My Rat Race

As much as I am a fan of Robert Kiyosaki, I am still in the rat race. With his popular E-S-B-I graph, I am still in the Employee and Self-Employed/Specialist quadrants but compared from the very first day I read Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2006, I have already doubled my employment salary and my small business has already grown into a freelance gig to a registered corporation. But still small that I can’t really make the jump into real estate yet until just recently.

Last year, I’ve learned a lot about grants from National Grants Corp. and has signed up for their mentorship which I only maximized in the beginning since a sudden surge of additional expense came into my life that real estate was put on hold.

The Invitation To Learn About This Real Estate

There was just one persistent person claiming me and my wife won some free Dinner at the Super Buffet (former East Buffet) at Miramar, San Diego. With the large amount of scammers out there, promotions with hidden objectives, I and my wife were skeptical about offers like these. Until one day my wife gave it a shot in entertaining the persistent phone caller and after a few minutes of conversation, my wife told me she did all the interrogation and it is really just a free lunch and some video presentation and no selling, no offers on-the-spot, no nothing. They even said the company. It was Silver Saddle Ranch and Club. Ok so everything is free, then I might as well take the offer.

Dinner with Tita Dali

The next day, after work, me and my wife headed towards the dinner venue. Since it was a buffet, it was Asian food and it was free, I really ate a lot then. The person that invited us, since we both came from the same country of origin, we kind of had nice good exchanges of stories to tell. And when it was time for her to present, it was direct and straight to the point. They showed the brochure and everything of the real estate. And after that showed a video presentation to everyone in the dinner venue.

And when that was done, there was absolutely no hard selling, no forceful convincing, no expression exaggeration. Just plain and simple, this is the resort, this is the planned real estate area and that’s it.

But a new free offer came out…

They gave a free 2 days 1 night stay at the resort’s hotel. Free dinner and breakfast, and free use of all resort amenities. Two wrist watches just for coming to dinner, a raffle ticket to some large prizes when we get there, a free $50 Shell Gasoline card and a free $100 gift certificate to a spa treatment.

Why the free offers we asked? Being a marketer myself, we started talking about advertising mediums and the cost of television commercials and the cost of free dinners and trips. As well as the effectiveness of the commercials and the effectiveness of the immersed experienced. As long as people are screened and pre-qualified by age and average household income, their sales conversions have been great with what they were doing.

Now since these offers were free and during our trip, we were allowed to bring more people with us, we just treated the whole even as some time to unwind, get away from home and work, get the children to go some place, have a vacation, get a facial at the spa, and we totally had no intentions into looking into the real estate since we believed we were not yet capable of getting into this lifestyle of real estate buying.

The Drive To Galileo Hills, California City, California

This was a super long drive from San Diego. And since we were unfamiliar with the location we got lost several times. Even with the guides from out GPS equipment, we were still getting lost since there were many dirt roads that were already in government plans, thus appearing on the GPS but the roads do not exist yet.

Eventually we got to the resort and since our main purpose was to have fun we did our best to have fun and it was fun indeed.

The Real Estate Tour at Silver Saddle Ranch in California City, California

Day 2 at 11:00 am was our scheduled tour. They did a presentation and we also watch a video presentation again and did an actual tour of the site. Cutting the story short, we were sold with the idea. Now the reason why I was convinced to buy this piece of land in what appeared to be a desert was:

• Zoning was applied to this raw land already. Meaning there is already a real estate plan on where everything goes, was submitted to the California government and was approved already. The value of this land in the eyes of a lot owner is better since you know what is around the land you bought.
• In the plan I have seen where the commercial area was, the super large area of land where the malls would be. Where the schools are, and the main future roads. And the land I bought was walking distance from the commercial area.
• I did not buy a residential lot. I bought a commercial housing lot, what was 11.6K square feet. That is about 3,535 square meters. I can put a 10-unit 2-bedroom apartments on the land in the future if I have the money to put one up one day. And if I don’t, I can always sell the land in the future. And if ever I do get to put up an apartment, in the future I can always convert this into a condominium.
• When we arrived there were two left commercial housing lots near the commercial area. And when the tour was done, one of them was bought already. I then decided I need to get the one left before someone else does. If everyone got a piece of land here then definitely, there is some future in that area.
• Compared to San Diego, of course the land I bought in an area where the planned roads are still dirt roads and the place literally looking like a desert, the price of the land was way low.

I still get some of my friends thinking I am crazy buying land in a desert far from home, far from work. But I guess they just don’t see what I see. It is far from everything, but that does not mean I am going to live in that lot. It just means I own it and will maximize what ever investment and earnings I can make from it in the future.

Still they think I am crazy because how can that lot make money if there is no one there? Well there is no one but all lots are almost owned by someone already. There is a zoning plan already. When buying land there is the:

• Under-Developed: Cheapest but usually sold in acres to a real estate developer. Land bought during this time take a super long time before you make money from it.
• Developing: Probably the best time to buy real estate land. Price is still super cheap and will turn into something revenue generating in a closer time frame.
• Developed: Land bought during this stage in a community will probably make money right right away but the price will be super expensive already. Only if you have the initial capital to go bigtime already, why not. But in my case, I am not yet capable of buying real estate in a developed city.

Now that I saw the rush in buying this land, I looked into all the financing matters. Of course I had no money. I had no money for the down payment and I simply told them, I will give the money at the end of May. They said ok buy give some reservation type of payment, at least $2,000 of the down payment. We used my wife’s credit card, and part of my salary to pay the $2,000. Now the rest is trying to get a loan because payment deadline.

Honestly, we have not yet secured the money needed. And I need to pay on the 15th and 30th of this month. Wish me luck and hope I can come up with something.