How to Create Multiple Streams of Income Buying Homes in Nice Areas With Nothing Down by David Finkel, Peter Conti (2000, Paperback, Illustrated)

Peter Finkel And David Conti have since parted company on good terms and are each doing their own thing. They have authored a half dozen books and spoken at seminars all over the country. This book is a good intro to the basics of real estate investing. A good read to introduce yourself to the world of real estate investign and some basic concepts of how it all works. The book does lack in specific knowledge or specific implementation, but is a great introductory book for begginers or for those who have curiosity about real estate investing.

I heard about this book called “How to Create Multiple Streams Of Income Buying Homes in Nice Areas With Nothing Down” by Peter Conti and David Finkel…needless to say, the title got me so I had to get it. I just finished it.

The book is all about a system they call “Purchase Option Investing.” It seems like a great way to get started in real estate. The book gives pretty specific techniques about how to go about doing it.

It is based on a system where (briefly): for example, you get a purchase option from a motivated seller for 4 years at the current price of $100K, your option price is $5k and the monthly payments are $800. You then go to a motivated tenant-buyer and you get them to rent the place for $1k with the option to buy the property at the future price of $120K in 2 years with an option payment to you at $12K refundable. You get $7k up front ($12k-$5k), cashflow of $200 per month ($1k-$800), and if the tenant-buyer decides to buy in 6 years, then you get $8k ($120k-$100K-$12k). This gives you a total of $29,400 in profits…in 2 years.

Now, this might not make sense, and probably shouldn’t because that’s a 300pg book summarized in a couple of sentences. It also seems illogical, but the book also explains why this is a win-win for everybody….it makes lots of sense in the book.

Here is the leverage I see in the system:
If it really goes down how they say it goes down, here is the deal:

No money down
You don’t own the property, but you control it
You get passive income
You also get quick cash up front
No maintenances fees or work from your part (toilets and stuff)
And you get big money at the end (if the property goes up in value)

And that last part is really the only thing that bugs me. The system is banking on the fact that the property value will go up. I think that if property values are obviously going down, then the system will not work at all. And to me that is not good because I want to make money in both the up and down market. In fact, I want to make a killing in the down market.

I think Kiyosaki says that at around the year 2008, real estate will begin to crash (Prophecy ISBN 0446690341). If it does really happen, then I believe this system will not work.

If any of you know anything about the Purchase Option system, PLEASE PLEASE tell me if what I’m thinking is right or totally off the mark. Thanks.

One last thing about the book. The last ¼ of it is all commercials for more of Peter Conti’s products. They are filled with what seems like exact how to manuals, marketing techniques, and forms and contracts you can buy. Lowest price for any of this is about $500. I’ve seen some of the programs that the book sells for $1,500 on ebay for $200. You can read whatever you want into that.

I went to their website www.resultsnow.com and you can actually get it for free. But it might be worth your time (and money) to the book of ebay or something. If you want it for “free”, you can print offline it and bind it for $7 at Office Depot.

It closing, the book gives a very good explanation on the Purchase Option Technique for investing in real estate. It gets a thumbs up for that. I believe though, that the system will not work in the down market, and since the baby boomers will start to retire soon and take money out of their retirement funds (having adverse effects on the ecomony), it gets thumbs down.

Somebody slap me if im wrong, cus Id hate to miss out on a near perfect system.
Victor