How to be Happy with a Sandwich

How to be a Happy Sandwich Lease Option Investor

“Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” We hear that saying all of the time and it totally makes sense. I absolutely love what I do, and I’m lucky to be able to make a great living at it. Best of all, it gets better every day because I’m constantly learning new ways to improve on what I’ve already learned. Sharing it all with you has become one of my golden moments.

A true golden nugget that I’ve learned over the years is that to be a happy sandwich lease option investor, it takes happy tenant-buyers. This doesn’t happen by accident. The current circumstances of tenant-buyers are always a challenging time in their lives.

When you’re happy, you’ll feel more fulfilled. You’ll succeed. You’ll inspire others.

Tenant-buyers are often very good people struggling to make the American Dream happen for themselves even though they weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouth. These people will work very hard at making that dream come true when they get a helping hand from a sandwich lease option investor. Others had many good things going for them but they suffered a temporary financial setback. It’s sad how fast a medical emergency or unexpected job loss can temporarily wreck a person’s credit rating. Most of these people want to get back on the horse as fast as possible. Of course, there are also people who have always been a credit risk and will always be a credit wreck.

Being happy makes it easier to get through the trials and tribulations of being a business owner.

Sandwich lease option investors need to be able to separate worthy tenant-buyers from never-do-well tenant-buyers…

Happiness is Having Happy Tenant-Buyers

Something amazing that I’ve learned is that you can share your happiness with others. I’ve been able to share my happiness with my students and tenant-buyers. One of my biggest golden nuggets as a sandwich lease option investor is knowing the difference between reasonable and unreasonable expectations of tenant-buyers.

Take a look at any list of houses for rent. One statement will stand out in almost every classified ad – No Smokers and No Pets. This is a great opportunity for a sandwich lease option investor to rise head and shoulders above traditional landlords.

Sandwich lease options offer a Unique Selling Proposition.

A unique selling proposition (USP) is also known as a unique selling point or a unique value proposition. I’ve known for decades that sandwich lease options offer something unique in the real estate business. That’s all good and fine but what’s important is being able to leverage it as a unique selling proposition. This brings us back to the No Smoking and No Pet policy for tenants…

Where is it written that smoking and pets make people bad tenants? Most of the pet owners I know are very good people. They are caring people who take good care of their pets. They share their lives generously with pets and this carries over into almost everything they do – including taking care of their home. Smoking is a little different. We all know how bad smoking is but some people just can’t seem to kick the habit. That doesn’t make them bad people. Some of them picked up the habit from their parents or got started to be “cool.” Here is you’re USP…

Traditional landlords don’t want smokers and pets because it might leave odors behind or possibly do a little damage to a rug or something. But as a sandwich lease option investor, you’re not a traditional landlord. Your entire mission is to transition tenant-buyers into homeowners. You don’t have much of anything riding on the possibility of a little odor or minor damage. Any little risk you have is easily covered by the lease option fee or security deposit.

These (and other opportunities) increase the number of potential tenant-buyers you can consider. A USP is about attracting more potential clients.

Ultimately, being a sandwich lease option investor is your USP advantage over traditional landlords.

Select the Best Tenant-Buyer by Having More Potential Tenant-Buyers

As a sandwich lease investor, you might have three potential tenant-buyers offering you full price for your white-picket-fence home. One is a smoker (and has a dog) but has had the same job for eight years and a credit rating within 75 points of qualifying for a mortgage. The second one just started her fourth job in two years. She has a long history of job-hopping along with stretches of unemployment between jobs. She says it’s always her boss’ fault that she can’t get along with the other workers. The third applicant had a house foreclosed on last year and that foreclosure is going to stay on his credit report for seven years. If you even bothered checking with his previous landlord, you learned he is consistently a month or two behind on his rent. Which of these potential tenant-buyers is most likely to be the best tenant and complete the purchase the soonest?

Granted, your choices won’t always be that cut and dry. But by using your USP as part of your marketing plan, you increase the number of applicants and the probability of finding the best tenant-buyer. Developing your USP is very simple. I’ve already given you the best one – you offer people the chance to own a home because you are not a traditional landlord. Another one is that you can consider smokers and pet owners because any minor problems they might cause will be their own when they become homeowners.

These are the three primary questions you should be asking as you develop your USP:

1. How are you different?
2. What makes you stand out from the crowd?
3. Why should people do business with you?

A USP is as simple as the M&Ms slogan: “melts in your mouth, not in your hands.” (America’s best-selling candy)

Why I’m a Happy Sandwich Lease Option Investor

You’ve heard me say time and again that sandwich lease options are all about creating WIN-WIN-WIN solutions. That will make any investor happy. It’s about helping the seller get a high price for their property. It’s about helping people become homeowners when no one else will (often their first home). And it’s about you being paid handsomely for doing good things. No wonder I love being a sandwich lease option investor.

The cherry on top is that it is low or no risk!

The seller gets out of the house without having to make any more payments and is free to establish a new life wherever they choose. The tenant-buyer rents a desirable home with the intention of becoming a homeowner before the end of the lease.

As a sandwich lease option investor, you earn the lease option fee, keep the spread in the rent payment, and collect a big payday when the sale closes. Both the seller and investor have a tenant-buyer in place who wants to take good care of the property because they will own it one day soon. They may even agree to pay a portion for any needed repair or improvement expenses.