Back in the 1970s when I first entered the real estate profession (my fellow bankers were shocked that I left international banking to work as a COMMISSIONED commercial real estate salesperson!), creativity in deal making was a LOT more commonplace than it is now. A large part of this was necessity; interest rates of 12% - 18% IF available doesn’t leave much room for profit UNLESS property can be transacted with leverage at a lower rate. I think I remember correctly that for a period of time 80% of real estate transactions involved some sort of seller financing or existing loan assumption. But beyond that we used many techniques that nowadays are either seldom used or totally misused by the undercapitalized, poorly educated and totally naive disciples of irresponsible “gurus”.
Beside the “subject to” that’s recently become the subject of much debate we utilized ”no interest short term owner financing”, the “2nd mortgage crank”, substitution of collateral, mortgage subordination, wrap loans, real estate “exchange” (not for tax reasons), sale - lease back, guaranteed rent payments, sale - buy back, land offered in lieu of down payment, zero coupon bonds as substitution of collateral, and a few others that escape my memory.

I'd be interested in finding out what creative deals you've done either in the past or are currently involved in. I'll start with one that was only doable under the special circumstances of the late 1970s early 80s. I purchased a somewhat run down vacant auto repair facility with all equipment in tack for about $115,000 in 1981. After spending less than $5000 for repairs (this was 44 years ago) I leased it out to an auto repair shop owner for $3,000 per month. The purchase I made was $115k with $15k down and $100k owner financed note at 8.5% interest for 20 years. Now here's where it get CREATIVE and INTERESTING. I had negotiated a substitution of collateral clause in the purchase agreement, that stated I could substitute a note that (1) yielded the same or more and (2) carried the same or less risk. With interest rates in high double digits, I was easily able to locate corporate bonds of BBB rating with 20 years of payments left and 8-9% coupons. I purchase $100,000 face value of these bonds and because the current yield on these bonds was about 23%, I paid somewhere around $42,000. Then retired the $100k note by giving $100k in Corp bonds to the seller. So, I'm in the deal for $15k down payment, $5k repairs, and $42,000 for the bonds, or $62,000 all in. If the property is worth the $115k I paid , I have earned $53k in added equity. Better yet, I'm getting $3,000 monthly double net, so about $30k annual net income, about 50% annual ROI. Unfortunately, after holding this very profitable investment 9 years, I lost it in a divorce.