Real Estate Investing How to Get Wealthy In Real Estate By Filling Out Paperwork

Wouldn't it be nice if you could become a wealthy real estate investor just by filling out some paperwork? Well, you can! One of my favorite ways to make money in real estate is to get a property under contract and then find another buyer before the closing date in the contract. In order to do this you have to be able to fill out a real estate purchase contract (i.e., the paperwork) correctly. You won't need a large down payment or good credit to make this work, but you do need to be a stickler for details when you make your offers (i.e.

, fill out your real estate contract). Have a real estate attorney review your contract before you get the seller's signature. Now that there are a lot of foreclosures on the market, I often get calls from families about to lose their home. They want to sell quickly, but their house needs repairs. In a situation like this, I get the house under contract and then assign it (that is, sign it over) to another investor who is going to do buy the property, do the rehab and put the house back on the market.

Let me show you how it works. Imagine you're sitting at a kitchen table in the home of a couple you've just met. Their kids are in the backyard playing with the dog.

They offer you a glass of iced tea while you look through their mortgage documents and verify the amount they owe on their house. "How soon will you be able to move?" you ask them. The man and woman look at each other. They look at the piles of stuff in the living room - everything from stacks of unopened mail, to dirty laundry, to half a dozen used pizza boxes.

No one has cleaned in months. The odor of sweaty shoes stings your nose and the carpet is fuzzy and gray from dust balls. Don't even get me started about the bathrooms. For anyone who works with people facing foreclosure, this is a common scene. I see it all the time.

Something happened here. One of them had a medical emergency and they didn't have insurance. Or she lost her job. Or he bought a boat and then had to buy a truck to haul it to the lake. They got behind financially and before they knew what happened they couldn't make the mortgage payments. For a couple or three months they really thought they'd get caught up.

But it never happened. So they gave up. Now we're sitting at their kitchen table. The sheriff's sale date is just a couple of weeks away.

I'm here to buy their house, save their credit and help them get on with their lives. But before we sign a contract, I explain that I need to show their house to the appraiser, the termite inspector and to a couple of different rehabbers to get bids on the work. They agree. I also ask them to sign an assignment document which simply states that they acknowledge that another person may step into my shoes and buy the property. They agree to that, too, and sign the document.

As I leave, I put a For Sale By Owner sign in their front yard with my phone number on it. Within the hour I get phone calls from other real estate investors who know the house is on the sheriff's sale list. They want to view the property and make an offer.

The following day I show the house - in its deplorable condition - to a couple of investors who specialize in rehabbing property and putting it back on the market. The nice thing about working with other investors and rehabbers is that you don't have to clean house first. You don't have to bake cookies for an open house.

You don't have to mow the lawn. You don't even have to clean the bathrooms. See, investors and rehabbers aren't looking for a house to live in.

They're looking for structural problems. They're calculating the cost of paint and carpet. Water heater doesn't work? No problem. The only "bad" thing about dealing with other investors who want in on your deal is that some of them overstate (make that "lie about") their ability to close quickly. The guy who can guarantee he can close the deal before the date of the sheriff's sale is your guy.

You sign over your rights in the contract to the other investor in the assignment contract. He becomes the buyer named in the contract - and you drop out of the picture. Your assignment fee may be $1,000 - $3,000, depending on what it's worth to the other guy. Everything is negotiable, including your fee and when you get paid. If you've never assigned a contract to a particular investor before, be sure to get your assignment fee (cashier's check or money order) upfront when you assign the contract. However, if you've had a good experience working with a certain investor before, you may agree to wait to collect your fee until the closing date.

It's up to you. Now that you know how simple it is to "buy" real estate with no cash and "sell" it before you own it, not having money, or good credit, or access to financing can never keep you out of the real estate investing game again. You can become a wealthy real estate investor just by filling out paperwork.

Krista Goering is an attorney and real estate investor, who has bought and sold more than $4.5 million of real estate using the strategies she teaches online. Find out how more about Foreclosures at Foreclosures Now which is at http://www.foreclosures-now.info.