If you want to make money in real estate like a professional investor then there is one secret that you really need to know. This is the secret that will be the difference between you earning a nice little bit of profit or equity from your investment strategy and you making a killing from your investment property assets.

This secret is little known outside of the professional property investor circle – this secret is hardly ever divulged, revealed or explained - and yet it is the absolute, number one essential factor that every single professional investor applies to every single real estate investment purchase decision that they ever make.

And the secret is – professional property investors secure their future profit when they purchase…

What?

That makes no sense, does it?

Actually, it makes a wealth of sense, let me explain…

Depending on the investment approach that you take, you can work a property's purchase price right down and in so doing you immediately create greater room for eventual profit.

For example, if you have a large lump sum to put down as a deposit for an investment property why not split the deposit in two, three or four and use the power of OPM (other people's money) in the form of multiple mortgages to acquire multiple properties?

This will allow you to negotiate the purchase price down if buying from a single vendor on a new development for example - it's called leveraging and here's how it works in basic terms: -

If you have USD 100,000 to invest, instead of buying a single home for USD 100,000 you can buy four for USD 100,000 by putting a USD 25,000 deposit down and mortgaging the other USD 75,000 on each one. Chances are if you're such a strong buyer you can hit the vendor hard with an aggressive purchase offer – say, 'I'm going to take four properties off your hands today and I want a 5% discount on each and I want all white goods, air conditioning, carpets and curtains thrown in.'

At the end of the process you will have paid out USD 100,000 for four properties that you have bought for USD 380,000 and which are actually worth over and above the original asking price of USD 400,000 because of the extras you got thrown in. At this point you can simply resell immediately and have turned the original USD 100,000 into at least USD 120,000 without doing much work for it at all!

Alternatively – you can buy a property at auction, you can buy a repossessed home or you can buy the worst house on a decent street all well below market value. You can then work the real estate into an attractive home and resell via a realtor at top market value and turn an undervalued property into a capital returning asset.

Another approach is to target a housing development coming to the end of the development phase. Any properties remaining for sale where the original sales have fallen through or any pieces or real estate remaining unsold as a result of being on an odd shaped plot of land or having less than perfect views can be snatched from a desperate developer keen to get onto their next project for well below market value if you're in a strong position to make them an offer and buy immediately.

Even if you are not in the position to act so aggressively and quickly, never ever offer what a vendor is asking, bargain hard, negotiate down, get extras included and try and increase the value of a property in relation to what you're paying for it before you buy…this will put you in the professional property investor league and ensure you make a killing from your real estate assets rather than an mediocre return.