cap@bunkerb.UUCP (Gerald Cap) (05/23/85)
I'm interested in gathering any information/opinions on Robert Lowery. He is apparently some type of real estate wizard who has a method of purchasing homes/real estate with no money down, selling the property and reaping profits on little or no personal investment. In addition, he offers seminars where he tries to sell you "his" method. I think the cost is around $200. Needless to say I'm skeptical. If any one has any insights they're much appreciated. A friend of mine is interested in purchasing the "method". I'm not so sure it's a good idea. Sorry if this topic has been hashed around already, I haven't been reading net.invest lately. -- Jerry Cap 2692
dan@haddock.UUCP (05/27/85)
I saw a TV show which presented one such method--I don't remember if it was Robert Lowery or not. The technique is quite real, and quite legitimate. The catch is that it takes enormous quantities of time and work. The TV show moderator challenged the author of the technique to have someone taking the seminar who had virtually no money, and of course no experience in real estate, buy a house with no money down in 24 hours. He did. What you do is find a really run-down place owned by some business or organization that never expects to get anywhere with it. You make a deal with them to purchase it with no money down, mortgage payments to start a year or so later. You include an escape hatch so you can back out if something else goes wrong, since this is only the first element of the deal. The owner is perfectly happy to make the deal, since they lose nothing, and might gain a lot. Next you get a professional appraisal of the house and an estimate (or better, several estimates) of the cost of making it livable. If the estimate turns out much higher than you expect, give up and use the escape hatch. If it turns out to be reasonable, you next put ads in big-city papers for "passive investors" in real estate to help you out. Believe it or not, you can actually line up investment (usually from doctors and suchlike) to help you put the house in shape, in return for part of the equity. Then the real work starts. It doesn't matter that you're arranging to contract out; it's a lot of work to get the house into shape to sell, and you'll do most of it yourself. On the TV show, a novice at all this really did manage to sign a deal in 24 hours for a really run-down home in a not-so-great neighborhood. She then lined up an investor or two for the $15000 it was estimated to cost to repair it. Unfortunately it turned out that it would cost more like $30000, the investors didn't want to fork over that much more money, and she used the escape hatch and got out. The TV show did a followup, and found someone else using the same technique, but much more successfully; he was no stranger to fixing up houses, and could do a lot of things (like stripping down walls to their studs and rebuilding them) himself. The key was that both of these people were willing to spend all of their free time making their investment pay. Dan Franklin