Changing the use of property is one of the oldest and smartest ways of making money in real estate. John Jacob Astor was one of the first to try it in this country in the early 1800s when he converted cow pastures in Manhattan to residential and commercial buildings, making a fortune along the way. Recently a friend 1 know bought an old nonproducing orange grove of 10 acres at $50,000 an acre, spending a total of half a million dollars. Then he cleared the dying trees and subdivided into lots for homes—five lots to an acre. He sold each homesite for approximately $50,000. Since he now had 50 sites, that came to $2,500,000. He made a profit of $2,000,000 before expenses (which were not insubstantial). All of this came about because he changed the usage of the property from agricultural to residential. Other changes can include small splits of a lot or home into two units instead of one, or creating a big commercial usage when there was previously a multifamily residential usage. Of course, changing usage often requires approval  from the local planning department, which can be any thing from easy to impossible to get. However, if you do get approval for a usage change (or the property was pre viously zoned for a higher use), there is usually a big profit to be made. Remember, your goal as a real estate investor is to make money, and one of the fastest ways to make it is to buy a property and upgrade its use- This is an important concept that too few investors remember or fully understand.