How do you invest in real estate without using money?
I know this is broad, but this isn't a scam -- it's a   workshop/educational thing about teaching people of investing in the   real estate market, and how to profit The scam is that the free or cheap class doesn't give you enough info to make money; so they sell you a more advanced and expensive class that gets you almost enough info; but the goal of the 2nd class is to get you to pay for the specialized seminar and coaching sessions that either fail to materialize or  are so basic they aren't worth the money. Sounds like the seminar is about using OPM (other people's money), which means you're going to have to find not just real estate, but investors.  Those investors are going to need a business plan, contracts, and a lot of work from you to provide as much equity as possible before the property is sold.  If you're serious about Real Estate, I suggest finding the most successful broker/agent you can, buying them a beer, glass of wine, or cup of coffee, and picking their brain about it. It'll be cheaper then a scam seminar. This is one way in which the scheme could work: You put your own property (home, car, piece of land) as a collateral and get a loan from a bank. You can also try to use the purchased property as security, but it may be difficult to get 100% loan-to-value. You use the money to buy a property that you expect will rise in value and/or provide rent income that is larger than the mortgage payment. Doing some renovations can help the value rise. You sell the property, pay back the loan and get the profits. If you are fast, you might be able to do this even before the first mortgage payment is due. So yeah, $0 of your own cash invested. But if the property doesn't rise in value, you may end up losing the collateral. They're probably talking about flipping houses. The conventional wisdom when flipping is to purchase the property with a mortgage or other loan on day-0. Do the work to rehabilitate it. Get it listed for re-sale promptly (this step has varying strategies) with a profitable price but one that will make it move. Have the house sold on or before the first payment would be due. This is anywhere from 30 to 60 days. The flipper then never has to make a payment on the mortgage or loan, the costs of rehabilitating the home are recovered promptly (potentially before any loan, credit card payments, or invoices are due), and there is a profit. This also assumes that either a 100% loan or some other mechanism is used to address closing costs and fees. This model fits the premise of the infomercial in that you make money investing in real estate but never have to tie up any of your own money in the process. I've been to one of these seminars:  a) you can get a loan of up to $700,000 from the company and only have to pay a fixed amount for the use of money, but you have to pay the loan off in nine months.  Or b) you can just invest say $50,000 and you'll get a return of say 4%.  But what the company does is take all of the investor's money and use that to fund the loans (putting none of the company’s money at risk), and that fixed amout sounds reasonable until you realize that it's only for a part of the year so the real APY is actually much higher than the conventional lending rate; or the rate they are paying the investors. There is (almost) always money involved somewhere, but it doesn't have to come from you.  It can be investors, credit cards, or even seller-financing (I've done all 3). Examples: If you can find partners with the money to make the deals happen, then your job is to put the deal together.  Find the properties, negotiate the price, even get the property under contract (all without any obligation or cost on your part... yes it absolutely can be done).  Then your partners will fund the deal if it's good enough and their terms are met, etc. In some areas you can put a property on a credit card.  If you find a house say for $25,000 that will rent for $300/month, and you can put it on a credit card (especially at zero percent for a year or something similar), then you can generate cashflow as a landlord without putting up any cash of your own on the purchase.  Of course there are many risks associated with landlording and i could tell you horror stories... but we're not addressing that here. You can negotiate a sale with an owner who agrees to finance the entire purchase for you.  I once purchased 3 properties at once this way from a seller who financed the entire sale, all closing costs, everything, this way.  Of course they needed a lot of repair and such so I had to fund that another way, but at least the purchase itself cost me no money out of pocket. So these infomercials/courses are not inherently scams in the sense that what they are teaching is (usually... I'm sure there are exceptions) true.  However they generally give you enough information to get into trouble, and not out.  But that's what true learning is... it's getting into trouble and finding a way out that doesn't kill you.  =)  That's called experience, and you can't buy that for any price. "I have a friend who had went on a seminar with FortuneBuilders (the company that has Than Merrill as CEO). He told me that one of the things taught in that seminar was how to find funding for the property that you want to flip. One of the things he mentioned was that there are so-called ""hard money"" lenders who are willing to lend you the money for the property in exchange for getting their name on the property title. Last time I checked it looked like here in Florida we had at least Bridgewell Capital and Fairview Commercial Lending that were in that business. These hard money lenders get their investment back when the house is sold. So there is some underlying expectation that the house can be sold with some profit (to reimburse both the lender and you for your work). That friend of mine did tell me that he had flipped a house once but that he did not receive the funding to that from a lender but from an in-law, however it was through a similar arrangement."
Well, Taking a short position directly in real estate is impossible because it's not a fungible asset, so the only way to do it is to trade in its derivatives - Investment Fund Stock, indexes and commodities correlated to the real estate market (for example, materials related to construction).    It's hard to find those because real estate funds usually don't issue securities and rely on investment made directly with them. Another factor should be that those who actually do have issued securities aren't usually popular enough for dealers and Market Makers to invest in it, who make it possible to take a short position in exchange for some spread. So what you can do is, you can go through all the existing real estate funds and find out if any of them has a broker that let's you short it, in other words which one of them has securities in the financial market you can buy or sell. One other option is looking for real estate/property derivatives, like this particular example. Personally, I would try to computationally find other securities that may in some way correlate with the real estate market, even if they look a bit far fetched to be related like commodities and stock from companies in construction and real estate management, etc. and trade those because these have in most of the cases more liquidity. Hope this answers your question! Wow! First, congratulations! You are both making great money. You should be able to reach your goals.  Are we on the right track ? Are we doing any mistakes which we could have avoided ? Please advice if there is something that we should focus more into ! I would prioritize as follows: Get on the same page. My first red flag is that you are listing your assets separately. You and your wife own property together and are raising your daughter together. The first thing is to both be on the same page with your combined income and assets. This is critical. Set specific goals for the future. Dreaming and big-picture life planning will be the foundation for building a detailed plan for reaching your goals. You will see more progress with more sacrifice. If you both are not equally excited about the goals, you will not both be equally willing to sacrifice lifestyle now. You have the income now to be able to set yourselves up to do whatever you want in 10 years, if you can agree on what you want. Hire a financial planner you trust. Interview people, ask someone who is where you want to be in 10 years. You need someone with experience that can guide you through these questions and understands how to manage your income stream. Start saving for retirement in tax-advantaged accounts. This should be as much as 10%-15% of your income combined, so $30k-$45k per year. You need to start diversifying your investments. Real estate is great, but I would never recommend it as this large a percentage of net worth. Start saving for your child's education. Hard to say what you need here, since I don't know your goals. A financial planner should assist you with this. Get rid of your debt. Out of your $2.1M of rental real estate and land, you have $1.4M of debt. It will be difficult to start a business with that much additional debt. It will also put stress on your retirement that you don't need. You are taking on lots of risk here. I would sell all but maybe one of the properties and let it cash flow. This will free up cash to start investing for retirement or future business too. Buy more rental in the future with cash only. You have plenty of income to do it this way, and you will be setting yourself up for a great future. At this point you can continue to pile funds into any/all your investments, with the goal of using the funds to start a business or to live on. If all your investments are tied up in real estate, you wont have anything to draw on if needed for a business opportunity. You need to weigh this out in your goal and planning. What should we do to prepare for a comfortable retirement and safety You cannot plan for or see all scenarios. However, good planning will give you more options and more choices. Investing driven by fear will set you up for failure.  Spend less than you make. Be patient. Be generous. Cheers! Do not borrow to invest in real estate.  The interest payments will eat up most of your profit (the property management fees might eat up the rest), and you will have significant risk with tenant issues, property value, etc.  Many people have made it work - many also lose everything. Real estate can be a great investment, but you can't even afford a house of your own yet, let alone investment property.  Keep saving up until you have 20% down to buy a house of your own (ideally that you can put on a 15% fixed mortgage), and pay it off as quickly as you can.  Then you can start saving for your first rental property. If that process isn't fast enough for you, you have two options.  Increase your income or reduce your expenses.  There's no shortcut to wealth-building without taking significant risks. At most I would scale back the 401(k) to the 5% match you get, but you should scale that back up once you have enough for a down payment. "You could also look up stock trading games.  Basically, you get x amount of ""money"" and ""invest"" it in stocks, trying to get the highest return of the group in y amount of time.  They are a decent way to get used to how different types of trades work without having to risk any real money, while having enough ""money"" to invest that you can try different things.  Of course, as others have mentioned they may or may not include all the nuances, like minimum investments and brokerage fees, but at least you can learn and see how the different buying and selling options work." Something you invest in has the ability to grow in value.  So examples of investments would be buying stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities.  Buying your house or a piece of real estate can be considered an investment because the house/property will hopefully be worth more as time passes.  So the act of paying down a mortgage really isn't an investment. Your post seems to read as if you want to invest only in real estate rental properties as a start because they will be a reliable investment guaranteed to generate profits that you will be plowing back into buying even more rental properties, but you are willing to consider (possibly in later years) other forms of investment (in real estate) that will not require active  participation in the management of the rental properties. While many participants here do own rental real estate and even manage it entirely, for most people, that is only a small part of their investment portfolio, and I suspect that hardly any will recommend real estate as the only investment the way you seem to want to do. Also, you might want to look more closely at the realities of rental real estate  operations before jumping in. Things are not necessarily as rosy as they appear to you now.  Not all your units will be rented all the time, and the rental income might not always be enough to cover the mortgage payments and the property taxes and the insurance payments and the repairs and maintenance and ... Depreciation of the property is another matter that you might not have thought about. That being said, you can invest in real estate through real estate investment trusts (REITs) or through limited partnerships where you have only a passive role.  There are even mutual funds that invest in REITs or in REIT indexes. There are tax strategies you could take advantage of if you own the property. Find local real estate investors that like 'buy and hold'. Additional strategy is to buy a property and sell it with owner financing (you use a Residential Mortgage Loan Officer to facilitate.) What is great is you can get a great % real return on your money without being a landlord. With out a doubt: commercial real estate.  Those that have significant amounts of money, and want to make lots more usually end up investing a chunk of their portfolio in commercial real estate.  Everyone finds a way to make money elsewhere, but there’s no comparison to the incentives and returns in real estate when you have tens or hundreds of millions of $ at your disposal.  Have money, make money.