How to come up with all cash offer?

[Mindy Bowden]

Hi, I'm a newbie to BP and very new to real estate investing. We purchased our first investment/rental property in July with a conventional 25% down, 15 yr loan. We saw another property yesterday that we were interested in purchasing to rent out and was going to follow the same route with the 25% down 15 year loan. We put in an offer a little over asking price and we didn't get it. Property was listed for $160k. Turns out there were 4 other offers, several being all-cash and it went way above asking price. My question is, and it sounds like a stupid question, where do people come up with all this cash? My husband and I both work professional jobs and have decent incomes but it'd take us several years of saving to come up with $160k in cash. Are there just tons of people out there making bookoos of money or are they coming up with it in a creative, nonconventional way I apparently don't know about?