Commercial Real Estate Investing For Dummies

Part I

Getting to Know Commercial Real Estate Investing

In this part . . .

In this part, we help you understand what types of property make up commercial real estate and also help you get past some of the biggest myths about it. We present information that will enable you to simply and quickly determine the value of any commercial property. After you understand this formula, you’ll be able to confidently hold your own while negotiating your way to your newfound fortune.

Chapter 1

Just Imagine . . . Commercial Real Estate and You!

In This Chapter

bullet Discovering commercial real estate

bullet Knowing what to consider as you get started

bullet Finding the ultimate investment

bullet Risk-proofing your investment plan

Can you imagine yourself in the world of commercial real estate investing? Imagine yourself walking through the lobby of your 100-unit apartment complex. What would it look like and feel like to be pulling into the parking lot of a neighborhood shopping center that’s all yours? Maybe you can imagine that you’re watching your construction crew break ground on your luxury home land development project. What if this project leads to a life where you can live a life of luxury and balance? You’d be able to do things such as drive your kids or grandkids to school every day, maybe even in your pajamas, with a big smile on your face because you’ve invested wisely. Okay, here’s one more scenario that may get you excited: Imagine yourself impacting the lives of hundreds or thousands of kids here and around the world who benefit from your charities, all funded by wealth-building skills and invaluable relationships developed from your commercial real estate investing.

We have two purposes for writing this book. The first is to introduce you to commercial real estate investing. We want to share with you that anyone can learn how to successfully find, research, negotiate, finance, and buy commercial real estate of any type. In this book, we do our best to break down powerful investing concepts that were once thought to be too complex for most people. Our second purpose for this book is to give you the confidence to go after what you really want in life instead of shying away from the true potential that you’ve always known is somewhere inside of you. To make this jump as easy as possible, you even get a free Commercial Quick Start Training Package, which will allow you to quickly implement the moneymaking ideas in this book. See the About the Authors section at the front of the book for details.

Creating the wealth that allows you to follow your real passion is what’s waiting for you whether you’re an investor, real estate agent, or lender. Commercial real estate will accelerate your financial freedom, and in the process our hope is that you’ll find the true meaning of the why in your life. That alone makes this book worth diving into.

What Is Commercial Real Estate?

Commercial real estate is many things. It’s office buildings, apartment complexes, shopping centers, warehouses, industrial parks, hotels, motels, resorts, and the list goes on and on. It’s where businesses are conducted and where many people live together. Commercial real estate is everywhere. (Jump to Chapter 2 for a journey through all the different types of commercial real estate that are available.)

Commercial real estate is also a means of building long-lasting wealth for the investor. To us, long-lasting wealth is an investment that pays you every month. It’s also one in which the value increases every year. Compare this to other types of investments that may allow you to draw a monthly payment, but the balance goes down year by year until the pot’s empty. Sound familiar? That’s not true wealth at all. In this book, we show you how commercial real estate has the ability to generate sizable cash flow every month as well as increase in value every year (and to be tax free!). We challenge anyone to find a better way out of the rat race than to invest in commercial real estate.

Commercial real estate can afford you a wonderful and fulfilling professional career that’s second to none. And besides being enjoyable, commercial real estate investors are among the highest paid professionals in the nation. In fact, it isn’t uncommon for a commercial investor’s check from just one closing to equal one year’s salary of an engineer. We see it all the time. We also get to hang out with and see the changes our Commercial Mentorship students are going through. Many of them have joined The Quitters Club by saying goodbye to their 9 to 5 jobs. These friends of ours absolutely love what they do and can’t dream of doing anything else.

Every ultrasuccessful investor or high-income-generating professional we know in this business knows the secret — it’s relationships. Commercial real estate is at its core a relationship business. For instance, big deals, huge fees, and long-lasting and fulfilling careers can all be created through the relationships you make. We talk more about relationships later on in this book.

As you’re out and about, start looking around at all the commercial real estate that you see. When you go to the shopping center, notice what space is leased out. What buildings aren’t fully leased? Why might that property be having trouble? After you realize that an investor owns every building, it’s difficult to not think about owning your own commercial properties someday. To get started investing now, try out the free bonus that’s waiting for you at www.commercialquickstart.com. As a reader of this book, you get three online training courses and a one-on-one strategic coaching session.

What to Think About As You Get Started

When choosing to make an investment in anything, you have to take several things into consideration, right? Why am I doing this? How much does it cost? Am I doing this at the right time? Well, the same applies for commercial real estate. In fact, you may find that you have too many choices simply because there are so many different ways to profit in this field. The following sections go over some of the most common questions you may have when deciding which part of commercial real estate is right for you.

Can I make money at commercial real estate investing?

This is one question that we have a definitive answer for: Yes! We know that you can make money investing in commercial real estate for three reasons:

bullet If we can do it, you certainly can too. Both of us started from modest beginnings and we aren’t special by any means. In fact, coauthor Peter Conti used to be an auto mechanic. Coauthor Peter Harris was an introverted engineer.

bullet We are blessed to be surrounded by our Commercial Mentoring Program students who for the most part have started with little or no experience in commercial real estate. Every time a Mentorship student gets another deal they prove that it really is possible.

bullet If you look at the most successful investors out there you’ll find that they all have a pattern in common: They’ve typically started out by investing in homes, running a business, or working in a fairly well-paying profession. The next step is to begin investing in smaller commercial properties such as apartment buildings. At some point the successful investors all move up to either big commercial deals or land development.

Coauthor Peter Harris started out investing in real estate by purchasing single-family homes. He did quite well in it, but one day he was daydreaming and said to himself, What if I could combine all my rental homes under one roof? He felt that would make managing the properties a lot easier because he wouldn’t have to drive around the city chasing rents. In fact, he realized that he could make better use of the time that he saved by investing even more! When he woke up from his daydream, he realized that he had just described an apartment complex. To make a long story short, he sold all of his rental homes and bought large apartment complexes. And the rest is history. His cash flow went from hundreds per month to thousands per month in only two years.

If he can make it starting out where he did as an introverted engineer, and now he’s buying commercial properties worth millions, you certainly can too. You see, Peter is simply an average person who applied the ideas in this book to change his life. If he can do it, anyone can use commercial real estate investing to transform his or her life.

Throughout this book, we show you what good real estate looks like, and we tell you how to time the real estate market, what markets to stay away from, and how to know a good deal from a bad deal Then we set you up with some powerful guiding principles of investment and some free ongoing training to help move you forward.

What type of investor am I?

You can fall into one of two basic types of commercial real estate investors. The first is the cash-flow investor, and the second is the long-term hold investor. Both make excellent cases for fantastic wealth building and both can do well in an up or down market. Read on for details.

Cash-flow investor

Cash-flow investors purchase properties for the purpose of putting monthly income into their pockets. And they buy commercial real estate just like you would buy a business. In other words, if you were buying a ready-made business, you would do whatever it takes to make sure that the business is a proven moneymaker, right? You would thoroughly check the financial records to prove that it could stand on its own every month. Well, cash-flow investors do the same. They take every measure to make sure they’re investing in a property that produces nice monthly cash flow.

Also, cash-flow investors don’t solely rely on appreciation as a way to get wealthy. They know that appreciation is only a bonus, a gift. If it’s present, great. If it isn’t, that’s okay, because the focus is on income. Cash-flow investors know that relying on appreciation is a form of gambling and doesn’t make good business sense. In Chapter 3, we show you how to easily evaluate and calculate cash flow for any income-producing property just like the experts do.

Another plus for cash-flow investors that’s frequently overlooked is the ability to weather the storm in a down market. In down markets where sales are slow and prices are falling, people who normally would buy homes to live in aren’t buying homes due to fear. These folks eventually become tenants for your multiunit commercial properties. This helps cash-flow investors to actually make more money in a down market.

Long-term hold investor

Unlike cash-flow investors, long-term hold investors rely on appreciation for wealth building, but they do so in a more conservative real-world fashion. They also benefit equity wise from paying down the loan amount over a number of years.

The long-term hold investor’s goals are simple: They want deals with an upside, like the ability to increase the value by improving the cash flow of the property. For example, some of the wealthiest investors we know are our mentors, who are older gentlemen who bought their pieces of commercial real estate decades ago. One of them bought land and another bought apartments. Their philosophy was Good real estate will always have a higher value over many years if I wait long enough. It’s a too-simple strategy that has worked incredibly well for many patient investors. Both of these gentlemen held onto their properties in three separate down market cycles over the years. Both have properties that are debt free, and they have made millions of dollars since.

In this book, we cover the basic foundational strategies such as buy good real estate and wait (Chapter 8) along with many of the more creative, accelerated wealth building strategies just in case you’re in a hurry (Chapter 9).

Do I have to be a genius to crunch the numbers?

Honestly, the only requirement needed to crunch numbers is to be able to count to ten with your fingers (or at least be able to use a calculator). What you’ll find is that any type of income-producing property can be analyzed by simply splitting up the deal into three parts:

bullet Income

bullet Expenses

bullet Debt (mortgage payment)

The process for figuring out the cash flow for a 30-unit apartment complex is the same as the process for a single-family home. For instance, say you bought a three-bedroom, two-bath home and you’re renting it for $1,200 per month. As the landlord, you’re responsible for property taxes, insurance, and a landscaper. All those expenses total $300 per month. You also pay $800 per month for your mortgage. The tenant pays all other expenses. Here’s a quick formula for figuring out cash flow per month:

Income – expenses – debt = cash flow per month

Using the numbers from the previous single-family home example, here’s the formula in action:

$1,200 (income) – $300 (expenses) – $800 (debt) = $100 (cash flow)

Wasn’t too difficult, was it? Now, here’s an example for a 30-unit apartment building. You have 30 two-bedroom units renting for $500 per month. That totals $15,000 per month in income. Total expenses for the 30 units are $6,000 per month (which includes taxes, insurance, maintenance, and property management costs). The mortgage payment is $5,000 per month. Here’s how the formula works to find the cash flow per month:

$15,000 (income) – $6,000 (expenses) – $5,000 (debt) = $4,000 (cash flow)

This concept applies for office buildings and shopping centers as well. Just remember that for any property you want to analyze, you need to get the income first, the expenses second, and the debt payment third. From there, you can see whether the property makes any money. In this book, we go through this concept in much more detail. In fact, after going through the real-life examples that we provide, your confidence level should be incredibly high.

What investing opportunities are available?

Gee, where do we begin to discuss how many types of opportunities you have to choose from when investing in commercial real estate? It may sound cliché, but there’s something for everyone. If you like the cash flowing dynamics of the apartment business, there are exciting times ahead for you. How about making huge chunks of money developing land? What about the stability of owning office buildings? Consider also the endless growth of shopping centers.

Throughout this book, we explain how to find deals and how to spot the gems as well as how to tell the difference between a good, bad, or average deal. As examples, we give you simple and practical guidelines to follow as well as real deals.

When investing in a property, you have two choices:

bullet You can invest in a property that’s ready to go with no necessary repairs, problems, or other hiccups.

bullet You can invest in properties that have lots of problems and need to be fixed up. Commercial fixer-upper opportunities are in every city. Just like you can do with a residential property, you can fix up, flip, and profit with commercial property.

Big investment returns await you if you take the time to study the fixer-upper how-tos shown in Chapter 14. We like the commercial fixer-uppers because after the rehab is complete, most times you can hold for cash flow, hold for long-term wealth generation, or flip for ‘instant" profits that you once thought would take years and years of hard work to earn.

How does financing work?

Are there differences between obtaining a loan for a single-family home and a neighborhood shopping center? The answer is yes, of course, but the differences may surprise you. Pretty much all you need to get a home loan is a good credit score, and then you have to make enough money to pay the mortgage. When you get a loan for a commercial property, the lender is often interested more in how the property performs than she is in your credit score. For commercial real estate, getting a loan is based on the following three main qualifications:

bullet Does the property produce enough income to cover the expenses and mortgage?

bullet What is the condition of the property?

bullet What is the financial strength of the borrower?

In commercial real estate financing, the borrower (the investor), is number three on the priority list. In other words, a strong cash flowing property in good condition will almost always outweigh the poor credit (or no credit) of the borrower. (Flip to Chapter 8 to discover how to get your lender to say yes to your deal, what lenders like and dislike in deals, and tips on choosing the best loan for your deal.)

Understanding the Risks of Commercial Real Estate

Is commercial real estate risky? You bet it is. One of our mentors always said, Anything you go after of great worth has great risk. Commercial real estate investing involves big dollars and lots of people. And whenever you have lots of money and people working together closely, trouble is right around the corner. But risk is a facet of doing business — any business. You can’t avoid it. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is to understand all the risks that are possible, and then get your advisors involved to help you figure out how to avoid them. Don’t skimp on getting the best advisors you can hire either. As the saying goes, It’s expensive being cheap.

But here’s the good news: Risks can be managed to levels of great certainty. Being successful in commercial real estate nearly always means taking calculated risks. Are you willing to risk some of your time and money to be financially free? What if you could secure your family’s financial future? There are risks with everything you do in life. You may have heard of people who spend their whole lives trying to avoid taking any risks, and in the process they accomplish nothing. What a shame. The point is that sooner or later you’ll probably have to step out of your comfort zone to free yourself from the rat race.

Will you consider taking only a little bit of risk? If so, you may want to start out with a smaller multifamily building. Or maybe you want to roll the dice big time. In this case, check out Chapter 15 for more on land development, which can satisfy the riskiest adventurer.

One of the risks of real estate investing is that if you aren’t careful the property can fail. We include a whole chapter in this book (Chapter 13) on why properties fail, because real estate investing and the decisions we make don’t always turn out well. Sometimes you just make a bad deal. And sometimes you may hire the wrong property management company. And other times the market may take a turn for the worse and send you in a downward spiral. Chapter 13 may be the most important chapter you read because understanding why properties fail can enable you to spot where your property needs some help. Or, if you’re looking at a deal, knowing why properties fail helps you analyze why the property is in its current condition. And don’t forget that understanding why properties fail can put you in a great negotiating position and assist you in solving property problems.

Avoiding lawsuits, the most feared risk

The most feared risk in commercial real estate investing is getting sued. Every tenant you have can be a potential lawsuit. You can also be sued by contractors, city personnel, and the list goes on and on. How do you protect yourself? Here are two lines of defense:

bullet Obtain property liability and hazard insurance.

bullet Choose a protective form of ownership or holding, such as a limited liability company.

Limited liability companies (LLCs) are by far the most popular form of ownership used today to hold commercial real estate. Warning: The worst possible method of holding title is to hold it individually in your name. This way, you have zero liability protection and absolutely no privacy. In Chapter 12, we offer many tips and strategies for holding and protecting your property and assets. Your goal should be to build a legal fortress with the right experts.

Risk-proofing your investment plan

In our years of investing and watching numerous successful and not-so-successful investors go at it, we have come up with several fail-safe measures (we call them common-sense measures!) for risk-proofing your investing. Here they are:

bullet Do proper due diligence. Due diligence is the process you go through when verifying the financial documents of the property, performing a physical inspection, and checking out the legal pieces of the property, such as the title. Ninety percent of all deals die during due diligence. So, if you don’t do a thorough job, the consequences can be costly. You may end up buying a property that’s a money pit. However, when done properly, due diligence can actually help you make your sweet deal even sweeter. Reading Chapter 6, which provides the ins and outs of due diligence, may save you millions of dollars.

bullet Don’t overpay. Overpaying is common among new investors. Don’t be the investor in a deal where the agent sets a record price on selling a property! If you’re buying apartments, make sure that you’re aware of what price you’re paying per unit. If you’re buying a shopping center, make sure you know how much you’re paying per square foot. In both cases, see what the recent market closings value your property at. Paying too much will lock up the property’s cash flow for a long time. (See Chapter 3 for more on pricing your prospective properties.)

bullet Have expert market knowledge. Knowing your market like the back of your hand sets you up for success. Before you close on your deal, make sure you know the following:

• How competitive your rents are with other similar local properties

• When and if there’s a slow season for rentals so you can plan ahead

• Whether there’s rent control in your city, which would inhibit you from raising rents as you thought you could

We also like to inquire on crime statistics on the property in question by calling the local police department.

bullet Hold your goals loosely. What we mean is that you should keep your investment’s exit strategy flexible at all times. In fact, have several exit strategies ready at any given time. Market conditions change. Your personal circumstances can change rapidly as well. So, don’t get wrapped up in executing just one exit strategy, because it may no longer apply.

bullet Know where you are in the real estate cycle. There are four parts to any real estate cycle: expansion, contraction, recession, and recovery. By reading Chapter 2, you can figure out where your particular city is in the cycle and you can determine when to buy, sell, hold, or bail. Each part of the cycle demands that you pay detailed attention to your investment decisions. Understanding real estate cycles helps you take the correct actions with the best timing. There’s nothing like timing the market like a pro!

Getting extra help

Why go it alone when we’re here to help you? As a reader of this book, you get additional free material and training at www.commercialquickstart.com. At this site, you’ll get your Commercial Quick Start Training Package which includes six hours of audio with your authors Peter and Peter, video training sessions, free commercial analysis software, and more! See the About the Authors section at the front of the book for details.

You can discover more about controlling the risk in your commercial investments as you go through this book. You may have thought that risk-proofing was impossible, but you’d be surprised at what a little knowledge can do to your investment portfolio.

Chapter 2

A Crash Course in Commercial Real Estate Investing

In This Chapter

bullet Understanding the basics of commercial real estate

bullet Surveying the types of investments available

bullet Discovering the tools you need to get started

bullet Debunking the myths of investing in commercial real estate

bullet Keeping timing in mind when selling, buying, and holding

What comes to mind when you think of commercial real estate? Downtown skyscrapers? Corner strip malls? Apartment complexes? Okay, that’s a good start. But have you thought about being the owner of one? Too complex you say? Too expensive you think? Jumping into commercial real estate investing could be the wisest and most lucrative investment you ever make. To us, the benefits outweigh the risks. But find out for yourself.

In this chapter, you find out what commercial real estate is, and you discover the different types available. We break down the big world of commercial investing into easy-to-follow categories so that you can pick and choose your favorites. We also uncover the five biggest myths that stop people from investing and understanding commercial real estate.

Because the value of commercial real estate depends on the cash flow that it produces, we show you how cash flow is made on a monthly basis, and we help you discover the steps to building long-term wealth. We also tell you when it’s the most profitable time to buy, hold, sell, or bail (we even share with you ways of predicting the future!). By the end of this chapter, you’re sure to be convinced that commercial real estate is, by far, the best way to produce true and lasting wealth.

How Is Commercial Real Estate Different from Residential Real Estate?

Here’s our definition of commercial real estate: It’s any piece of real estate that’s bigger than one house on one lot. So, commercial real estate includes everything from small apartment buildings (five or more units) and large office buildings to shopping centers, to industrial parks, and even land development.

The three biggest differences between commercial real estate and residential real estate include the following:

bullet Commercial real estate projects are passive investments only after they’re up and running. Remember that unless you have a ton of money and don’t care about getting huge returns, commercial real estate will take a lot of your time and effort to get started. After all, you have to deal with many things, including the learning process, finding the right mentors or teachers, searching for the right deal, financing your investment, picking management teams, protecting it from lawsuits, and overseeing the project.

The good news is that after you have a commercial project off the ground, it’s usually big enough that it allows you to pay other people to take care of it. So it won’t take much of your time at all — and that’s why it’s called a passive investment. Compare this to a single-family home that may require collecting rents and making repairs for many years to come.

bullet Commercial real estate has the potential to make you rich with just one deal. Doing one commercial deal the right way can generate you a profit several times your yearly salary in addition to providing you sizable monthly income as long as you own the property. Residential real estate can produce a sizable profit as well, but it will not generate anywhere near the cash flow that a commercial property will. You’ll receive one check per month from a single-family residence, but you can receive several hundred checks per month from a commercial property.

If you don’t believe us, consider these numbers: When several of our Commercial Mentoring Program clients were sharing how they got started in commercial real estate, we found out that one of them is in a project that already has a profit of $10 million or more. Another one bought a piece of land near his home for $1.5 million, and it has jumped in value over the past two years to $9 million (and he didn’t even have to use his own money).

bullet The people that you meet who invest in commercial real estate are all big thinkers. They’re people who have decided that they want to think big, live big, and hang around other people who are just as passionate about life as they are. Until you get involved, it’s difficult to really understand just what your life could look like. Investors of residential real estate think of one monthly check and one tenant, they wait for appreciation (which may never come), and they’re limited in ways of creating massive value for their property.

Why Invest in Commercial Real Estate?

We think commercial real estate investing is a great way to generate wealth, and the main reason we like it so much can be boiled down to one word: leverage. Leverage is what allows you to use a small amount of your time and money to bring you a magnified return. Commercial properties are usually bigger and more valuable than other types of real estate, such as houses. What this means to you is that after you figure out how to find, negotiate, and buy commercial property without using much of your own money, you’ll be able to sit back and watch the magic of leverage work wonders for your financial future. Your family will thank you for generations to come.

When people get started with their investing, most of them dream of creating a six-figure annual income stream so that they can quit the rat race. However, deep down many of them have doubts that they can actually make it happen. But never fear. The goal of this book is to give you the starting steps and specific know-how to help you realize that you really can live the life of your dreams. And we want you to do it in a way that creates the lifestyle you want without years of hard work. We’ve helped other clients do it, and we know you can do it too.

Understand that there are still going to be naysayers out there who say you can’t invest in commercial real estate in today’s market, in today’s economy, or in today’s cosmic layering of celestial occurrences. But you have a choice. You can either buy into what these financially stressed-out individuals are desperately clinging to, or you can let go of everything that’s been holding you back and go after the future that you want and deserve.

Let us be clear: Commercial real estate allows you to make whopping piles of money. With commercial real estate you can make anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 on a little deal. And, you can make $10 million or more from a bigger property. Sound interesting? Does it take work? Sure it does. But a $100,000 commercial deal doesn’t take anywhere near ten times the work that a $10,000 residential deal takes. So what you’re doing is working at a higher level that rewards you with the opportunity to make a lot more money with just a little more effort.

What Types of Investments Are Available?

Most people think commercial real estate is all about apartment rentals. Even though residential properties are a big part of commercial real estate investing, other types of properties make for excellent investment opportunities as well. For instance, commercial real estate includes offices and warehouses, retail centers, and even undeveloped land.

We define commercial real estate as any real estate that’s bigger than one house on one lot. So even if people live in the property, it’s still commercial as long as it’s bigger than one house. Some people would argue that a little property like a duplex or a four-unit isn’t really commercial. That’s ok. We like keeping our definitions simple. Actually, five or more units in an apartment building is considered commercial, but who’s counting? We explain each of the different types of commercial property in the following sections.

Apartment buildings (also known as residential properties)

The commercial properties that are in the residential category include everything from small apartment properties (five or more units) to huge apartment building projects that cover several city blocks. You drive by thousands of commercial properties like this every day (or you may even live in one). Every single building you see is owned by a commercial investor who’s in the game to make money. (Now anytime you see a nice apartment building, you won’t be able to stop thinking about getting into commercial real estate investing.) What we find great about investing in apartments is that they’re easy to find, banks love to lend on them, and they’re great cash flow generators.

The advantage of starting off with residential properties is that they’re a great way to jump into the exciting world of commercial real estate investing. We both started off investing in small- to medium-sized multiunit properties. This was a great experience because it allowed us to make the jump to get started. For most people, getting started is the hardest part. However, after you’ve started investing in commercial real estate, you’ll have a difficult time going back to the old grind of the rat race that so many others find themselves trapped in.

Offices and warehouses

After you get the itch to invest in commercial real estate, you’ll never walk into an office building again without thinking, somebody owns this building. Why couldn’t it be me?

As our populations expand, more and more office and warehouse buildings are being constructed. Offices and warehouses are great for investing because they have what we call triple net leases. This type of lease is one where the tenants in the property pay you the rent plus they also pay for the following:

bullet All maintenance and repairs

bullet The insurance on the property

bullet The real estate taxes

Bingo! It’s called passive income for a reason. After you get your office building rented out you can sit back and watch the cash flow come rolling in. Heck, you can even hire a property management company to lease it out for you. Then your only obligation is to sit on the beach.

Triple net leases are so called because the tenants in your office building pay for all three categories of expenses. Tenants pay all three of these costs so that the rent you get is a net amount that you don’t have to pay expenses out of. So after the tenants pay for all the expenses and you pay the mortgage, the rest goes into your pocket. It’s quite typical for a triple net lease to be 5 to 20 years in duration with rent increases every couple of years. But that can be a disadvantage as well and here’s why: Let’s say that the lease is for ten years. If your neighborhood experiences explosive growth over the next three to five years, you won’t be able to charge higher rents or capitalize on what’s happening because you’re locked into a ten-year lease agreement. But overall, triple net lease investments are very much sought after.

How a college dropout turned $4,000 into a $120,000 profit in 60 days

Tom was the kind of teenager in high school who thought that he didn’t need anyone else because he had all the answers. Too smart to go to college, Tom worked a variety of jobs until he found himself working as a bouncer in a bar and surviving on 69 cent cans of beans. Well, you can probably imagine where Tom ended up: He found himself at age 22 with no real friends and a pretty bleak-looking future.

For some reason, Tom had the wild idea that he could somehow make money investing in real estate. So, he drove around town talking to agents and looking at properties. One day he saw a sign on an empty lot that said Exxon Corporation Land for Sale. Tom didn’t know much about land, but after looking at the county records he figured that the property might be worth about $200,000.

After calling and meeting with the agent, he was able to put a contract in place to buy the land for $160,000. But now Tom had a big problem because the agent was calling about the $4,000 earnest money deposit that Tom had promised to give to him. So he went down to the bank and talked them into lending him the $4,000 based on the value of his car, which was the only real asset that he had.

Now Tom was faced with the problem of having to close the deal in 120 days or he would lose his deposit and perhaps his car too. So, he went back to the county office and looked at all the other parcels of land around his piece that he had under contract. He saw that there was a larger lot behind his property that could have its access restricted depending on how he developed his property.

With the help of an architect, Tom put together two sets of plans. One set showed a larger commercial shopping center that restricted access to the lot behind it. He also put together another set of plans with another smaller building designed as a gateway to the property behind it. Tom’s next step took a straight face. He marched into a meeting with the owner of the property that was behind his property and dropped both sets of plans down. He told the owner (in a nice way) that he had a choice: He could either buy his property for $320,000 so the owner could develop it with the gateway, or if the owner didn’t want to buy it, Tom was going to develop it himself and restrict his access.

Tom was scared stiff at this point because he knew that he didn’t have any way to close the deal himself. Fortunately the owner agreed to buy the property for $320,000 — and after they went through the due diligence, the price dropped down to $290,000. Tom walked away with $130,000 in profit (after paying the land owner his $160,000) and for two reasons: One was that he found himself in a place in life where he didn’t have a lot of choices. Either he was going to go for it and make it in life, or he wasn’t. The second reason that Tom was successful is because he had guts. Guts boil down to a willingness to move ahead even though you’ve never done it before and even though you’re scared to death.

Retail centers

Retail centers, also known as shopping centers or malls, are at the heart of most of the towns and cities in our country. These are the places where people come to shop, eat, and meet with friends. And retail centers are one of the commercial property asset types that you can invest in. Most investors like retail centers because, like office and warehouse properties, many retail properties are leased out on a long-term triple net lease basis where the tenants pay for all the expenses. The upside to this as an investor is