Real Estate Investments

People who are planning on buying a home and then living in it year round are not the only people who use real estate services. There are a wealth of other options out there, ways you can use real estate to turn the money you have into more money, and these ways are becoming increasingly popular thanks to reality television shows on all the time. If you think you might want to get into this lucrative business, see below for some of the more popular options when it comes to real estate investments. Most of them you can enter into on your own without a lot of training, so that's a bonus for the inexperienced.

Flipping

House flipping, more than any other type of real estate investment, has been popularized by reality television. In house flipping, you would buy a house for sale that's designated as a fixer-upper and rapidly complete the upgrades to the house before turning around and re-selling it. House flipping is a balancing act wherein you have to tightly budget your time and money in order to make a profit. Taking too long will drain monthly mortgage payments from your pocket while unexpected or overbudget repairs will also put a dent in your potential earnings. Hiring contractors to do the work is expensive, so most house flippers do the work themselves. Careful here, though. You should only try this if you have an understanding of carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work. Of course, if you have no clue how to do the repairs, you are much better off calling in renovation experts.

Renting

A very simple method of real estate investment is purchasing a property and then renting it out to a third party. This can be done with everything from furnished single family home, to an entire building of luxury condos. The only limit is how much capital you can lay out for the investment. You don't even have to have any management experience to invest this way, because you can always hire someone else to handle that aspect of the business.

Time Shares

Firstly, What is a timeshare, you ask? Time shares are a fairly recently invented method of real estate investment in which you purchase a property and then sell ownership of it for certain months of the year. For instance, one person may own it from October to May and another from May to August. Time shares are most popular and work best in vacation cities like Orlando where the weather is nice year round. This brings in snowbirds and other consistent yearly visitors who like to set up a routine in their vacation city without laying out a lot in hotel bills.

Bird Dogging

Bird dogging is a colloquial expression for a method of real estate investment wherein you act as a scout for other financial backers. As a bird dogger, you would be responsible for finding new homes, condos, or even commercial lots that would make good investments and passing the information off to an investor who would then purchase the property and pay you a commission. This is a good way to begin if you know the market well but lack the funds to make your own investments.