Advanced Option Strategies » Invest

Foreclosure Investing – a Smart Strategy

admin — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 07:43:59 +0000

Foreclosure investing is a form of real estate investment. It is one of the best investment options as far as returns on investments are concerned. Foreclosure investment opportunities are normally created when homeowners default on monthly installment payments and the bank confiscates their property. The property is then sold at a foreclosure auction. Foreclosure investment opportunities are also available when a homeowner tries to sell the property directly to the ready buyers, before the foreclosure is announced. Information about such auctions is readily available on the Internet. You can use the information to invest in properties that have the potential to maximize your investment returns, in the next few years.
It is a buyer’s market
The foreclosure investment market is often called a buyer’s market because buyers are in a better position to negotiate the price of the property and other related terms and conditions in a deal. A homeowner, who has not made timely payment towards a mortgage loan, is usually aware of the fact that the property will be confiscated and he will not be able to profit from the sale proceeds. To avoid foreclosure, homeowners try to sell their property and use the proceeds for applying for new mortgage loans or buying new properties. Generally, owners who want to avoid the impending foreclosure have only 60 to 90 days to sell the property, before it is evaluated at a public trustee sale. According to certain state laws, homeowners are even given the option to reclaim their property within 360 days. Homeowners, who do not use this option, if available, will not be able to stop the lenders from foreclosing the properties and eventually selling them at a public auction.
Cheap and low risk investment option
Investing in foreclosure properties is probably the cheapest way of maximizing your investment returns. If you conduct a thorough research, you can easily identify and buy properties at very reasonable prices. In the past, there have been properties that were sold at discounts as high as sixty to eighty cents to a dollar. The foreclosure investment market is considered a low risk one, since land is a scarce resource. The value of the land will definitely rise, even if the real estate market witnesses a downtrend.
Other benefits
There is no dearth of foreclosure properties in the market. In order to buy a foreclosure property, you may not even have to apply for a bank loan. You just need to identify a suitable buyer, who is willing to pay the right price. Foreclosure properties are either sold at auctions or the buyer sells it directly.
As compared to the regular real estate market, the foreclosure properties market has a fewer investors. This makes it a lot easier to find and buy properties below the existent market rates. It is anticipated that the foreclosure properties market is set to grow at a steady pace in the next few years. The investment thus made is worth all the initial effort and patience applied. The foreclosure investment market offers real value on the money spent and re-evaluation of the property always reveals that the price paid was well below the existent market value.

10 Strategies: an Overview

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:15:23 +0000

Fast Profits in Hard Times will teach you everything you need to know and give you specific resources (websites, toll-free numbers, etc) to implement the following 10 strategies:

1. Invest in Tax Liens

Buy liens placed on properties by municipalities because owners have fallen behind in paying their property taxes. Then, when the property owners pay what they owe to the municipalities, receive not only a return of your principal but also a penalty interest rate set by the municipality, typically in the range of 8% to 25%. If the property owner defaults altogether, take possession of the property for a fraction of its real value: the sum of the back taxes you’ve already advanced. You can then sell the property, even a bit below its market value, for a huge profit.

2. Buy Real Estate Below Market Value

Identify real estate sellers who are willing to accept less than their property’s full market value for a variety of reasons. Then resell the property immediately at a profit, rehab it, rent it out, or even live in it yourself, all with the built-in financial cushion of having purchased the property for far less than it is truly worth.

3. Invest in Income Trusts and Master Limited Partnerships

Earn high yields of 8% to 13% by investing in trusts that extract or transport natural resources such as oil, gas, coal, or timber. Such trusts pass a large amount of their earnings directly to investors through monthly dividends. Depending on the trust or MLP, some of the distributions may be considered a tax-free return of capital, boosting your after-tax return even more.

4. Invest in High-Yield Stocks

Invest in stocks with stable businesses that pay dividend yields of 5% to 15% or more. Some industries offering such high yields include electric utilities, oil tankers, and real estate investment trusts, and several broad-based closed-end mutual funds. This is a way to make your capital compound with very little risk when you reinvest the dividends or to boost the income you live on if you take the dividends in cash.

5. Enroll in Dividend Reinvestment Plans

Invest in companies that offer Dividend Reinvestment Plans, known as DRIPS, which allow you to use dividends to purchase shares directly and thus bypass brokerage fees. Automatically reinvest dividends back into further stock purchases, thereby compounding your portfolio’s assets over time. Several companies offer discount DRIPS, meaning that you get an additional 2% to 5% bonus every time you reinvest dividends, compounding your return even more at no additional cost to you. So if you get $100 in dividends, you receive $105 worth of stock when you enroll in a 5% discount DRIP.

6. Buy High-Yielding Bonds

Buy bonds of companies, municipalities, or foreign governments, either individually or through open and closed-end funds, which pay yields of 5% to 12%. In addition to the high rate of interest, you will receive the return of your principal when the bond matures. There are many types of hybrid bonds available in today’s market with catchy names like STRIDES, ELKS, MITTS and HITS which offer guaranteed return of principal, high yields and potential bonuses based on how the underlying instruments perform.

7. Use Put and Call Options

Rather than buying and selling actual stocks or stock indexes, you can, for a fraction of the cost, trade rights to buy and sell those stocks or stock indexes at specific prices within a specified period of time up to two years into the future. This form of leveraged trading allows for far greater gains but also runs the risk of far greater losses than normal stock investing. It is therefore imperative to follow careful strategies that limit risk while optimizing profits.

8. Profit from Foreign Exchange Trading

Trade one currency against another currency, on the expectation that the currency you’ve bought will gain in value relative to the one you sold. This provides a convenient way to profit from the decline of the US dollar against most major foreign currencies.

9. Invest in and Broker Cash Flow Opportunities

Identify people and/or businesses willing to sell future receivables at a significant discount in exchange for ready cash. Then either buy the payments yourself or serve as a broker for a third party, typically a large financial company, which provides the funds. For example, you can broker or buy cash flows from lottery winners, lawsuit winners, mortgage notes or reimbursements due to a doctor’s office from insurance companies or Medicare.

10. Set Up Passive Income Strategies

Set up some kind of system that needs minimal ongoing management but continues to produce significant cash flow far into the future. A few examples include:

placing vending machines in high-traffic locations to collect passive income whenever customers make purchases

placing ATMs or point-of-sale (credit/debit/card swipe) machines in high sales volume locations to earn small fees paid by merchants whenever customers use the machines

Buy high-quality timeshares in desirable locations and seasons and rent them out over the internet to earn substantial rental income

The above is an excerpt from the book Fast Profits in Hard Times

by Jordan E. Goodman

Published by Business Plus; January 2008;$23.99US/$27.99CAN; 978-0-446-58156-1

Author

Jordan E. Goodman is a former Money magazine journalist and the author of several bestselling books, including Everyone’s Money Book, The Dictionary of Finance and Investment Terms, and Master Your Money Type. He provides financial advice to millions of people each month through regular appearances on radio call-in and TV shows and through his seminars to corporate, association, and university audiences. He has been a regular contributor to NBC News at Sunrise, The Marketplace Morning Report on Public Radio, and many other shows.

Creative Real Estate Investing for Flat and Down Markets – Beating the Bursting Bubble!

admin — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:43:28 +0000

I find the current media coverage about the “Bursting Real Estate Bubble”to be priceless for those of us who are investors. They talk about falling house prices which will only bring gloom and doom for homeowners and real estate investors a like. I can understand where they are coming from; having little or no knowledge about investing and that is OK, because it just creates more opportunity for you and I. Real estate is cyclical and always has been. There was a large national article published that stated Las Vegas real estate had completely capped out and there was no place for it to go but down. Does that sound familiar? If so, you may want to think again. That article was published nearly half a century ago! Has real estate gone up in value in Las Vegas in the last 50 years? You bet, and not just a little! Now does that mean real estate is going to keep going up like it has the last few years? I wouldn’t plan on it, particularly in the short term, however that’s what makes this media coverage so invaluable. *It creates fear that scares off a lot of people from investing (creating more opportunity). *It eliminates aggressive scam investments (as we saw rampant with builders in Florida and Las Vegas the last few years). *It makes people question the value of their properties (creating more flexible sellers). Here is something to consider: do you know any ultra successful real estate investor that is afraid of flat or declining house prices? Quite to the contrary, knowledgeable investors understand when markets are flat or down it just weeds out beginning investors, makes people panic and means more opportunity. What’s important to understand is just as real estate is cyclical, so are the amount of buyers and sellers in a given market. When markets are up, you’ll have to spend more time finding motivated sellers, but you have the benefit of appreciation on your side. When markets are down, you can’t depend on appreciation, but you’ll have a lot more motivated sellers to work with. In fact, when markets are down, you usually have to let “good” deals go, so you can take advantage of the “best” deals! We’re not just buying properties and hoping that they will appreciate or go up in value. That’s not investing, that’s speculating! Your completely dependent on future growth that is entirely out of your control. That’s a conventional mindset and will not work in flat or declining real estate markets especially in the short term. Like any business, you need to make well calculated decisions. In real estate, that includes making creative, risk free offers and setting up your exits appropriately for the specific circumstances. There are better and more creative real estate investing strategies for down and soft markets like assignments, lease options(as a seller or a “sandwich”), foreclosures, short sales, wholesaling and “subject to” arrangements. But even when doing rehabs or fixer uppers (which are not typically recommended in down markets) there are still good ways to make a good profit with the right system and proper planning. For example, let’s say you are in a market depreciating at 10% a year, you would need to factor in the time to make the rehab repairs plus the time to sell (with a cushion), then subtract market depreciation during that time. So if an area was depreciating at 10% a year and you had a property that would take 2-3 months to fix up and 2-3 months to sell, you would want to subtract an additional 5-6% from the retails sales price when making your offer to a seller. There’s really no issue with doing rehabs of fixer uppers in down markets, you just need to factor in depreciation accordingly. This is why faster, lower risk, more creative real estate investing strategies are better to use during market declines. The point is market conditions will not determine your success; it’s how you approach your market and do what is appropriate for the current trends. When you structure risk free deals and make calculated decisions, the market conditions will never be a determining factor of whether you make money or not! Copyright © 2007-9 Creativerealestatehelp.com. All rights reserved.

The Art of Hedging in Options Trading

admin — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 19:20:13 +0000

A hedge is an investment made to offset the risk incurred by entering another investment. Essentially you are setting up a bet on both sides so that one offsets the other and you can end up winning either way.
Think of it as a form of insurance.
Options are frequently used in hedging.
For example, you can speculate that the market price will rise in the future and buy a call today. But, because the market is uncertain and you’re not certain it will rise, you simultaneously buy a put option.
By carefully selecting the appropriate combinations of strike price, expiration date and type of option an investor can minimize risk and maximize the probability of making a profit.
So how does it all work?
Well let’s take a look at a common hedging strategy: the Strangle.
In this strategy, an investor holds both call and put options with the same maturity, but with different strike prices.
The contracts are purchased ‘out of the money’ and are therefore cheaper. ‘Out of the money’ means the strike price of the underlying asset is higher (for a call) or lower (for a put) than the current market price.
For example let’s say Intel (INTC) is currently trading at $40 per share. You could buy one call at $3 and one put at $2 with the call having a strike price of $45, the put $35. Your total investment would be ($3 x 100) + ($2 x 100) = $500.
If the price over the length of the contracts stays between $35 and $45 the total possible loss = $500, the cost of the options. So your risk in this kind of hedge is limited to $500.
Suppose the price drops near expiration to $25. The call would expire worthless, but the put is worth ($35-$25) x 100 = $1000 – ($2 x 100) = $800. Subtract the cost of the call, $800 – $300 = $500. So that’s your net profit (ignoring commissions and taxes).
The difference between the exposure and the potential profit represents a kind of hedge. Though you are essentially ‘betting’ that the price could go either way, your downside is limited to the combined cost of the put and the call.
There are, not surprisingly, nearly as many hedging strategies as there are investors. A couple of common types are:
The collar: Hold the underlying asset and simultaneously both buy a put and sell a call of the same asset. The short call limits gains, but the long put hedges against any losses from the underlying asset.
The protective put: Buy the asset and also buy a put option on the same asset. At expiration, the asset may have gained (eliminating the value of the put option), but the rise in the asset offsets the loss.
And there are a whole host of other variations. Most do involve speculating on the price direction of the underlying asset, while taking advantage of the leverage, cost and timing characteristics of options. As with any investment strategy, make sure you understand the pros and cons before laying down your bet.