Creating Additional Income From Real Estate

Everyone of us have the same dream, of becoming a Real Estate Millionaire, but that dream may be obtained in more ways than just buying and selling property. I broach this subject because real estate is a vast field and there are many ways to profit from it besides selling and buying.

This was brought to mind recently when my son decided he and his friends needed some summer work to help support their very expensive hobby (future careers) of BMX Free-styling (trick bike riding).

You see, I had been paying the group of them, about 7 teenage boys, to clean up the houses I have been getting. So after a long brainstorming session we came up with quite a few things they could do to earn money, but the common denominator in most of them was real estate. As I posted an ad for REO house cleaning and property clean up. Over the weekend I just had 3 lenders call to get more info on the services.

The beauty of real estate as a field and industry is that there are so many different way to make a living from it. The rental business is a great foundational platform to launch other ancillary services and profit centers. Your existing housing business (rentals) make an excellent platform from which to launch a parallel business opportunity.

For instance. Suppose you want to make a go at full-time real estate, but the properties you currently own just aren't enough to make a full-time go at it. Couldn't you easily provide your superb services of rental preparation and perhaps maintenance skills to other investors? Yes, you could. By marketing yourself cleverly as a rental preparation expert you can save other investors a lot of money and provide a complimentary income stream for yourself.

From here you could expand into additional services like:

* Land Trust Trustee Services

* REO Repo Cleanup

* New Construction Cleanup

* Eviction Services

* Monthly Maintenance/Service Contracts

* Consulting

* Winterizing and Property Security

* Services on vacant units, etc.

Suppose, you're not the hands-on type, couldn't you start a home-based mortgage brokering business. If you're a detail, paperwork type of person there's substantial money to be made here. Perhaps, getting into so-called "bad paper" or judgment recovery is another option.

Let's not forget professional title searching. Again, you can get started in this business working from both home and from the courthouse, therefore, not needing an office. While this is more like buying a job, you can take this valuable skill and begin to either buy bad paper for literally pennies on the dollar and recast it or buy distressed properties loaded with junk liens and with your title expertise effectively--de-lien the title (certain liens will expire), thereby letting time clean the title.

Let's not forget buying and selling properties. The two biggest opportunities here are the Rent-to-Own / Installment Sales house business. Or the wholesaling game. Right now the wholesale game is looking great because the investment markets are flooded by burned out stock investors. These folks want good investments. As a wholesaler you tie up the deals and let others close in your place. The profits are smaller, but it's faster and cleaner.

The rent-to-own house business is another great opportunity because you as a professional buyer set up base financing with the seller and then resell with your own custom credit package, also know as lease-purchase, land contract, or RTO. There are thousands, no make that, tens of thousands of folks who need your custom credit deals to get into a house. Best of all, most of these properties can be sold in some sort of fixer upper condition as long as the major mechanical problems are fixed. Get ten or twenty installment deals going and you'll see how good this can be.

Do you consider yourself somewhat of a marketing expert. Why not start a real estate marketing consulting practice where you help licensed agents, private investors and brokers market their own business? A real estate marketing specialist.

There are literally dozens and dozens of small business opportunities that you can start with minimal cash investments. Find something that interests you and get started building another income stream into your business. If you are in the rental business look for rental-related services you possibly could add to your business mix. For instance, if you just rent houses, consider buying or building basic garages. There's good potential offering low-cost storage space. Did you know you can buy distressed city lots for $500 at tax sale? Then for another $3,000 you can put up a basic cement block garage. You can typically rent these out for between $75-200 per month! Not a bad ROI.

There are countless opportunities with land, mobile homes, paper, sales careers, property management, maintenance, consulting, furnished room and apartment rentals, investor services, and much more. Open your mind to the idea of adding a new twist or service to the business you already have!

Not to take anything away from buying and selling but sometimes we need other ways to generate the cash flow needed to keep us afloat until we are on our way to BECOMING A REAL ESTATE MILLIONAIRE. And this will also give you great hands on experience in the real estate world, thus you gain knowledge of an industry you have pretty much only just discovered.