Ways to Do a Deal with Bad Credit and No Money Down
Real estate investing, whether doing house flips or commercial, follows the traditional axiom of “In order to make money, you need to have money.” Or so it seems. This article will showcase how this isn’t necessarily the case, and provide you options to acquire real estate with no money down, or with bad credit. Note that these are not guarantees, they’re techniques. Like all techniques, and most advice in real estate investing, they won’t do you any good unless you follow them carefully, and know when not to follow them to suit the deal you’re brokering.
First and foremost, you need to ask the classic question, “What’s my motivation?” Or, rather, you should know your motivation already – you should be asking yourself what the seller’s motivations are. These provide the key to understanding what the seller really needs (rather than what they want) and will provide insight into how to make the deal happen, even under less than ideal circumstances. Is the seller trying to get out from under the house to facilitate a new job? Have they experienced a financial setback? Are they in danger of a home foreclosure? It’s not quite a case of “search out the desperate sellers”, but knowing why they want to sell now and what they need is a clue on how you structure the deal.
Structuring the deal is a mind set, not a recipe. The mindset should focus on mutually beneficial arrangements. You benefit from doing the deal, the seller benefits from doing the deal, and both of you succeed. Again, knowing your seller’s motivations are important here, because they’ll tell you what the victory conditions are.
Making the deal happens means finding a way to meet the down payment. There are numerous options, and what follows is at best a summary.
First, and perhaps the simplest, is getting a loan. With good credit, getting a loan is easy – with bad credit, in the current subprime loan meltdown, it’s not. read more…
