THEY DON'T TEACH YOU THIS ON TV... HOW AN 8 UNIT CONDO DEVELOPMENT WAS PURCHASED NO MONEY DOWN!

I have worked directly with a few developers. One of the groups I have been most impressed with is - we'll call them- "M/M," for short. These guys have been around, they're aggressive and they're creative. They have private investors backing their other projects, and if they ever made a decision to do something, they do it.

We quickly set up an appointment so I could arrange another viewing, this time with M/M. We go through the entire building, each apartment checking progress. By the time we get to the roof, one of the partners of M/M lets me know that he likes it. On the way back to our office, the conversation turns to price. What would be the right price for the building -- what is the projected sell out, what will the financing cost, marketing cost and of course what will the builder be willing to agree too. The builder was referred to me, so I have a little time to get my info together, but of course time is of the essence.

After putting together an outline of the project, costs and potential sellout we have a number where we have to be. Now it's a matter of getting the builder to agree to our numbers, which wasn't a big challenge. In our conversations, he stated he was willing to leave xxx amount of dollars on the table for the next guy. When he affirmed he would do that, and I demonstrated what the real numbers for the building were, we put together a number that would work for both parties.

Great, we're ready to roll. Wrong...

MM's investors don't want to release the money to the builder. And they don't want to lend him the money. So now it's back to me, so now I'm in. Can I raise the money for them? Of course. I don't know how, I don't know where, but I'll get it.

So I start the calls, and start making the rounds. If you had mentioned to me you could raise money before you were getting a call and taking a meeting. Low and behold, I found someone willing to lend the money for the building, with a guarantee by the developers, and interest to be paid monthly. To protect us from the builder taking longer than promised, we agree to get the interest payments backed off the total purchase price - in essence the builder would pay back the payments with a lower price for each month this project takes to complete. The best part, as I'm lining up the financing, the offering plan gets approved - so we can pre-sell these units while we wait -this is going to be easy! (Yeah, right.... wait to see what happens next)