My girlfriend and partner, Emily, and I are one year into real estate investing (we started with an FHA owner occupied four plex) and we've known from the jump we wanted to scale to commercial multi-family properties sooner rather than later - for the ability to force appreciation. The problem... WE HAVE NO MONEY! How the heck are we supposed to buy commercial property without any capital?!?!

But I had the belief, if we had the will - we'd figure out a way to make it happen.

We ended up finding a niche that suited our situation well - wanting to scale to commercial multi-family properties with no money in the bank. That niche ending up producing this opportunity here.

The niche... Mom and Pop property owners with a high level of equity in their property (or own it outright) that no longer wish to manage but DON'T want to incur the hefty tax bill that comes along with selling. The solution... the Contract for Deed! (or commonly referred to as seller financing)

On this deal, that we commonly refer to as "Garfield", we purchased the property for $810k or $135k/unit in the prime Uptown location of S. MPLS (just one block off Lake and Lyndale, if you know Minneapolis). The Seller carried 90% of the purchase price, and we privately funded the remaining 10%. The 10% raise from private funding is receiving 10% interest only payments on their investment. The Seller is receiving 5% interest only payments on their 90% carry. The seller carry is on a ten year term with a pre-payment penalty for any payoff in the first three years - a balloon payment anytime after three years incurs no penalty.

We plan on refinancing the property in three years - once the property has been brought to market level rents (and thus the NOI increased) and there will be no penalties for pre-payment. The private equity individual will be paid off at the time of refinance as well.

All in, we purchased a six-unit apartment building in one of the best areas of Minneapolis with a total of ZERO DOLLARS out of pocket!

I'm continually amazed, that if you can dream it - and you TRULY believe when there's a will, there's a way - the universe has a funny way of making **** happen.

The reason I share all of the above, I'm curious, what beliefs have YOU instilled to help you find success in this wild world of real estate investing? I want to know!