Creative Real Estate: The Power of Lease Options

[Michael Carbonare]

Most people think real estate investing requires huge capital, perfect credit, or bank loans—but that’s not always true. Creative strategies like lease options allow investors to control properties without owning them upfront.
Here’s why lease options are a game-changer:
🔹 Low Risk, High Leverage – Instead of buying a property outright, you lease it with the option to purchase later. This gives you control without needing a large down payment or a mortgage.
🔹 Profit Multiple Ways – You can rent the property for cash flow, sell the option at a profit, or buy it later at a pre-agreed price (often below market value).
🔹 Great for Sellers & Investors – Motivated sellers can turn a vacant or hard-to-sell property into income while investors secure future deals without a huge upfront commitment.
🔹 Ideal in Any Market – Whether home prices are rising or falling, lease options allow you to lock in today’s price while benefiting from future appreciation.

Other creative strategies—like seller financing, subject-to deals, and the BRRRR method—can also open doors, but lease options remain one of the most powerful, low-risk, minimal cash out-of-pocket ways to build a portfolio.

[Shawn Ackerman]

@Michael Carbonare The rent to own strategy has been good to our business model as a long term buy and hold investors.  I have sold a couple to investors and some to occupants and can't say I have anything to complain about.  I reduced my responsibility to only taxes/insurance while the tenant buyer does the maintenance, pays utilities and makes monthly payments to me.  Wish I would have done more of these earlier on.  

I've actually had an investor give two of the properties back to me after religiously making his payments for 3 years on time but got a set of bad tenants and could not maintain the rentals.  Happy to report I took back possession with well over $140K in equity.

Thanks for shedding light on the creative side of real estate.