced Jack to let me record his seminars and get him on weekly Coaching Calls.
CashFlowDepot was originally created as a place to showcase Jack Miller’s training videos, audios, books and home study courses. But now there is much more training at PREMIUM TRAINING at CashFlowDepot! There is all the training you need to achieve success along your path to financial freedom.
Then one really hot summer in Texas, when it never got below 100 degrees for 3 months straight, I decided to move to a place where I’d never need an air conditioner or heater again. Because of the cash flow I had created, I could live anywhere in the world. Now, I live in the mountains of Panama where I own a small coffee farm, master lease rental properties, and recently purchased land for building more property which will produce more cash flow. Oh, and I started a relocation tour company too.
Twenty years ago, I would never have guessed that the road to financial freedom would lead me down these various paths.
Your path to financial freedom will be different. You have to learn to go with the flow. Every year evaluate your financial situation and make plans to add or delete a technique which will help you get closer to your freedom goals. Write down your goals.
Never say “ I can’t do that” because I know you CAN if you just set your mind to it.
If a stay-at-home Mom can do all this, you can too. For success, you just need a burning desire for financial freedom and independence, devote time to learn as much as you can about real estate investing, and you will need a whole lot of tenacity.
There is not one right way or wrong way down the path to financial freedom. Everyone’s path will be different.
I’d love to hear about your path to financial freedom. Send your story to [email protected]
Best of Success… and Freedom,
Jackie Lange
