Real Estate Investing for Television News Anchors

By Bill Cherry

Meet me on the web at www.billcherrybroker.com

            One of my friends is a television news anchor here in Dallas.  She recently told me that her next career is going to be as a real estate investor. 

            "Got any advice for me?" she asked.

            Well, with all of the thirty minute infomercials that are on radio and TV here in Dallas, and for the most part hawked by local real estate and mortgage loan sales people, it's not hard for her to wonder if by not joining up with them, she's missing her pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

             The answer is, "She's not!"

            My daddy told me at least fifty years ago that there was only one way investing in real estate that made sense for the common man.  "Do what the Italian corner grocery store owners have been doing since they and their forefathers began coming to America more than two hundred years ago," he said.

            "You buy one rent house and use the rent to help you get it paid for as quickly as you can.  Then you save up enough for a down payment to buy a second house, and so on.  And never pay someone to manage them for you.  You do it."

            Daddy went on, "Your objective is to get the real estate paid for so that you can use the net income to make your life better.

            "It's not to sell the house in a few years or re-mortgage the house or to fix it up and immediately flip it," Daddy instructed.  "Remember this:  When you sell one, you've sold a friend.  Nobody but a nut gets rid of a friend," he told me.

            Note that most of these real estate investment radio and TV personalities are usually talking about the fast buck.  But the fast buck usually goes to them, and it goes to them without their taking any risk.  You're instructed to fix up the house, rent it, then sell it to another investor.  Or, you're instructed to get its appraised value up so that you can borrow more against it and then use that money for your next down payment.  They keep defining this as equity, and by the strict definition, it is.  But it's paper equity, not realized and spendable equity.

            And lets get this out in the open:  Look who's making the money.  It's in the form of commissions for them.  It isn't in the form of money that you can spend.

            No, as I told my news anchor friend, "Listen to your ‘Uncle' Bill.  Do what my daddy said to do.  It worked and made him wealthy.  And he didn't risk his children's education or his and my mom's retirement in the process.

            If you have questions about real estate investments, find a neutral party to help you find the answers.  And if the answer the neutral party gives you is that you're going to dramatically increase your net worth and income within a short period of time, you've asked the wrong person.

            I've been working with real estate investors, small and large, for most of my forty-three year career. The successful ones primarily follow some hybrid form of the Italian Corner Grocery Store Owner Principal.  You should, too.

                                                          Copyright 2007 - William S. Cherry

                                                                      All rights reserved