What are the three best real estate investing techniques for 2012? After carefully analyzing market reports, studying recent trends, and looking at where we are making the most money in the business right now, three investment strategies emerged as the most accessible and the most profitable for the new year.

By focusing your efforts on these three real estate investing techniques, you can make 2012 your best year ever! That's right, even in this down market, there is tremendous opportunity for you to make big money investing in real estate.

Technique #1 - Assign Lease Purchase Options to Rent-to-Own Tenant BuyersThat's a mouthful, isn't it? Assigning lease purchase options to rent-to-own tenant buyers is a little-known real estate investing technique that is very profitable and theabsolute fastest way to put quick cash in your pocket.  Literally, within a few weeks, you could have $3,000, $4,000, even $6,000 extra money in your bank account.

Here's how it works:

There is a large number of prospective home buyers who can't qualify for a mortgage. Lenders have tightened up, creating a huge backlog of people who want to stop renting and own their own home, but simply can't because they can't qualify for a loan.  Enter the "Rent to Own."

A rent-to-own home (or lease purchase option) gives the person the option to purchase the property while they are renting, and in some cases, allows a portion of each payment to go towards the purchase price.  For those unable to qualify for a mortgage, it is the ideal scenario. Therefore, the rent-to-own is in very high demand right now.  

At the exact same time, there are hundreds of thousands of properties on the market right now that are not selling. In many cases, the reason why the home is not selling is that the homeowner is unwilling to drop the price low enough to compete with the short sales and foreclosures in their neighborhood. Month after month, these listings sit with no showings and no offers.

Overtime, these property sellers get tired of making payments on a home that won't sell. If offered, they actually would be quite open to a lease purchase option, whereby the person agrees to lease the property with the option to buy it in the future.

The problem is, no one is offering to do a lease purchase option on their home. Buyers' agents rarely bring rent-to-own tenant buyers to listings. Homeowners do not know how to find and handle the details of a rent-to-own transaction.
So...

1. If rent to owns are in demand, and


2. Homeowners across this country would be open to a lease purchase option,


3. How do you turn these two factors into money?

In simple terms, you bring the two parties together. For most rent-to-own deals, the option to buy the property requires an upfront payment from the tenant buyer of $4,000 to as much as $10,000 or more, depending on the property. By getting the property seller to agree to a lease purchase option in writing, you then assign your interests in that agreement to the tenant buyer for a fee; an amount that could be as much as their upfront payment or a portion thereof.

Since tenant buyers and property sellers are both motivated to move quickly, these transactions can be completed--start to finish, in a matter of weeks. If you are short on cash right now and need a quick boost to your bank account, use the real estate investing strategy of assigning a lease purchase options to rent-to-own tenant buyers; it'll probably be the fastest money you've ever made in real estate.

Technique #2 - ForeclosuresIndustry insiders predict another wave of foreclosures will hit the market in 2012. Improper handling of foreclosures over the past several years led to Federal investigators to review banks' foreclosure practices and in many cases, they found problems. This created tremendous delays and stopped many foreclosures from going through in 2010 and 2011.

Banks and the Feds are settling on a solution right now in Washington, and it should be completed very shortly. When this happens, expect a new flood of foreclosures on top of the massive amount of foreclosures already.

Foreclosures can be a mine field. Just because a property is a foreclosure does not automatically make it a deal. In fact, if you pay too much in this market, you can really lose your shirt! Savvy foreclosure investors know that great foreclosure deals are the needles in the haystack. They exist and may be all around you, but they are a small percentage of the overall foreclosure population.

What's the secret to finding the select few extremely profitable foreclosure deals? Top producing REO (real estate owned) agents.  They are the fountain of youth for foreclosures.  In any market, there are a select few REO/Foreclosure agents who rise above the rest.  They close 300, 600, 900, or more transactions per year.

From time to time, these REO agents have foreclosures listings that require a fast cash investor buyer to purchase quickly. If you are on their speed dial for such situations, you're in for a big money-making deal.

Technique #3 - Short SalesThis report would not be complete without mentioning short sales.  More than 1 in 4 mortgage loans in this country are underwater.  For borrowers in this situation, many will require a short sale.  The sheer amount of prospective short sales is gigantic.  Plus, there is terrific money to be made in short sales if you have taken the time to properly educate yourself on how to approach them.

The beauty of the short sale is that the property is still owned and controlled by the homeowner. This creates tremendous flexibility for the savvy real estate investor.  Some investors negotiate the best deal they can with the short sale lender, buy the property and resell it for a profit.

Others get their real estate license, so that they can list the short sales they don't buy and still collect 3% commission as the listing agent.  On a $500,000 home, a 3% commission is a very respectable $15,000 payday.

Short sales have undergone dramatic changes over the past several years. Those investors who are on top of their game have adjusted accordingly and are making big money with short sales, both as investors buying and reselling them as well as collecting fast commissions as the listing agent.

So, you just got that great bank-owned property under contract and now you need a loan to buy, fix, and flip. You went to three hard money lenders, and they turned you down. Why? Because you STINK at selling your deal. 

That's right, you need to learn how to SELL your deal to a lender. 

You start by getting a binder from the office supply store with a set of tabs you can print on. Here's what you need in each tabbed section: 

About Me. This section should contain a FNMA 1003 loan application, a copy of your credit report, a copy of your driver's license, and a brief resume of your experience. If you have no experience, at least put a list of books and seminars you've taken. A list of references would help, too. 

Purchase Contract. A copy of the purchase contract with addenda goes here. 

Appraisal. Ideally an appraisal, but at least a real estate broker BPO (broker's price opinion) goes here. 

Insurance Binder. A copy of a commitment to insure from your insurance provider goes here. 

Title Commitment. A copy of the title commitment goes here. 

Photos. Detailed, color photos inside and outside of the property go here. 

Inspection. Have a professional inspection done of the property and put the report here. 

Repair estimate. A repair estimate from a licensed general contractor and a copy of his license go here. 

Numbers. Insert a spreadsheet of the breakdown of the numbers: your purchase costs, closing costs, holding costs, repairs, realtor fees, etc. 

Timeline. An outline of your construction project goes here. 

Now, you've got a product you can SELL. Go out and approach hard money lenders and see if you don't get much better results! 

What started as a hobby for Keith Gamble is now a risky, exciting, full-time job: buying properties at the monthly foreclosure sale and flipping them. Gamble, and others like him, are a new generation of property flippers who buy at low prices at a foreclosure auction, clean up a property and sell it for a profit.

“Some people’s bad fortune is other people’s opportunity,” Gamble says. “I know that sounds callous—I know people doing what I’m doing at the courthouse each month are there to take advantage of that opportunity, but I also feel we provide a backstop to the market.”

Today’s flippers differ from those during the real estate boom who took advantage of rapidly increasing prices and were fueled by loose lending regulations, says Tom Maeser, a real estate analyst with the Coastal Carolinas Association of REALTORS®. When the market collapsed, many of those flippers were stuck with properties they couldn’t afford, he notes.

“That really irritated a lot of people and caused problems,” Maeser continues. The flippers during the market peak would often buy a property before construction, wait for it to be built, hold onto it for a few months and then sell it for a profit. Today the flippers are buying at low prices, doing some minor repairs and then trying to sell the properties quickly. The profits aren’t as large but the flippers may be selling more properties in a year, says Penny Boling, the broker-in-charge of Century 21 Boling and Associates in Myrtle Beach.

Flipping properties isn’t something new, she comments; it’s just taken different forms over the years, and it hasn’t always had that name. Boling says she sees some differences between today’s flippers and those during the boom, including their knowledge of the market.

“They are really doing their homework on what prices are,” she said. “Before, the market was going so fast no one was looking.” Many of the foreclosure flippers will attest to the hours of work they put in; several said they spend upwards of 60 hours leading up to the auction doing research and trying to see properties they might want to buy. Unlike a typical property purchase where a buyer can see the property and get a home inspection, often a buyer of a foreclosure at auction has little access to a property and sometimes must bid without seeing the inside of it.

“There’s just a lot of research involved in it,” says Johnny Buxani, a Realtor® who also flips foreclosure properties. He will look through a list of properties for sale, identify the ones he is interested in and then try to drive by them to see them. Once he narrows down the list, he looks at the market value and establishes how much he would be willing to pay and how much he thinks he could make on each property.

It’s important to know about the real estate market to know about any problems with developments or buildings and to be up to date with how prices are changing, Buxani said.

Armed with those papers and a budget, he heads to the monthly foreclosure sale and tries to be the winning bidder. “It’s really gambling,” Buxani says. “It’s a rush.”

There is often competition among bidders on the best properties, but most have a set cutoff price. The winning bidder has to pay a 5 percent down payment within 24 hours and the remainder of the price within 30 days. Unlike flippers during the boom, these buyers aren’t piling up loans that they can’t pay back. Instead they’re paying cash either from their own money or with the backing of investors.

Most of the time, the flippers won’t make any major repairs but typically might repaint, replace appliances and improve landscaping. Some properties need more work, such as new countertops, flooring or new heating and air conditioning systems.

Gamble explains most flippers have a set number of properties they want to have at one time and know how many they’re willing to bid on each month. For him, he’s willing to have about four properties at a time and will wait until one sells before bidding on another.

Gamble says he’s careful not to overextend himself and knows that even if he gets stuck holding some of the properties, he would be able to cover the expenses.

That caution is warranted because it’s rarely a smooth path from the purchase to the sale. It is a risky business and most foreclosure flippers have at least one story of a property that didn’t work out as they had expected. For Buxani, that was an oceanfront condo with a serious mold problem that required thousands of dollars to fix. One of Gamble’s deals fell through when he turned down one offer on two of his properties, only to see the other potential buyer back out at the last minute. For David Galfetti, another REALTOR® and real estate investor, it was a problem with a mortgage that held up a deal for several months.

“I’ve gotten stuck a few times,” says Galfetti, who represents a group of investors and typically buys two or three properties each month, depending on how quickly the ones he bought previously are selling.

Like the others, he tries to get a property on the market as quickly as possible and tries to sell it within the first couple months. “The main thing is people are sometimes amazed at how we get them resold,” Galfetti says. The trick, he explains, is to know before he buys how much he can get for a property.

Unlike Gamble and Buxani, who have been flipping foreclosures for less than a year, David Galfetti is not a newcomer to the foreclosure sales. He has been buying at the foreclosure auctions for about six years, though he’s bought more in recent years. When he started going to the foreclosure auctions, there were far fewer properties for sale and a much smaller crowd, Galfetti says.

The flippers are helping fix up foreclosure properties that are often left in bad shape and hard to sell, which is good for the market, Maeser says. “Anyone who depletes the foreclosure inventory is helping the marketplace because we will not see appreciation or increases in values until foreclosures go away,” he notes. Galfetti and the others say that they know the volume of foreclosures and current opportunities won’t last forever, but that they are an important part of the market. “It’s unfortunately the whole state of the union but we’re doing a favor to the lowest end of the market, which has to get cleaned up before the regular stuff can sell,” Galfetti says.

Boling agrees that their ability to pay cash and get rid of foreclosures is helping the overall real estate market. “They’re kind of like the street sweepers,” she comments. “They’re part of the cleanup committee of this marketplace.”

Maeser says that it’s unclear what impact the foreclosure flippers will have on prices. Flippers could help improve property values in a neighborhood if they price properties fairly, but if they are selling properties below the lowest price in the neighborhood it could have a negative impact. The properties flippers sell are typically priced at market value, though they try to be among the best priced in an area, Galfetti says.

“I don’t feel we are contributing to lower prices,” Gamble notes. “I feel more we are getting inventory out of the banks’ hands.” If banks were lending more, there would be less of a market for flipping foreclosures, he says. “In a couple years, these opportunities will dry up, banks will be lending more and inventory is getting depleted,” Gamble continues. “This niche market might disappear or get very limited.”

Boling says that sales activity is starting to pick up, and she expects foreclosures to decrease as the market improves.

Galfetti and Buxani say they’d change their focus once the opportunities to flip foreclosures dwindle. “I obviously hope it does dry up and the whole market and whole economy turns around, (but) I don’t see it happening anytime soon,” remarks Galfetti.

When working online brand building is always recommended as a means to make you or your business more recognizable. In fact developing a business brand is one of the most strategically sound advertising strategies you can implement considering the long term benefits it offers! There is little complicated about establishing an online brand however it is a process that will test your persistence and patience.

Here are 3 challenges you can expect to encounter and will need to overcome in order to establish a recognizable online brand.

Contending With the Online Noise

The internet offers up a tidal wave of noise involving late breaking news, industry chatter, idol gossip and of course promotional purges by the countless number of businesses. It is for this reason you want and need to develop a distinguishable business brand but it is also something which you must contend with when doing so! The only thing that will help you here will be your own consistently relentless efforts and knowing that once you do get noticed it will all be worth while! When you have succeeded you will come to understand and appreciated the power of your own persistence and perseverance!

Viral Influence

Bloggers, forums and even social sites have followings therefore their opinions good or bad can be influential and carry a viral effect as well. In some cases there are those who will intentionally make inflammatory comments simply for the notoriety! As you begin to gain attention these people will begin to focus more on you. Do not be discouraged. If you stop and consider for a moment these people have developed their influence and gained the attention of others by establishing their own online brand. So therefore if nothing more, this should only further demonstrates to you why you need to invest the effort yourself!

Building Trust

The primary focus of any online brand is to build trust and hopefully, loyalty however to have both the trust must first be there. Online this can be difficult to do because skepticism runs rampant and this is something you will need to overcome. In order to do so be sure the image you have chosen and the strategies you use all reflect something of a positive and reliable nature. To represent yourself or your business in any other way will serve you no good purpose.

In your branding efforts you must also continually display a willingness to be of service to others. Freely offering helpful advice or any type of content people may find useful is a great way to develop this trust. At all times remember to act in a professional and cordial manner! Consider it much like a politician running for office and figure you will always be 'under the microscope' until you have proven your reliability and sincerity!

Brand building is a highly recommended approach every online business should take due to the vastness of the internet itself. In fact of all the different advertising strategies in use online developing a recognizable business brand should be one of the very first you implement. By developing an online brand you are actually giving your business a 'face' which helps you to better stand out and be heard above the noise of the internet. Although the branding process itself is not complicated it will require patience and perseverance to effectively accomplish your goals. The 3 challenges you can expect and will need to overcome as you develop your business brand are discussed above. As you can see the biggest obstacle standing between you and the online brand you want to establish will be your own patience! All things considered, it would seem that the investment of a little time and patience on your part is a small price to pay for the benefits you stand to receive.