What It Takes to Be a Profitable Real Estate Option Investor

Do not make the all-too-common mistake of running out and forming a separate business entity before you have done any option deals. As far as I am concerned, it is totally asinine for aspiring option investors to go to the effort and expense of forming a separate business entity solely for the purpose of buying [...]

IRS forms and publications are available online in PDF format at the following web page: www.irs.gov/formspubs/. The following IRS publications pertain to running a real estate investment business: Publication 334, Tax Guide For Small Business. Publication 535, Business Expenses. Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records. Publication 587, Business Use of Your Home. Publication [...]

For record keeping and tax purposes, you must maintain a separate checking account for your real estate investment business that you can deposit checks into and pay expenses out of. One of the criteria that the IRS uses to determine whether a business is legitimate and not a sham is bank accounts. A business that [...]

For a home office to qualify as a business deduction for federal tax purposes, it must be used regularly and exclusively for business purposes. For example, if you are a part-time real estate investor and a full-time schoolteacher with a home office that you claim as a real estate investment business expense but you use [...]

First things first: You cannot have a phobia of computers and be successful in this business. To be successful, you must use today’s technology in your option investment business. I divide the real estate investment business into Before the Internet (BTI) and After the Internet (ATI). In fact, I consider the Internet to be the [...]

I use fixed-rate, low-interest lines of unsecured credit to finance the purchase of options. Unsecured lines of credit are issued through unsecured credit cards. I currently use two $40,000 lines of unsecured credit, which have fixed-interest rates of between 3.4 percent and 4.5 percent. I am able to obtain these low-rate lines of unsecured credit [...]

One of the main reasons real estate options appeal to so many people is that you do not need a six-figure income, a hefty bank account, an 850 FICO score. The term FICO refers to the name of the company, Fair Isaac Corporation, that developed the popular credit scoring model named FICO, and a lifetime [...]

Americans today live in a drive-in society where just about everything under the sun is available from the front seat of an automobile. And as a nation, we are the most impatient people on the planet. When we want something, we want it right now, instantaneously. Well, that type of impatient attitude may be hunky-dory [...]

As I alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, real estate options are definitely not for dummies. To make it as a profitable option investor, you need to possess an imaginative, analytical, and creative mind. First, you must have the imagination to be able to visualize various types of properties being put to a [...]

As an author, I always strive to tell it to my readers as it really is. I do not believe in sugarcoating the truth. And that is why I want you to know that most people— more than 51 percent—fail miserably as real estate investors. I am telling you this not to discourage you, but [...]

Please, whatever you do, do not be swayed from your dreams by the naysayers who tell you that what you are proposing cannot be done. If I had listened to all of the naysayers throughout my life, I would probably be living in a cardboard box under an overpass in Bugtussle, New Hampshire. But luckily [...]

First off, all rational, reasonable, intelligent adults have an innate fear of failure. In fact, most Americans are continually warned from birth to be careful and watch out for the unforeseen. However, it is how human beings are able to overcome the very real fear of failure that determines whether an individual will eventually be [...]

A positive mental attitude is the most essential element in achieving lasting success in any type of worthwhile endeavor. And from my observations, the people with a real can-do attitude are the ones who generally get ahead in life. The following inspirational quotation from author Walter D. Wintle best sums up the power of a [...]