The Millionaire Hall of Fame

Real Estate Success Stories

A Good Deed with a Great Reward By Samuel H. ($83,406)
I recently purchased a lot with two duplexes on it from a couple of investors. I found the property the day I was helping a local family recover from a recent flood. The investors were selling the house after the flood had come through and wiped out the basements of the two buildings. It turns out the investors were my middle school math and shop teachers! We negotiated a 25% down payment (that I borrowed from family) with payments at 7% amortized over 30 years with a full balloon in 3 years.

My father and I are fixing the first building together. When we are finished with the first building, I will finance the property and have money escrowed for the repair of the remaining building.

When all is said and done I will have $30k in equity, $20k in cash, be completely out of debt (bad debt) and a net cash flow of $500 per month. Not bad if I do say so myself!

This property is a great learning experience because I am getting to know the average fix-up costs for different repair issues. I am definitely the fixer investor because I enjoy restoring to new and giving things my personal touch. Practice makes perfect and I am already searching for my next project. Thanks to EWI for the knowledge and encouragement to go out and do it!

Creating Your Own Destiny By Mary C & Stuart C ($1,716,970)
I struggled for years trying to hold a J.O.B. Even beat myself up for only staying in them for about 3 years each. After reading Multiple Streams of Income and joining the EWI, I realized the reason I had trouble holding a job was that I am really an entrepreneur!!!

With the help of the Institute, I am learning to use real estate to generate enough wealth to pursue my passion for raising horses and even to make this a wealth building occupation. Using Robert Allen's techniques, I am buying and selling properties and living on the profits.

It has not been smooth sailing all the way. I just sold a property that caused me a great deal of trouble. I had it under a lease/option contract, but the residents refused to live up to their drain clearing responsibility and let raw sewage spill all over the property.

The city condemned the property causing the people to leave within 24 hours (and I didn't have to go through a lengthy eviction process). It cost $15,000 to clean up and repair, but by believing in myself and persisting I sold it and made a nice profit of $35,000.00 after the realtor commissions.

I will forever be in control of my own life because I found the EWI and all the wonderful people associated with it. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Tears of Joy, Everybody Wins By John A  
I got a call early one morning from a homeowner in foreclosure, responding to one of my direct mail pieces. The home she bought last year and lived in, was in foreclosure and scheduled for Sheriff Sale in less than two weeks.

I looked up the value of her home and mortgage amount while we were talking and saw that she owes more now than the home is worth. Then the conversation took a turn I wasn't expecting.

She had another home in a neighboring county with an approximate ARV of $250,000 to $260,000 and a mortgage balance of $125, 000. Her husband had died a few years ago and her 20-year-old son had been living there for the last year because he wasn't ready to leave the house he grew up in. The seller was up to date on the payments on this house and losing her own home!

We didn't have much time, but I went and looked at the house the son was living in and called the seller later that day to tell her I'd be willing to make an offer and I wanted her to think about the lowest amount she would accept for the house the son was living in (she wanted to stay in her current home).

She called back 48 hours later with a number that was more than the highest current market value and I was puzzled. I couldn't reach her till she finally called me back the Saturday before the sale. I told her we needed to sit down face to face and see what we could come up with because we were out of time. She agreed and I met with her at her dining room table later that day.

The solution I came up with brought tears to her eyes. I would write a check to reinstate her current mortgage and we would partner on the sale of the other house and I would receive a percentage of the proceeds on top of covering my expenses.

I ended up creating a mortgage and we executed it so that my company would be paid $52,700 at closing upon sale of the house. After recouping $15,800 I paid to reinstate her mortgage and $6,000 in cleanup/paint/carpet in the house we're selling, I'll walk away with just short of $31,000 at closing and I never had to own the house.

After our first rejection of what we believed were well conceived and well written offers we were somewhat gun shy of beginning again. Fortunately Robert's admonition that you can't make money without making offers and that rejected offers simply means we were active began to sink in. We were in search of other properties that fit our criteria for purchase, in our case Multi-Family properties.

While we were searching a member of our team, a great real estate agent, called with information that changed our lives. One of the folks he had mentored was going to list a commercial Multi-Family property the next day, and wanted to know if we were interested in looking at in for investment. He said he thought it was more than we were interested in to start with, but also thought it was a great deal and one that we should see.

The property was 2.6 acres with 11 all brick duplexes close to us in a growth location. We were told the property was worth approximately 1 million dollars. We learned the Seller was motivated to sell and was 'flexible', we also learned that the term flexible was unique to each opportunity. We created three offers that met varying needs. Our first offer essentially of 725,000 with 20% owner financing was rejected but counter-offered at 785,00.00!

In the end of the negotiations we settled on 793,000.00 with the seller paying 15,000.00 of closing costs, giving us 60 days to close, with a Partner clause and an additional 30 day clause with a 500.00 adder to our 5000.00 earnest money. In an addendum to the contract we protected the earnest money by a financing clause.

Long story short we couldn't get financing as a commercial deal, surveyed the property, went before the County board to get permission to break-up the property into 11 separate properties enabling residential lending. We found various banks to fund a few properties a piece, enabling the purchase.

The Day of closing a bank backed out on two of the properties. Our power team came through with the funds for those buildings enabling the deal to be completed. We earned over 180,000.00 in Equity in our first deal. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for all of the knowledge and your investment in us.