How I Buy Houses Without Going to the Bank

By Lindsey Jensen
The first house I ever bought creatively, I barely negotiated at all. It was 2016, I was pregnant with my second baby, and I’d been looking at houses for about six months without buying a single one. Then I found one that made sense. I gave the seller pretty much what he was asking for, and in return he financed the whole thing for me at zero percent interest for a year, nothing down. No bank. No big pile of cash. I just figured out what the seller actually wanted and gave it to him. That was my first real taste of creative deal-making, and it changed how I saw this whole business.

Most people think there’s only one way to buy real estate. You save up, you go to the bank, you put twenty percent down, and you cross your fingers that you qualify. That’s fine for your first house or two. Then you hit a wall. The bank caps how many loans you can have, your down payment money dries up, and you sit there watching good deals go by because you can’t fund them. Creative finance is how I got past it, and it’s what I’ll walk through in the morning session.
Let’s talk about what I mean with creative finance. Master leasing is when you control a property and rent it out without ever owning it – you lease it from the owner with the right to sublet, and you keep the difference. Subject-to is when you buy a house and take over the payments on the loan that’s already there, instead of getting a new one. A lease purchase is a rent-to-own setup, where you lease the house now with the right to buy it later at a price you lock in today. And sometimes cash really is the right tool – but it doesn’t have to be your cash. Once you understand these, you stop seeing one kind of deal and start seeing five.

None of it works without sellers to talk to, though, which is why I spend real time on marketing. The goal is to get motivated sellers coming to you instead of you fighting over the same listings everybody else is fighting over. When you’re the person who shows up able to solve a seller’s actual problem – they’re behind, they’re tired, they inherited a house they don’t want – you become the easy answer, and the deal comes together because it works for both of you.

Here’s the thing I get fired up about, and I’ll say it from the stage too. You have to understand the deal you’re doing. My first several deals were done with a mentor, split fifty-fifty, because I wanted to make sure I was doing them correctly before I did them alone. If you don’t understand how a deal works, don’t do it – or bring in someone who does. Real estate isn’t about houses. It’s about people, and when you’re putting a deal together, every part of it is your responsibility. Do right by the seller, tell the truth, and the money follows the service. That’s not a slogan for me; it’s how I’ve built everything.

Buying creatively is the part that gets people excited, and it should. But getting the house is only half the story. In the afternoon I’ll show you the other half – the systems that keep all those properties from turning into a second job. Because what good is a portfolio if owning it makes you miserable? Come to the morning session and I’ll show you how to buy. Stick around after lunch and I’ll show you how to keep your life while you do it.