Every day more and more people are deciding to become weekend real estate investors. Armed with the proper information and right training this can be a lucrative business. Jumping in and playing blind archery can be a very costly mistake.

All of the stories you hear about being able to buy real estate with no money and no credit are true, but doing it without the proper documentation and training can literally wipe you out overnight.

I don't say this to scare anyone away from the business quite the contrary, just due your homework before you start making offers on property. Concentrate on a small area and learn it well find out what homes in that particular area are selling for now and what they have been selling for the past six month to a year.

The best way for a new investor to start is by wholesaling properties to other investors. This is done by finding a property below market value and selling to another investor. If you add a few thousand dollars to the price and leave enough for the other investor to make money you will have more buyers than you could ever supply.

Most investors would give their right arm to have someone finding properties for them to fix up and resell for a tidy profit. You see, investors are basically a lazy group and don't mind paying you for doing their legwork for them.

Another profitable way is lease option or get the deed as I call it. Your key here as with any other niche of real estate investing is to be working with people who need to sell not people who just want to sell. You can find hundreds of sellers that want to sell just by picking up the classifieds.

This may come as a shock to some of you but you really aren't looking for houses you're looking for problems. Homeowners who are getting a divorce, a job transfer, military transfer, burnt out landlords that just want to get out of the business simply because they don't know how to manage the property or the tenants. Get the idea?

Preforeclosures are another great way to make money as a real estate investor. In fact your highest paydays and most motivated sellers will be those who are in the preforeclosure state. Sellers in preforeclosure are behind on their payments, but the bank has not yet taken back the property. Come on now, can you think of anyone more motivated to sell.

Remember that you are doing a great service to these seller by somewhat saving their credit by not having a foreclosure on their credit report. Most people don't realize the severity of a foreclosure or how long it stays on your credit report.

Their problems are just beginning at this point. Picture yourself as a landlord and an individual that has just been foreclosed come to rent or lease option a home. The foreclosure shows up and the first thing that pops into the landlords head is, if they won't pay for their own home the sure as heck aren't going to pay me.

Unfair, possibly but put yourself in the landlords shoes and then lets see how unfair it really is. So yes you really are helping the seller solve some of their problems and making a profit by doing so. After all most of us don't start a business and intentionally not make money.

Heck even non profit organizations make money and a ton of it; if they didn't how in the world would they possibly stay in business for very long.
So get off your high horse and wake up and smell the coffee, this is the real world we are talking about here.

Buying Junkers and fixing them up and then retailing them is great also if you are experienced at estimating cost or can do most of the work yourself so you don't get raked over the coals by some contractor that wants to make a killing on your first rehab.

Just slow down and look before you leap by doing some wholesale deals and lease options before you decide you want to play with the big dogs in the tall grass.

Make certain to get you team in place such as your title company, attorney, plumbers, painters electricians. In other words all your tradesmen before you take the plunge and start doing property rehabs.

Take it one step at a time and you'll be a professional real estate investor before you know it, without getting kicked in the teeth a half dozen times while you are learning.