When you understand and apply the ideas in this blog you’ll learn that motivated sellers don’t care about your credit; they don’t care about your home life; they don’t care about you, period. They care about getting out of tough situations and relieving themselves of major sources of pain in their lives. And sellers are only one of several funding sources for your foreclosure deals.

Myth #3: If You Buy a Property from a Seller in Foreclosure, You’re a Shark Taking Advantage of Another Person’s Misery

This false belief would have you believe that you are out there swindling sellers by sneaking into their home, fooling them into signing documents, and running away with all their cash before they wake up to what you’re doing. Far from it!

Even if some investors do business that way, let’s make it absolutely clear: that’s not how members of the Mentor Family do business. The Mentor Family is a group of our clients and readers who’ve discovered that real estate is about more than just making money. You see, when you help sellers in foreclosure, they are thankful for your taking time to understand their situations and finding a win-win way to solve a problem they’re embarrassed and scared to admit they even have.

Investing in foreclosures is like holding the core of your being up to a mirror. If you are a good person, what refl ects back is that you help people and get paid well for doing it. Isn’t that what business is all about—providing value and getting paid handsomely for it?

Success Team—Peter’s Story

When I think about everything I’ve accomplished in my life, the things that really stand out aren’t the number of properties I have purchased or the wealth I have accumulated. Rather, it’s what that financial wealth has enabled me to do and the people I have been able to help. I remember Fred and Evelyn who wanted to sell their house. I recall sitting in their gorgeous home on a great lot. The house seemed perfect, but the property never sold. So Fred and Evelyn called me and we sat down at their kitchen table. Fred was doing all of the talking. It took a long time, but he fi nally felt comfortable enough with me to share their concerns about selling the house. They had received offers on the property, but all of the offers felt cold to them. No one had ever taken the time to sit down and really understand them. Sadly, a short time before this, their son had drowned while playing in the creek toward the back of their yard. It was important for them to share that and have someone show interest.

Fred and especially Evelyn were able to move on with their lives as a result of our conversation around that kitchen table. It emphasizes that when you invest in foreclosures, you fi nd yourself talking with the sellers at a critical time in their lives. So take the time to listen. And realize that the connections you make with sellers and the connections you make with other investors who have the same mindset as you do are an important part of what we do as real estate investors.

When we tell people, “Anyone can make big money investing in foreclosures,” most simply shake their heads and walk away. We watch them passing on what might be their best chance to create security and freedom for themselves and their families while they help people like Fred and Evelyn. They simply don’t believe—or can’t believe—that they could be successful this way. They say they don’t have enough money, or that they don’t know how, or that it’s too hard. Sadly, many let themselves sink into the “lives driven by fear and obligation” that so many people lead.

But you’re different. Something inside made you realize it’s possible for you to create a life driven by passion and purpose, a possibility fueled by creating your fortune with real estate. You may not have all the know-how yet, but with the specialized knowledge you’ll gain from reading this blog, you’ll uncover dozens of ways to find profi table foreclosure deals and structure them without using your cash or credit.

We know this sounds too good to be true. But success takes a great deal of study, disciplined action, and willingness to set aside many deeply rooted beliefs you have about wealth. If you are willing to add these three ingredients to the recipes explained in this blog, we guarantee you can and will make big money investing in foreclosures.

Myth #1: It Takes Money to Make Money

There you are, sitting in your family’s dining room after enjoying a full holiday meal. You’re a young child; your family is gathered and talking about life. How many times did you see the dreamer in your family get his or her dreams shot down with a bullet like, “You can’t do that. Where will you get the money to do it?”

Were you the dreamer in your family who felt the sharp stab from those well-intentioned remarks? Did people who influenced you keep drilling into your head, “It takes money to make money”? Where is this myth written in stone? And if it were really true, how did people like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates start with nothing and build net worths of billions of dollars?

Success Team—Peter’s Story

“I started investing while I was an auto mechanic working for less than $15 an hour. Not only didn’t I have a large chunk of investing capital to start with, but my wife and I had two small kids at the time. In the home where I grew up, my dad had to work really hard to provide for his wife and seven kids. One day, I reached an emotional low when my boss yelled at me for helping myself to some coffee that he’d set out for customers. That incident gave me the courage to find a way to make investing work for me. Sometimes it does take an emotional low to help you commit to never settling for less again.

Success Team—Coach Emily’s Story

When I started investing in real estate, I had just graduated from college. I was looking for a way to succeed in life without having to work for a big corporation for 40 years. I was scrimping by on my small savings because I wanted to prove to my parents that I really could make it on my own. That’s when I first got started with my investing. Over the next two years, I bought dozens of properties using other people’s money and have been involved in hundreds of deals since. If a new college graduate like me can start with nothing and become a real estate millionaire in less than four years, then you can do the same thing!

It doesn’t take money to make money. It takes specialized knowledge of a profi table niche that you apply with disciplined and passionate efforts over time, taking care to learn and to improve along the way. Even if it really did take money to make money (which it doesn’t), no one said it takes your own money to make money. One of the advantages of investing in foreclosures is that it’s easy to use other people’s money to make money. You can potentially tap into thousands of dollars in profi ts created through buying properties using other sources of funding.

Myth #2: You Need Good Credit to Borrow Money

We can hear you saying, “Yeah, but we need good credit to borrow money so we can make money investing in foreclosures.” This is true if your only source of funding is from traditional lenders. In this blog you’ll learn seven other ways to fund your way into a deal with someone else’s money—no matter what your credit is like.

Success Team—Peter’s Story

I’ve had a hand in hundreds of real estate deals—acquiring interest in millions of dollars worth of real estate—yet I’ve only applied for funds through a conventional lender for a small handful of loans in all those years. If I can do this, you can too. It’s just a matter of learning the real-world secrets that successful investors have mastered.

For example, I bought and made more than $250,000 in profits from a fi ve-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath house. The seller agreed to act as my bank and carry back all the fi nancing I needed to buy that property after a small down payment. He carried back over $400,000 without ever once asking to check my credit. Was the seller unsophisticated? Was I taking advantage of him? No. He had a net worth several times greater than mine (he was a real estate investor in his seventies and I was just 38 years old at the time). He simply regarded this as a win-win situation.

More to come in Three Biggest Myths About Investing In Foreclosures Part-2