The New Year begins with everything you need to close your first lease option deal in the next 30 days! Nothing gets you off to a faster start than cooperative lease options! And your big bonus is that it leads directly into sustainable full sandwich lease options that pay you for years to come!

Using time-proven and standardized contracts and forms let you insert your information once to reuse it deal after deal.

Your Cooperative Lease Option Timeline (Checklist)

Make 2% to 5% on cooperative lease options. On a $250,000 house, that comes to between $5,000 and $12,500. Of course, on a $325,000 house, the numbers are much bigger. Opportunities are waiting for you.

There are three primary goals when flipping these cooperative lease options.

1. Simply flipping deals quickly for fast cash!
2. Making quick cash on deals that don’t have enough equity for you to stay in long term.
3. Other deals you don’t want to stay in (when you’re too busy with bigger sandwich lease options).

For every cooperative lease option, especially when getting started, the most important form to closely follow is the checklist. This is how you walk step-by-step through the easy to follow process to be sure you don’t miss anything. The checklist is also a valuable tool even after you have plenty of experience with sandwich lease options. While you focus your attention on more profitable deals, you can have an assistant work on the cooperative lease options by following the checklist.

Even if you are not yet working with an assistant, but are busy with other deals, the checklist keeps you on track to collect a fast and simple bonus paycheck from a cooperative lease option.

In real estate, “Time is of the Essence.”

Cooperative Lease Options Lead to Sandwich Lease Options

With a cooperative lease option, you are in and out of the deal very fast. You don’t babysit the tenant-buyer. You don’t have to spruce up the property. You don’t collect rent checks from tenants and write checks to the seller. You don’t have to make sure they maintain the property. You don’t have to check in with the tenant-buyer to be sure they are making progress toward obtaining a loan to finalize the purchase.

Cooperative lease options eliminate most of your responsibilities but still deliver a healthy payday!

As you’ve probably read in my previous blogs, the cooperative lease option is the 1-payday technique that gets you started toward the 3-paydays that come with sandwich lease options. With the cooperative lease, you collect a healthy fee (4-figures or more) by flipping the option to a tenant-buyer that works directly with the seller through the remainder of the lease option process.

You don’t have to work the back end of the deal with the tenant-buyer. But as soon as you master the front end of the process, you are ready to move on to full sandwich lease option deals that have all 3-paydays!

Cooperative Lease Options for the Option Fee

There are other versions of the cooperative lease option such as wholesaling to another investor. However, this version of the Cooperative Lease Option works well when the seller doesn’t leave much meat on the bone for you or another investor to stay in a sandwich lease option for a year or two. Sorry to say but this could also be a time when the seller is being greedy. More likely, the seller just doesn’t have enough equity in the house to afford to share with you in exchange for your knowledge and expertise. But greed is greed, and you should always be very cautious when working with a seller motivated by greed. What this is about is how you can structure a deal when the seller needs to sell a house but just doesn’t own enough equity to be able to share.

Cooperative lease options are about finding a buyer that wants a lease option and connecting him or her with a seller wanting the same thing. You are the middleman flipping the lease option directly to the tenant-buyer for a fee. An example of a seller without enough equity to share is when the seller’s mortgage balance is equal to the sales value of the house. For some reason (divorce, job relocation, illness, etc.) they need to sell the house but will be stretched to pay off the mortgage at the current value of the home. This is a time the seller is motivated to make a creative sale because they probably can’t afford to pay a Realtor^® commission either.

That means the seller welcomes having a tenant-buyer generate rental income that is higher than the mortgage payments until the tenant-buyer qualifies to complete the purchase (the seller gets some extra income until the deal closes). The tenant-buyer is also willing to pay top dollar for the house, which helps the seller pay off the high mortgage and also puts some money in his/her pocket.

This is a win-win-win for the seller, you as the investor, and for the buyer.

What you are doing in a cooperative lease option is bringing the seller and tenant-buyer together for a lease option and you collect an option fee from the tenant-buyer but then you step out of the deal. The seller and buyer complete the sale before the end of the option period.

How to Structure Cooperative Lease Options

This might seem more complicated than it is. It’s really remarkably simple. This is nothing more than a creative solution that most people never think about. First, you use one of the many methods I share to find a seller in a bit of a pickle that needs some help with this type of creative selling.

Then you explain, in a general way, how a lease with an option to purchase works. What’s important here is that you do gain some control over the property. You do this by signing a purchase option agreement between you and the seller for some “consideration.” When it comes to a cooperative lease option, you want the option fee you pay the seller to be very small. Maybe as small as between $1 and $10. This is important because your profit comes from the much higher option fee that you collect from the tenant-buyer. If you pay too much to the seller, the tenant-buyer fee will only be reimbursing you rather than earning you a decent fee in exchange for your work and knowledge of how to put the deal together.

The purchase price you have under contract in a cooperative lease option is the same price you offer the tenant-buyer. What you want from the tenant-buyer is the full “traditional” option fee. A traditional option fee is between 2% and 5% of the purchase price. At 3% on a $300,000 purchase price, the option fee you collect is $9,000. Once you collect the traditional option fee, you “flip” the purchase option agreement (you paid $1) to the tenant-buyer.

After collecting your full option fee, you step out of the deal.

Time is of the essence! Get started today with cooperative lease options to quickly advance your real estate career in the New Year!

1. Cooperative Lease Options.
2. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options
3. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
4. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
5. Add Personalized Coaching.
6. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
7. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

When you want to control property without owning it, how to become a landlord is the first step in working with millennials through the sandwich lease option process. When you read about millennial statistics in the real estate market, be sure you read them carefully. The headline statistic says millennials make up about 33% of the market but an incredible 66% of the first-time buyers’ market. The first-time buyers’ market is what you are targeting with sandwich lease options.

A generational shift has happened. Millennials now dominate home purchases.

What Millennials Want is What Counts

Millennials are now at the top of the food chain when it comes to home purchase demographics. What’s important about how to become a landlord is meeting the current needs and expectations of the millennial generation.

Not only are millennials the next generation to define a new lifestyle and economy, they have the numbers to make it happen. According to the Pew Research Center (along with government and other reliable sources), 2019 is the year that millennials officially outnumbered Baby Boomers. The number of millennials exceeds 73 million while the number of Baby Boomers has declined to 72 million from its peak of 79 million. Yes, the Baby Boomers are dying off and living in assisted care homes.

While Baby Boomers are redefining our health care system and retirement care, the millennials are redefining everything else. When it comes to suburbia, this means turning it into a version of the city core where many forecasters thought millennials were destined to remain throughout their lives. Today, millennials are split between the city and suburbia, but the trend is definitely towards more baby strollers being pushed past green private lawns than in city parks. Whether it is suburbia or the city, sandwich lease investors provide tremendous opportunities to help millennials find the homes that they want.

Millennials are prime candidates for sandwich lease options!

Millennials Come of Age and Need Sandwich Lease Options

To say the least, the millennial generation has had a tough time reaching the age of homeownership. It’s been one financial hardship upon another financial hardship their entire life. Anyone born between 1981 and 1996 (ages 26 to 41 in 2022) is considered a millennial. As you begin understanding how they will benefit from a sandwich lease option, be aware of the major financial events that have defined their lifetimes.

The stock market crash of 2000 (aka dot-com bubble) happened when the youngest were just born and the oldest were about 20. The NASDAQ rose five-fold between 1995 and 2000 before losing almost 77% of its value. The result was a loss of billions of dollars (most was their parents’ money). But it took 15 years for the NASDAQ to recover, which was during prime time for millennials.

The financial collapse of 2008 (aka the Great Recession) happened in the meantime. This is of concern to real estate investors because the bottom fell out of the mortgage market and foreclosures hit all-time highs. millennials remember these times well because becoming a homeowner was out of the question for many years.

Student loan debt is still part of the financial equation for millennials looking to become homeowners today. This affects credit ratings and saving for a down payment. This is an important consideration when deciding how to become a landlord using sandwich lease options. Understanding student debt needs to be part of your evaluation of credit reports.

Retirement pensions became a thing of history. Financial security no longer includes a retirement pension. Millennials must rely on 401k accounts that are only partially funded by employers. But as 401k accounts grow in value, they are also a source for funding homeownership for millennials.

It all means that sandwich lease options are very helpful to millennials when a professional investor can give them a helping hand — even if they have financial and credit challenges. How to become a landlord to millennials means taking all of this into consideration. You gain an even bigger advantage by knowing where and how millennials want to buy their first home.

Millennials want homes and communities that are sustainable.

How to Become a Landlord is About the New Suburban City Center

Real estate investors should revisit the formula that revived city cores a few decades ago to attract the once younger millennial crowd. It’s a simple formula about living and working in the same city neighborhood. It’s a combination of affordability and creativity. For living units, it’s a combination of owned single-family homes and condos. The neighborhoods are diverse with small niche businesses and amenities.

The entertainment venues are next to offices and retail shops. Activity centers are small parks with open spaces for sports alongside passive spaces for reading, texting, socializing, and working outside of the office. There may even be elements of a 24/7 city with always-open pubs, restaurants, and coffee houses. The city life formula for millennials is a live, work, and walk the neighborhood. Sandwich lease options work great in these neighborhoods where young professionals are ready to settle down.

Millennials have rediscovered suburbia.

Why Sandwich Lease Options Work So Well With Millennials

After years and years of this seller’s market, there are fewer and fewer houses available for sale in suburbia. However, millennials with families have taken a liking to suburbia. Still, they prefer as many city amenities as possible. Walkability and neighborhood parks are big attractions as are smaller niche businesses (pubs, restaurants, and coffee houses).

This is very much about the millennial generation… the most active demographic in today’s real estate market. Millennials (73 million of them) now outnumber baby boomers and the millennials are much more active in the real estate market than baby boomers who are mostly in retirement.

The few houses available for sale are attracting the most qualified buyers. These are millennial buyers who are already prequalified for a mortgage. But there is a much larger pool of millennials who would be buyers if they get a little help qualifying for a mortgage. Buyers who are eager to pay top dollar if someone will give them a chance.

Sandwich lease options are all about helping these people qualify for a mortgage. These are the same people that house flippers are ignoring. And landlords raise the rent every year, which further motivates these people to want to buy a home. Offering millennials exactly what they want is the niche that you fill with rent to own properties.

Millions of millennials want to be served by the sandwich lease option niche but very few investors are filling the need….

Lease to Own is a Perfect Fit for the Millennial Niche

Today there are tens of millions of millennials living in city apartments where rents are increasing faster than homeowner equity. They have good jobs but very little savings and haven’t qualified for a mortgage. They no longer want to pay high rents to landlords without the possibility of becoming homeowners. Besides, the few single-family homes on the market are being scooped up by the scarce millennials who do qualify for a mortgage and investors that know how to work with sellers. All of this makes sandwich lease options the right combination of rent to own that fits the wants and needs of these millions of millennials.

Into the picture steps the “lease to own” niche expert with a solution to all their problems. Solutions these millennials are willing to pay top dollar for. You can get them into a single-family home out in the suburbs. For the cost of a rental deposit on a bigger apartment, you collect the option fee for the ability to purchase. This works both towards the down payment they need and converts into the homeowner equity they want, as soon as they complete the purchase. You offer them a way to improve their credit score to qualify for a mortgage. And it comes with a white-picket-fence-home to raise their family. Having all the right solutions is highly profitable for a niche expert.

Who would have thought that “lease with the option to purchase” offers all of the solutions to the largest demographic group in the tight real estate market of 2023? …

Only a sandwich lease option niche expert!

Here is how to become a landlord today using sandwich lease options!

1. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
2. You’re Wealth Building Arsenal.
3. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
4. Getting started with Cooperative Lease Options.
5. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
6. Add Personalized Coaching.
7. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

It’s late November 2022 and the real estate investing world has changed a lot. Interest rates have more than doubled this year. Home prices remain sky high and unaffordable. Mortgage approvals have gotten more difficult rather than easier. As a real estate investor, what are you going to do differently to succeed in this new landscape…?

The answer you are looking for very well might be in “Subject To Deals” (aka Get the Deed).

Subject To Deals Work Well In Recessions

Housing markets with poor affordability, relatively high rates of unemployment, underwater loans, and foreclosure activity will be at risk if we enter a recession or even face a more modest economic downturn. Simply put… recessions are not pretty.

People make mistakes and need help recovering, which is what “Subject To Deals” (aka Get the Deed) is all about.

There are tragic financial situations that some (but not many) people will be facing in the coming year. Recessions cause people to become unemployed. When people become unemployed, too often, they can no longer afford their homes. I know that is tragic but it is also reality. When they can’t make their mortgage payment it is only a matter of a few short months before they go into foreclosure. No one wants to be foreclosed on and face seven years of damage to their credit rating. Or worse yet, ten years of bankruptcy.

You can wring your hands and spill tears over their bad fortune, or you can take action to help them out of a bad financial situation.

This where Subject to Deals become a helping hand.

Get the Deed Belongs in Today’s Real Estate Investor’s Toolbox

Imagine if you could buy a property, bank some money as soon as the deal is done, and help someone in financial trouble all at the same time. That doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen. Get the Deed has so many tremendous possibilities that it’s another “must-have” tool that belongs in your creative financing toolbox.

Subject to Deals are about buying a property and keeping the existing mortgage in place. There are big benefits to doing this.

Sandwich lease options are certainly a powerful investment method for little or no cash and without taking ownership. Still, the Subject To Deals aka Get the Deed method is another potent way to acquire property for little or no cash and no credit.

With the very real possibility that the number of foreclosures will be increasing soon, now is the time to learn the nuts and bolts for getting the deed subject to existing financing.

As an ethical real estate investor (and problem solver), you come into these deals as a “Knight in Shining Armor!”

Ethically Investing with Subject To Deals (aka Get the Deed)

Does it sound strange to be taking over a property for no money and no credit by keeping the existing financing in place? Your first thought might be that I’m encouraging you to rob or scam people out of their hard-earned homes. But I’m not. The fact is that you will be helping people out of very difficult situations at a time in life when they need help the most.

Stop for a moment to think about the reality of a mortgage going bad (a looming foreclosure). Obviously, the person is in dire financial straits and doesn’t have many options available.

If they have a few months, and if the house is in good shape, and if they have enough equity to pay a realtor’s commission, and if the local real estate market is humming along, they could list the house for sale to get out from under the mortgage before foreclosure. There are four “IFs” in the previous sentence. It only takes one of those “ifs” to not come true for the owner to be out of all other options. When their options are gone is when an investor offering a Subject To Deal becomes the Knight in Shining Armor. Here is why…

If the seller wants to buy another home in six months, next year, or in three years, they will need a good credit score and can’t have a foreclosure or bankruptcy on their record.

Subject To Deals… aka Get the Deed Subject to Existing Financing is how the owner avoids destroying their credit rating for the next seven to ten years. It takes seven years to remove foreclosure and derogatory events from a credit report and a bankruptcy stays with them for ten years.

Here are some of the reasons an owner might desperately need what you are offering…

Many Reasons Why a Seller Wants a Subject to Deal

If you are financially savvy and budget-conscious, you may not realize how many different ways people get into a financial jamb that they need to get out of quickly. But we all know that bad financial times fall even on good people. Here are some of the many situations where you can step in to rescue someone from bad circumstances.

The broadest category is whenever an owner has fallen behind on the payments and will never catch up before the bank demands full payment. It could be that a spouse has gone crazy with a long spending spree and all their money is spent. This gets even more desperate for the owner(s) when a divorce is looming and neither spouse even wants the house anymore. Both just want a fresh beginning. Both agree that Subject to Existing Financing is the best solution!

Subject to Deals work almost any time the owner is financially strapped.

It can be any financially strapped owner. A recession means that millions of people could lose their jobs. People have medical bills with little or no insurance. Business owners are struggling to keep their business doors open and decide that an income is a bigger financial priority rather than staying current with a house mortgage. Or it could be something as simple as the owner took on a bigger mortgage (or second mortgage) than they can financially handle.

A seldom thought about reason is that the owner already has damaged credit and when you take over making the mortgage payments (while keeping it in their name), it helps rebuild the previous owner’s credit report using your on-time payments (knight in shining armor). When it comes to money, there is no limit to the number of ways that people can get into unbelievably bad situations. Many are situations that are best solved with a Subject to Deal!

Reasons Why Subject to Deals Work for You

This is another long list that I can only partially cover here but is covered in detail in the Subject To Deals (aka Get the Deed) course materials. Let’s start with “Subject-To” is the fastest way you can build a portfolio of income-producing properties. Because you are not applying for or taking out loans in your name, there is no limit to the number of properties that you can have under your control.

You never have to qualify for a mortgage so you can control as many houses as you want.

How much higher can your return on investment (ROI) get than when you don’t have any money in the deal? If you truly have no money in the deal, your ROI becomes infinite.

As the knight in shining armor who brings a Subject To Deal (aka Get the Deed) deal to the table, the owner is helped and will thank you. There are situations when the owner is so thankful that they will leave money in the deal so that you have instant equity, walk away with cash in your pocket, or both. This is one of the best ways to build wealth at break-neck speed.

No income, no credit checks, and no mortgage qualifying required!

You’ve read the blogs, you know others are doing it, and it’s time for you to TAKE ACTION NOW:

1. Get the Deed “Subject To.”
2. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
3. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
4. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
5. Cooperative Lease Options.
6. Add Personalized Coaching.
7. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

Let me be clear, it does not take very much money to become extraordinarily successful as a real estate investor. In fact, it doesn’t need to take any of your money. You can use other people’s money to make just as much profit as any other prosperous investor. It can all be done by paying as much or more attention to the contract terms as you do to the purchase price!

When you seek control rather than ownership, you become a lot less concerned with the purchase price.

John D. Rockefeller’s business strategy is exactly the same strategy that you want to use when buying real estate with lease options!

Your Unique Position When Buying Real Estate with Lease Options

You want to be much more interested in the “terms” of the lease. You still need to be conscious of the price (but less so). More of your attention is on terms such as the initial cost of the lease option fee, how long you’ll have control, and your monthly cost (rent) to maintain control.

Because you are less concerned with the purchase price, you can profit nicely from houses costing very near the full retail value. This vastly opens you to the larger market that isn’t available to other investors that are all chasing a few highly discounted distressed sales.

When buying real estate with lease options, the meat is in the middle. You are that meat in the middle. The seller and the tenant-buyer are the bread and butter. Having bread, butter, and meat in the game makes it a win-win-win for all three.

Building rapport with the seller is key to making a deal.

Learn What the Seller Wants From the Deal

Here is a basic deal directly out of my files that any investor can easily put together. Of course, the numbers will vary depending on your specific location and situation, but the basic deal looks like this. I ran an advertisement looking for a home in a decent neighborhood. The advert read:

Company looking for 3 – 4 homes in the [name neighborhood] area for a long-term lease. Call 222-333-4444.

A homeowner answered the advert. Her Realtor^® listing had expired without an offer for her asking price of $189,000. Several other sellers answered my advert but Linda was the most promising because she had an interest in selling as well as being open to a long-term lease. It only took a short conversation to determine that her definition of a “win” was completing the sale at nothing less than $185,000.

Look at all of the sale terms to put the deal in your “win” column.

Clearly, this was very close to the full market value of the house. That meant I had to look at other terms of the deal to put the deal in my “win” column. Most other investors would have instantly walked away because there wasn’t any meat on the bone for them. But when buying real estate with lease options you have much more flexibility to earn a handsome profit.

Letting Linda do most of the talking, I also learned that she had physical ailments preventing her from doing the upkeep and repairs on her own home. For her next home, she wanted a tenant/landlord relationship that required the landlord to maintain the property. She had found a home on a lake that she could get into for $1,000 cash – if she moved fast. That is all the cash she needed from the deal to lease the house she wanted to live in. Completely making her happy required that I assume all maintenance for the house I would lease from her.

Learn how much cash the seller really needs from the deal.

Next, I determined that it would cost me another $4,000 to replace the carpet and paint the interior of the house. This would attract a quality tenant-buyer with the near term ability to purchase the home. I would be in the home for $5,000 ($1,000 to the seller and $4,000 in repairs). Of course, Linda was incredibly pleased that I would immediately spruce up the house (happy seller). I would have control for about 2.7% percent of the $185,000 purchase price (win-win).

I needed to look at the rest of the scenario and possible terms for a successful lease option. But I knew that I was close! Annual appreciation was expected to be between 9% and 10%. That meant I could expect the value to increase by more than $17,000 in the first year (based on $189,000 full retail). That more than covered my initial $5,000 cost. Now, I knew I had at least a win/win deal but I needed to bring in a tenant-buyer to complete the win/win/win formula.

How Buying Real Estate on Lease Options Becomes Win-Win-Win.

Finalizing the Profitable Terms

After buying real estate on lease options, finding high-quality tenant-buyers is a breeze. The same day that I signed terms with Linda, I ran another advert looking for a tenant-buyer. Emma was one of the first people to respond to the ad. She was interested because the ad didn’t specify no pets and she needed a place with a yard that allowed her two dogs. Allowing pets is one of the keys to finding tenant-buyers willing to put down a big deposit. When they have enough for a deposit, you turn that into their nonrefundable option fee (instead of a refundable deposit).

Emma had $16,000 saved towards purchasing a home. But she still had a little work to do on her poor credit, which is why mortgage brokers weren’t yet ready to talk seriously with her. By me accepting the $16,000 as a purchase option fee, Emma was able to get into a home with her dogs and be on the road to purchasing a home by applying her $16,000 towards the down payment.

This created the final piece for the win/win/win formula.

As soon as the deal was in place, I walked away with $11,000 in my pocket. I did it by using other people’s money to structure the deal. Here’s how my numbers worked out:

Option fee to seller (Linda)                         -$1,000

Improvements                                               -$4,000

Option fee from tenant-buyer (Emma) +$16,000

Left in my pocket                                        +$11,000

I also shifted the maintenance requirements to Emma. Going forward, I had to pay Linda $1,100 a month in rent, but I was collecting $1,500 from Emma. That left $400 in my pocket each month until Emma exercised her purchase option.

Emma’s purchase option price was $206,000 with an escalation clause of 9% (appreciation) if she didn’t complete the purchase within 18 months. After accounting for my upfront costs, option fees, positive rent cash, selling price, and related transaction costs, I cleared $32,800 from the entire deal. All by controlling the property without owning it!

In the end, the seller got her full asking price (win), I made a very respectable profit (win), and the buyer owned a home with equity (win).

Buying real estate with lease options begins HERE:

1. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
2. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options
3. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
4. Add Personalized Coaching.
5. Bring in Cooperative Lease Options.
6. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
7. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

There are TONS of Millennials out there who want to buy a home but can’t. People trying to build a life in these challenging times. What I want you to know is that you can make a difference — not only in other people’s lives but in your own good fortune. There are many ways for investors to make money. What’s not intuitive is that there are ways for investors to earn money helping buyers that are coming up a little short of being able to purchase a home.

One of the best ways is the Cooperative Lease Option (aka wholesaling).

When to Use Cooperative Lease Options

Sometimes it’s difficult for any of us to see the good fortune that is right in front of our faces. The trials and tribulations of everyday life make it difficult to see multiple opportunities that are available. For instance, the sandwich lease option is the most profitable and most preferred method for investors to connect tenant-buyers with a seller needing to sell outside of traditional channels. But there are times when cooperative lease options are a better choice for everyone involved. Three of those times are:

1. When you (the investor) are just getting started and could use a quick deal generating fast cash.
2. When you have maybe a half dozen sandwich lease options under contract generating monthly rental income (let’s say $350 per house per month) but it will be several months before a tenant-buyer closes a purchase to generate a big payday for you.
3. You have a possible deal that will generate a decent lease option fee for you but there really isn’t much equity (big payday) for you to earn by holding the rental contract for a few years.

Here we look at the third scenario.

Cooperative Lease Options for the Option Fee

This version of the Cooperative Lease Option works well when the seller doesn’t leave much meat on the bone for you (the investor) to stay in a sandwich lease option for 18 months or 2 years. Sorry to say but this could be a time when the seller is plain greedy. Or the seller might not have enough equity in the house to afford to share with you in exchange for your knowledge and expertise. Greed is greed and you should always be very cautious when working with a seller motivated by greed. But there are times when the seller needs to sell a house and just doesn’t own enough equity to be able to share.

Cooperative lease options are about finding a buyer that wants a lease option and connecting him or her with a seller wanting the same thing. You are the middleman flipping the lease option to the buyer for a fee. An example of a seller without enough equity to share is when the seller’s mortgage balance is equal to the sale value of the house. For some reason (divorce, job relocation, illness, etc.) they need to sell the house but will be stretched to pay off the mortgage at the current value of the home. This is a time when the seller is motivated to find a creative way to sell because they probably can’t afford to pay a Realtor^® commission and pay off the mortgage.

That means the seller will put a tenant-buyer in place to generate rental income to make the mortgage payments until the tenant-buyer can qualify to complete the purchase. This is how you use your knowledge about the cooperative lease option to create a win-win-win for the seller and buyer as well as yourself as an investor. These tenant-buyers are also willing to pay top dollar for the house which helps the seller pay off the high mortgage. Everyone is smiling about this fast deal and your goal is a quick check for the lease option fee that you can deposit in your bank account before the end of the month!

It is a win-win-win for the seller, you as the investor, and the buyer.

What you are going to do with a cooperative lease option is bring the seller and tenant-buyer together for a lease option and collect the option fee from the tenant-buyer but then you step out of the deal. The seller and buyer stay in the deal to complete the sale before the end of the option period.

How to Structure Cooperative Lease Options (Wholesaling)

This might seem more complicated than it is. But it’s actually the simplest of the lease option methods. This is nothing more than a creative investing method that most people never think about. First, you use one of the many techniques I share to find a seller in a bit of a pickle that needs some help with this type of creative selling.

Then you explain in a general way how a lease with an option to purchase works. What’s important here is that you do gain some control over the property. You do this by signing a purchase option agreement between you and the seller for some “consideration”. When it comes to a cooperative lease option, you want the option fee you pay the seller to be very small. You probably want to start negotiating for as little as $1 to $10 but in a good deal you might be able to pay the seller $1,000 or more and you’ll still come out very well — thanks to the highly appreciated house values today!

This is important because your money comes from the much higher option fee that you collect from the tenant-buyer.

If you pay too much to the seller, the tenant-buyer fee will only be reimbursing you rather than earning you a decent fee in exchange for your work and knowledge of how to put the deal together.

The purchase price you have under contract in a cooperative lease option is the same price you offer the tenant-buyer. This will be very enticing to the tenant-buyer. What you want from the tenant-buyer is the full “traditional” option fee. A traditional option fee is between 3% and 5% of the purchase price.

At 3% on a $300,000 purchase price, the option fee you collect is $9,000.

Once you collect the traditional option fee, you “flip” your purchase option agreement (you paid $1) to the tenant-buyer. At this point, you step out of the deal. It becomes the responsibility of the seller and the buyer to close the deal at some future date before the option period expires.

Of course, what is great about creative investing is that there are variations to everything discussed here. The cooperative lease option is only one tool in your toolbox.

It all starts with my Profitability Worksheet that you use to run multiple scenarios before placing a house in a lease option and before filling in the blanks on the easy-to-use forms and contracts.

Now is your time to immediately take Wealth-Building Action:

1. Getting started with Cooperative Lease Options.
2. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
3. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
4. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
5. Add Personalized Coaching.
6. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
7. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

I began growing my real estate empire more than 30 years ago and you can too! But there is no reason it should take you 10 years, or 5 years, or even 1 year to succeed. You’ll want to define what success means to you but if you can start with a 5-figure payday within 30 days — then sandwich lease option investing is for you. But that is only the beginning. You should be defining success as a reliable and steady income that brings you $150,000, $200,000, $300,000, or more every year…

Many of the world’s wealthiest people acquire much of their wealth through investing in real estate.

Importantly, I want everyone to succeed. Not just you as an investor. But also the sellers, the buyers, and the real estate agents that you work with must win… EVERYONE COMES OUT A WINNER (WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN).

Today, I’m sharing a couple of success stories my students have had with sandwich lease options. These were completed by different investors in different parts of the country. The sellers’ and buyers’ names have been changed, but the numbers and details reflect the specific transactions. The numbers are a little outdated and you can expect bigger paydays today because home prices have recently appreciated in value so much!

I hope these deals inspire and show how you can also become successful by creating unique solutions for motivated sellers and grateful buyers.

Frank’s First Sandwich Lease Option Deal

Let’s start at the beginning with a student’s first sandwich lease option deal. It’s always inspiring when a student’s first deal comes away as such a strong win-win-win for everyone.

Here is how Frank described it.

“Sara had a house in Fowlerville that she kept after her divorce. She couldn’t stand to continue living with the memories from the marriage, so she bought another house in Fenton, closer to where she works. She had the house “For Sale by Owner” and “For Rent.” She wasn’t excited about being a landlord, but she was looking for debt relief in a quick way. I called on her “For Rent” ad and we met to discuss some options. I agreed to start paying her $1,100 per month immediately (because that is what she needed to cover her expenses) and for $1,000 I bought an option to buy at $155,000 sometime within the next three years. I put about $300 into the house to fix a few things, plus a home inspection and title search, so my costs were minimal; around $500.

Two days after I signed with Sara (the owner), a tenant/buyer from my accumulated list paid me an option fee of $5,000 and the first month’s rent of $1,195 to move in. The lease term was 18 months and the buy-out was $169,900. There is no lease money being applied to the purchase price. The lease started several months ago and they have been paying every single month early. They have never called me with an issue of any kind, so it is going about as smoothly as I could ever hope. I liked this deal because the owner was very happy that I took the house off of her hands, and she always receives rent from me by the first of the month. The tenant/buyers were very happy because they were able to get themselves and their 3 children from an apartment into a nice house on an acre of land. This is a “win” for me also because I made money on the front end with the option fee of $5,000 plus $95.00 monthly cash flow, and the whole deal will make over $16,000. Not bad for my first deal!”

~ F. Purdue -Michigan

Frank’s is a great story showing how you too will be successful by creating unique solutions for motivated sellers that also make your buyers happy.

Shannon Works Well With Realtors

This outcome actually has all four winners when you count the agent. I’m telling you — there are a lot of remarkable stories from students, and this is only one of them. I only wish I could share more student success stories that come from sandwich lease options.

Here’s how Shannon’s story goes…

Shannon received a call from a realtor that she had spoken to over a year earlier. The realtor had kept Shannon’s card. This particular house had been listed for six months without luck. The seller had moved out of state, leaving the home empty for the last four months. Shannon was able to lock in very flexible terms to create a terrific deal for her while relieving the seller of his burden and allowing a new buyer a fresh start.

The rest is in her own words:

“This deal came as a referral from one of the realtors that I talked to OVER A YEAR AGO!!! She called me out of the blue from my card that she had kept. Here are the numbers:

$700 per month -Lease option price from seller

$850 per month –Lease option price to buyer

$150 per month –profit

$132,000 Purchase price from seller (for as long as I want… I can buy this house for this price in a month or in ten years; he didn’t care either way)

$159,000 Sales Price to buyer within 24 months

I also got a $7,000 option fee from the lady up front.

Not a bad deal, huh? This is almost a $30,000 deal. The great thing about it is that the buyer has pretty decent credit. She could qualify for a loan on this property right now if she wanted to, but is going to wait about a year to get her score up from a previous divorce (her husband had a few late pays). Not only that, but if she doesn’t pay me, it’s no big deal. I’ll just do this whole thing all over again. I also negotiated with the seller that if for any reason I have a tenant that stops paying me that I don’t have to make payments until I get another tenant in the property.

This property was listed on the MLS for 6 months at $155K with no luck. The fact that I offered it on a lease option and had a pretty good marketing plan allowed me to get MORE than a realtor could get. (The house was in great overall condition, it was just a little bit outdated compared to the rest of the neighborhood.) The seller had moved to Texas and it was sitting empty for 4 of those 6 months, so he was obviously motivated. Thanks for showing me the ropes on this one Wendy! I love it!”

~ Shannon McLeay, Missouri

Shannon’s story shows the value of establishing relationships with Realtors.

Those are merely two of the thousands of successful student sandwich lease option stories out there. It’s a proven road to Financial Freedom and a Wealthy Retirement.

Wendy’s Ethics Rule:

Don’t do sandwich lease options if you don’t intend to follow through on the transaction. Do what you say you will do and when you say you will do it. Help keep real estate investing an honest profession.

You can start writing your sandwich lease option success story right NOW!

1. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
2. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
3. Success by Working with Realtors.
4. A fast start with Cooperative Lease Options.
5. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
6. Add Personalized Coaching.
7. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

Working directly with the seller is the most profitable way of making sandwich lease options work. There are other ways of buying real estate with lease options such as working with realtors and using birddogs. However, when there is no middleman — your profits will be much higher.

Even better, the seller’s profits will be significantly higher which makes these deals easier to put together.

Key Information About Buying Real Estate With Lease Options

There is no more creative way of buying real estate with lease options than by working directly with the seller. It all begins with a few short telephone calls that are most effective when your opening comments encourage the potential seller to ask for more information about lease options.

There is absolutely no reason why you don’t want to work with realtors and I write about that often. What’s important is knowing which method is most likely to be most effective for signing the deal and earning everyone the biggest paydays.

But when you work directly with the seller, it becomes a little easier for the two of you to come to a meeting of the minds.

What you are about to learn is key information about buying lease option houses directly from home sellers.

Know How Much You and the Seller Will Make on the Deal

Before ever signing any paperwork, a knowledgeable investor always has a very solid idea of how much money her/she will make on the deal. That’s where this old real estate adage comes from – “You make your profit when you buy – not when you sell.” In this particular situation, you make your profit buying real estate with lease options directly from the seller.

Not only do you want to know how much you’ll make before signing the paperwork, but this is also the information that empowers you to negotiate the deals that you want to be part of. Smart investors do a little homework upfront to define the profit points before making a firm proposal to the seller.

Your success becomes greater when you are fully prepared to negotiate offers that benefit both you and the seller the most.

If you don’t follow my blogs regularly, you might want to go back and read the blog below that helps you explain to sellers how they are likely to make more money with a sandwich lease option than with any other method of selling. You want to use these types of numbers to astound sellers about what you have to offer:

Selling Real Estate on Lease Options — By the Dollars

The blog link above is about helping the seller understand what is in a sandwich lease option for them — that’s especially important — but it is only half of what you need to know before signing the front end of the deal. You never want to sign a deal without knowing what is in it for you. This next link shows you how to figure out your profit from the deal:

Selling on Lease Options — For Big Profits

Buying Real Estate with Lease Options — Highlights & Tidbits

Knowing the financial details upfront is key to structuring the deal from the beginning. That’s exactly what the course materials are all about and here is a glimpse inside:

• Know how much money the seller wants at the beginning of the deal. It may or may not be an amount that you can work with.
• Clearly know what the property is worth in today’s market.
• Using my proven formulas, calculate what you can expect the property to be worth in the future (over the life of the lease option period).
• The expected future value is critical to your profit.

Sandwich lease option investors love making profitability calculations.

These numbers may not be the final profit that you earn but they will give you a good indication before you make a firm offer when buying real estate on lease options directly from the seller. You’ll be locking in your option price with the seller based on the current market value (possibly at a discount). The price that you offer to the buyer is based on the anticipated future market value. This is the premium price a buyer pays for the ability to purchase on a lease option. This is where most of your profit comes from.

The premium price to the buyer is very important but it’s not your only profit point. You’ll also get a monthly payday from the rent-price-spread and the lease option fee that the buyer pays upfront. The worksheets help you calculate all of this information before buying real estate with lease options.

Other Considerations Before Signing the Deal

Several considerations go into the length of time you negotiate for on the lease option with the seller. Market conditions should be one consideration. Regarding the lease period, your number one consideration is that your lease period with the seller be longer than with the buyer.

I give serious thought to the particulars of each deal but typically plan to offer the buyer between 12 and 18 months to complete the deal.

Other than my students and myself, I don’t know of any other lease to own investors that consider the time of year that the buyer’s lease option will expire. I do this because if the deal doesn’t close, I want the house back during the busiest market time of the year — the spring market. Of course, my option period has not expired when the buyer’s time expires, so I still have an opportunity to put a different deal together.

Just like the premium sales price for the buyer, you want to have a good idea of how much you’ll be able to charge for rent. Because this is going to be an active deal for a year or longer; you want to know how much positive cash flow you’ll have each month.

Positive cash flow is an important consideration for how much rent you’ll agree to pay to the seller.

A lot of valuable information is calculated for you in the worksheet before you make an offer to the seller. By the time you finish the worksheet, two important pieces of information will pop out for you. One is the suggested sale price to the buyer. The other is the suggested monthly rent… and plenty of other useful information to make your negotiations both profitable along with a winning solution for everyone involved.

Your profit numbers become much clearer as soon as the worksheet is completed — before you make an offer when buying real estate with lease options directly from the seller!

Whether selling or buying real estate on lease options, here is where you’ll find the answers to your questions – and answers to questions that you haven’t yet thought to ask:

1. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
2. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
3. Fast Paydays with Cooperative Lease Options.
4. Round it all out by Working with Realtors.
5. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
6. Become an expert with Personalized Coaching.
7. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.

If real estate has been around as long as dirt, Realtors^® may very well be the oldest profession. Realtors have seen every change that has ever happened in the real estate marketplace.

If you want to be a successful real estate investor, you must learn how to work with real estate agents!

Now Is The Time To Start Working With Realtors^®

I make a powerful effort to work with Realtors^® as a lease option investor to the extent that I wrote a book on the subject. I strongly suggest that students seek out Realtors that understand the concept of lease options and can help their sellers understand lease options. Not all Realtors are completely familiar with sandwich lease options. However, the book has step-by-step processes and a presentation to show Realtors how lease options will enhance their careers — and their pocket book.

Traditional home sales have drastically decreased over the past few months because of the affordability problem. Decreased home sales hurt Realtors where it counts — in their pocketbook.

Lease options and sandwich lease options are NOT traditional home sales! These non-traditional methods work very well today because they get around the buyer’s affordability problem by giving buyers a year or two to build equity in a home (option fee) while saving additional money for a bigger down payment and tuning up their credit report to qualify for the best interest rate.

This is the 4 Winners solution to home sales — the seller, the real estate agent, the buyer, and you as an investor!

Sandwich lease options have become such a successful investment method that many Realtors have added it to their skill set. Most Realtors take continuing education classes with sandwich lease options becoming a popular choice with realtors over the years.

Working with realtors as an investor brings competitive advantages as a path less chosen!

You Want to Help Realtors Better Understand Lease Options

Many Realtors are mostly interested in shiny new kitchen appliances and the latest trend in new home technology. You and I are a different breed by looking at things like qualified tenant-buyers and maximum sale prices. We’re more interested in a decent rent spread from the sandwich lease while most Realtors only focus on preapproved buyers and staging a seller’s house for sale. But that doesn’t mean working with realtors as an investor can’t be a good fit.

Often, the first thing you need to do is inform Realtors that you are a knowledgeable and enthusiastic sandwich lease option investor. This is as simple as sending a letter or email to listing agents explaining your strategy and offering to share a short presentation with the details.

Something that Realtors have in common is they are always looking for new leads. A buyers’ agent is looking for the next buyer and a listing agent is looking for the next seller. Their repeat business is far and few between — especially in today’s marketplace.

As a sandwich lease option investor, you offer repeat business to Realtors!

What to Share When Working With Realtors as an Investor

The type of seller that you are looking for through a Realtor is a seller that doesn’t immediately need to pull all their equity out of the house. A seller that is more interested in receiving top dollar rather than fast cash. A sandwich lease option brings top dollar, but it can take a year or more. That’s the seller, but what does the Realtor want…?

What you need to understand when working with Realtors as an investor is that he or she needs to be paid for what they do. You don’t want to make the Realtor wait a year or more to be paid in full. If you do make him or her wait, they might not suggest your offer to sellers. One technique that I’ve used in a seller’s market is giving the listing agent a substantial portion of the commission upfront. This comes from the option fee that is applied to the purchase price when the tenant-buyer completes the purchase. You should be collecting an option fee between 4% and 8%. The total Realtors’ commission is typically 6% but this is split 3% and 3% between the listing agent and the selling agent. You can pay up to the full 3% to the listing agent and still walk away with a nice first paycheck with many more paychecks to come before the sale closes.

You may also be able to let the Realtor “Double-Dip” when he or she collects the selling agent portion when the deal closes in a year or more.

Why would you do this? It’s simple logic because the Realtor is also going to bring you repeat business. That’s one of the big benefits that come with working with Realtors as an investor. You’ll be sharing part of the money, but you’ll be collecting the lion’s share at the closing table. With a few emails and short presentations, you can soon have 3 or 4 Realtors bringing you several sandwich lease options every month — as much business as you want.

When a Realtor hears a seller say, “If my home doesn’t sell soon, I might have to RENT it!” — the Realtor should immediately think of you.

Finding the Right Fit When Working With Realtors as an Investor

Ideally, you want Realtors that understand real estate investing. This is easy to find because most Realtors are investors themselves. Realtors interested in investment properties hang out at the same places as other investors — at real estate investor clubs and groups across the country.

It can also be worth your time checking out Realtors who specialize in the types of houses and neighborhoods you invest in. Drive through these neighborhoods looking for “For Sale” signs. Also, call on these listings in the MLS.

Key to working with Realtors as an investor is finding agents who:

• Own investment properties. You want to know how long they’ve owned these and what types (single-family, apartments, commercial, etc.).
• Have worked with investors. Have they closed any deals for investors? How did they feel about the process and the business relationship?
• What types of investment deals were these (flips, rentals, sandwich lease options, REO, probate)?
• How many investor deals have they worked on and how many closed?
• Have they ever worked with lease options and sandwich lease options?
• Which neighborhoods, price ranges, and other attributes do they know well and are suitable to your investing goals?
• How time-sensitive are they to investor needs?

They should be able to talk in the lingo of investors. Still, if he or she isn’t already familiar with lease options, it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker. You may be able to draw on the experience they have putting together seller-financed deals or other creative financing. Having third-party financing sources can seriously enhance why you want to be working with Realtors as an investor.

Ask if they are interested in something like a rent-to-own or a lease option with their commission paid in full. Let them know you are a rent-to-own buyer looking for homes in their area. Do they have sellers open to something like this?

Also, don’t hesitate to be clear about your needs. The more he or she knows about your objectives, the more effective a Realtor will be at tailoring their efforts to help you achieve your goals. The more you educate a Realtor about your unique advantage using sandwich lease options, the more you both will benefit. There is true value for both of you when the Realtor gains a repeat client, and you have a Realtor working with you who clearly understands how he or she will benefit from sandwich lease options.

Working with Realtors as an investor is only one in the bundle of proven creative investing methods. Take action by exploring all the possibilities:

1. The time-proven method for Working with Realtors.
2. Advanced strategies for Buying and Selling with Lease Options.
3. Your Wealth Building Arsenal.
4. Investing In Real Estate with Lease Options.
5. Cooperative Lease Options.
6. Expand to Get the Deed “Subject To.”
7. Add Personalized Coaching.

To Your Success,

Wendy Patton

For more than 30 years, I’ve used the Sandwich Lease Option System to earn myself and my students millions of dollars. From my experience, I know there is plenty of room and opportunity in the real estate investment market for everyone wanting to participate to find profitable deals. It’s because of that fact and my personal success that I share the Sandwich Lease Option System with others.

If you found this information useful, please visit again soon at wendypatton.com.

For more exclusive content, please subscribe to my RSS Feed and YouTube Channel.

What did you think of this article? Please leave a comment below.