These are rough transcripts of one of the latest episodes of www.REI-TV.com , feel free to go to the links below for dozens of videos about investing, training, and money making opportunities. Since these are transcripts of a live video, we have went to great lengths to translate as accurately as possible.

Welcome to www.realestateinvestormachine.com , the real estate investor network, and host of www.REI-TV.com , where beginning and experienced investors can find training, tips, networking opportunities, and other info about creative real estate investing.

Today is Newbie Tuesday, and we’re talking about different types of deals, real estate investor tips and techniques you can use to flip a house, and various strategies. We do all types of deals, we do bird dog deals, wholesaling, retail flips, auctions, and I’ve even bought and flipped houses on Ebay!

When you first or getting started though, I highly suggest you pick one technique and stick with it. Become a bird dog, become a wholesaler, whatever it might be, and when you are good at it, you can move to the best thing.

In the past, I’ve repeated many times “I’m just going to wholesale”, or “I’m just going to be an option investor”. It seems soon after that a perfect sub-to or rehab comes across my desk, so I tend to do it all… but in many cases, if you’re new, just bird dogging or wholesaling alone may be the best strategy for a new real estate investor beginning her career.

Some investors, all they do is bird dogging… or in other words become a “house scout”. Bird dogs find properties for other investors for a fee instead of actually doing the deals themselves. Some have jobs that take them through neighborhoods as they work, (a perfect opportunity to find houses) and they have no intention of going full-time. Perfect jobs for a bird dog include pizza delivery men, gas meter readers and mail-men. These are ideal because they are always coming and going.

The best reason to start your real estate investing career as a bird dog is there is zero risk. As a bird dog, all you have to do is find the house, get the sellers phone number, the address, pictures of the house, the seller’s name and selling price.

That’s why it is called a “bird dog”… just like when someone is hunting, the dog runs ahead of the hunter (or investor) and flushes out the birds… or houses, in this case!

My first deal was as a bird dog… I made an offer myself to buy the property… I offered $19,500, and they turned me down. The investor I then gave it to offered $15,000 and they took it! (go figger, eh?!)

In any case, I made a quick $500. It was my 1^st money in the business, and I framed the check, (er, a copy of it, that is!) and hung it on my wall! I’ll never forget that 1^st deal… and my 1^st check!

When you want to find an investor to work for as a bird dog, you can simply look for “We Buy Houses” signs as you drive, look in newspapers for “We Buy Houses” ads, or go to Google and type “sell my house” and you’ll discover dozens of pages of investors, many who would love to have you work with him or her… and if none of that works, contact me with the deal and we’ll see what I can do!

The average bird dog makes between $500 to $1000 per deal, while some investors pay their bird dogs on a “per-lead” basis. This is typically determined by a combination of the closing ratio of leads to closed deals by that particular investor, and the real estate license laws in that state.

The next step for most investors is wholesaling. Many investors stop at this point and make a full-time career out of wholesaling houses… big careers, with seven figures income… yes seven figures, as in “millions” wholesaling. Wholesaling is almost the same as a bird dog, but instead of turning it over to another investor, you contract to buy the house yourself.

When wholesaling houses, just like anything else, you buy something cheap and resell it to someone for more… simple, eh? Wholesalers negotiate the best price he can on a property, then put it under contract to buy.

Once you have a contract to buy, you go to another investor who intends to rehab or renovate the property, and you sell, or “assign” your contract to the other investor. Instead of turning it over to some other investor entirely (like a bird dog would) the wholesaler stays with the “deal” until it is closed upon… or when your “buyer” closes and buys the property from your “seller”.

Wholesaling is some of the easiest money I have EVER made in my real estate investing career… and there is no risk when you wholesale, as long as you do it properly. The best part, is a wholesaler simply finds the seller, and the buyer, then steps out of the process… earning his income on the “spread”… and NEVER owns the house!

The “spread”, which is your profit, is the difference between how much your seller gets for the property, and your buyer pays for it.

Another type of deal is what we call a retail flip. Retail flip deals are very similar to wholesale deals, yet a lot of people consider it a type of wholesale deal as well. We call it retail flip because we deal with “pretty houses” and are selling to the end user… a homeowner who will live in the property, who’s buying it “retail”, thus we call it a retail flip.

In a retail flip deal, an investor gets an “option” to buy the property at a discounted price, or puts the house under contract… not unlike a wholesale deal. He then finds a homeowner to purchase the property from him, and again, makes “the spread”. The property is of course, marketed differently, since you’re selling to an end user. We market these properties with bandit signs, newspaper ads, as well as the MLS, and it’s not uncommon to use an auction exit strategy to sell these properties.

There is HUGE profit potential doing this type of a deal, and many deals have been knows to be “six-figure deals”, in profit alone. In a retail flip deal, again, there’s no risk except the marketing money to find a house and find the buyer.

A more “risky” type of a deal, but one that in these times is very easy to find, as well as easy to fill/sell is a “subject-to” deal. In this type of a deal, you buy the property “subject to the sellers mortgage”. In other words, you own the house, but the seller leaves his mortgage STAY on the house until you refinance or sell it in the future. This is similar to “assuming” the mortgage.

The typical exit strategy for a sub-to deal, is to find a buyer who needs some time to get their credit or down payment in place, and is willing to give you a deposit, and rent the property until they qualify for a loan. This is more typically known as a “rent to own” property. The buyer leases the property from you, until he can get financing, and “cash us out”.

The nice thing about a sub-to deal, is it’s usually “no money down” to the investor. We simply buy the property for the amount the seller owes, he signs the property over to us, and we make the payments until our “rent to own” buyer gets financed.

1- He makes some money from the deposit the “rent to own” tenant pays when he moves in. We typically charge $5,000 to $15,000… this is technically an “option fee”. The tenant pays this to us, to secure the right to buy the property in the future at a locked-in price. We make this up-front.

2- He makes some money monthly. For instance, if the mortgage payments, including taxes, interest, and insurance total $1,200.00, we would typically charge that tenant $1,400.00-$1,500.00 per month.

3- The “big payday” is when the tenant gets his mortgage and “closes”, buying the property from the investor. If the investor pays $150.000 for a house, and the rent to own tenant eventually pays $185,000 for the house, at the final closing, the investor makes $35,000. (minus the deposit, in #1)

But remember, if the rent to own buyer doesn’t make the payments, you’re going to have to make them, as the investor!

Another type of deal, is “buy and hold”. It is what more typical investors do… they buy the properties over a long period of time, rent it out, and eventually acquire a LOT of equity, as the renters payoff the investors mortgage over the years. 10 or 15 years from now you sell the house, which could be huge money if you have the patience to deal with tenants. This is how real estate investors have traditionally “done the business”, and is one of the absolute best ways to become filthy rich in real estate!

These are only a few of many “deal types” that are known to the creative real estate investor. For a more detailed look at these techniques and more, please go to www.realestateinvestormachine.com , or www.rei-tv.com , and take advantage of the dozens/hours of free real estate training and education videos.