Buy Small, Earn Big

In today's real estate market, a hands-on real estate investor can make money with smaller properties that are easy to acquire and manage. Here are some suggestions to get started:

• Rent out a part of your own home for $400 a month and use that money every month to pay down mortgage principal. Shaving 10 years from a $350,000 30-year mortgage will reduce total payments by more than $165,000. And you’ll be able to write off all your costs on your income taxes, including depreciation on the unit, up to your actual rental income.

• If buying a single family home, make sure you can put 10 percent down and rent the property for more than your monthly payment, interest, taxes, insurance and a $200 expense budget. Purchasing a foreclosed home owned by a lender is one way to find such a property.

• Consider buying a two-family home, where you’ll make nearly twice as much in rent for a property costing little or no more than a single family.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

International Investment

Worldwide, Koreans could spend at least $4 billion on overseas homes in 2007 as a result of changes made by the Korean government last year that allow its citizens to make as much as $1 million in foreign investments, analysts say. Koreans are expected to invest nearly $2 billion in U.S. residential property, up from $1.27 billion the year earlier, says Brian Shaffer of the International Real Estate Trade Organization. Much of the money will likely be directed to U.S. cities with large Korean populations, including San Francisco, New York and Atlanta, to take advantage of lower home prices stemming from the weakening U.S. housing market. Observers say the lion's share of the money will be invested in Los Angeles, which has one of the world's largest Korean populations outside the Asian nation.

Source: Associated Press