BiggerPockets

I'm looking to expand my knowledge in lease options/purchase. Does anyone have any suggestions? Something you used that was great or just plain awful.

Thanks for the help. :cool:

If you email me at [REMOVED] I can tell you a course that is less than a hundred dollars that is pretty good. I don't want violate the board rules of advertising.

Its OK to recommend someones product here, but not to advertise your own.

Wendy Patton has a couple of books on the topic. I'm sure she has a course, too. Wendy and her co-authors cover lease options as both a purchase and sale strategy.

Andy Heller and ??? Frank has a couple of books and a course. I have the course. Its well done, with an interviewer asking them questions and walking through their method. They focus on buying REOs and then selling on lease options. They do advocate putting a lot of the maintenance on the tenant buyer, which doesn't work if you have habitability standards in your area. Can't really vouch for the lease option part, since I'm not doing those. But seems like a decent approach. Includes forms.

Been a while since I've looked at them, so I thumbed through them again. I'd put them toward the basic end of the scale. There are just a few forms. The ones they have are OK, just not a very complete set.

Scott Frank is the other guy's name.

I also have Bill Bronchick's Lease Option course. Its not as fancy, just a recording of him giving a seminar. But covers a lot of ground. Has a MUCH more thorough set of forms, including many state-specific ones. About three dozen general forms, plus state ones for key docs (deeds, mortgages) vs. about a dozen total for Heller & Frank. Also has state specific landlord tenant law summaries. Of course, you have to take any forms with a grain of salt.

Do you really need a course to do a lease-option? Here's everything you need to know about it:

Buy a house. Rent it out. Charge the tenant an option fee (in addition to the normal security deposit) and sign an option contract giving them the option to buy your house at a specified price for the next 12 months!

You just saved $1,495 and you now know everything there is to know about lease options.

Here's a bonus that the gurus will never tell you in their $1,495 course - NEVER DO A SANDWICH LEASE OPTION!

No extra charge!

BTW, I have been at several state REIA conventions and attended several guru sessions on lease options. During the boom, their strategy was to buy a property (pretty house) at retail and do a lease-option at higher than market rent and with an option price well above market price. The idea is that you would make your money in a year when you sell. If you followed this RIDICULOUS strategy, where would you be today? BROKE!

The days of all these silly guru nonsense strategies and gimmicks are over. We're back to reality and will probably be here for many years. If you want to survive in real estate today, you've got to get back to basics and learn to run a BUSINESS! (no extra charge for this rant either)

Good Luck,

Mike

Jonathan is dead right, you can't go wrong with Michael's manual and forms. He replys daily on the forum too. Herbster

Nice to see you to Mr Investor. I can't believe I haven't been here before. Just learning this site and really like it. BTW Eric M. invited me over. Thanks, Herbster