Solve Problems Like Nancy Drew to Make the Big Bucks

I’m not sure if I’ll blog my way through the entire event and my memory is a bit unreliable but I thought it would be fun to share some of the high-lights and lessons learned from the past weekend in Phoenix at the Rich Dad Headquarters.

On Thursday evening were met by Kim and Robert at a casual reception. Since I went last year meeting Robert and Kim was cool, but not as awe inspiring as the first time. It’s always fun to see someone famous in a small and intimate environment though and I was determined to get a picture of myself with Robert, but when the event actually began, it seemed like a silly thing to ask…so I passed.

This investor made $145k (with a much bigger upside if she develops the property) just by solving a simple puzzle about the ownership of a piece of land and asking the owner if he was willing to sell.

It was also great to see all the returnees from last year again, but the most fun for me was provided when a guy named Peter who, the second I walked in the door, ran up to me and proclaimed, “I read your blog!” I guess having that big picture of me up there was good move by Sean (at least if my goal was to be recognized.)

Profitable Attitudes

When Robert gave us a little wealth building pep talk he talked about a “deal” (the word of the weekend) that one of the participants had pulled down.

She had lived beside an “unbuildable” vacant lot but had a dream of expanding her property onto that lot. No-one knew who the owner was. She tried everything she could think of to find out who the owner was so she could offer to purchase it, but was unable to using conventional means. She was told to just give up and do what she wanted on the vacant lot, others had tried in vain to locate the owner and never succeeded.

One day she saw people pruning trees on the property and asked who had hired them. The said they were not allowed to tell her, but she made note of the company name on their uniform and from that small lead was able to locate the owner of the lot. He turned out to be the original developer who built the sub-division 60 years ago, and had pretty much forgotten about the throw-away lot, that he couldn’t build on at the time.

He didn’t really seem to care about the property (he was very wealthy) and so he sold it to her for $6,000 (this is in Washington D.C. by the way!!!).

To make a long story short she needed to jump through a few hoops at city hall, but she now has the property zoned “buildable” and recently received an appraisal of $151,000 on the lot.

I’m sure over the years many people had tried to find out who owned that land with the idea of developing it, but they didn’t persevere.

Solve Problems, Make Money

We heard it over and over again this weekend. The way you make money is by solving problems and being able to do the things that other people can’t or won’t do. This investor made $145k (with a much bigger upside if she develops the property) just by solving a simple puzzle about the ownership of a piece of land and asking the owner if he was willing to sell.

It’s an illusion that making money with real estate, or probably anything else, is about numbers and in depth knowledge. Creative problem solving makes money. The rest is just details.

Jon Symons
- Thinking about real estate lately, since my landlord just died and I have to find a new place to live!

This post was written by Jon Symons, see my short bio. Or use the contact page to get in touch.