Shopping malls require experience for their financing, purchase, and operation. You’ll get this either as an owner of mini-malls or as an employee of a large shopping mall. Just be sure you know what you’re doing before you buy a large shopping mall.

Funding for mini-malls and shopping malls often comes from local banks near the facility. Why is this? Because local banks:

•Feel safer with property near their own.
•Understand nearby property values better than distant ones.
•Have personnel who shop locally and want to see the area grow.  

So your best opportunity for mini- and shopping mall financing is often at your local commercial bank. Check your local Yellow Pages under “Mortgages” and “Loans” for banks that might want to work with you.

Wait Before Investing in Industrial Properties

Industrial properties - factories, storage buildings, warehouses, or others - are not for beginners. It takes experience and know-how to make it big on zero cash in these properties. So for now, I suggest that you get experience in other types of properties before investing in industrial projects.

Unique Funding You Can Do Yourself

Today is the age of the do-it-yourselfer. Thousands of people rebuild houses, construct their own home, build walls, or other projects- So why not expand this to do-it-yourself financing? Thousands of real estate investors are doing just that. You, too, can do the same. Let’s see how - right now.

Two Quick Unique Ways to Raise Money Yourself

There are two quick unique ways you can raise money for real estate yourself at low cost. These ways are:

1. Limited partnership to raise $500,000 to $50 million.
2. Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) for $5 million to $100+ million.

Of these two methods, the Limited Partnership (LP) is the easiest for real estate investors and has been used much more often than the REIT. However, we do have RElTs being formed almost every day of the year to raise big money for real estate investment. Let’s look at each unique funding method to see how you might use it today.

Use a Limited Partnership to Raise the Money You Need

you’ll learn how to form your own Limited Partnership to raise money directly from investors in your partnership.

A Limited Partnership (can raise money for real estate investment at little cost. In a typical real estate limited partnership, you, as the general partner, work with limited partners who invest their money in some aspect of income real estate.
As general partner, you invite limited partners to put money into the partnership in the form of participations. Each participation can be priced at anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 or more. Thus, if you get 20 limited partners to invest, say $50,000 each, you’ll raise 20 x $50,000 = $1,000,000 to invest in income real estate.

As general partner, you have control of the investment funds. You can use them in any way you believe will earn a profit for the Limited Partners. And your Limited Partners are limited in their liability in the partnership to the amount of money they originally put into the partnership.

Thus, if a Limited Partner put $15,000 into your real estate LP, that partner is limited to no more than the $15,000 if an outsider sues the LP and is awarded money for damages or other charges.

Six Steps to Setting Up Your Limited Partnership

To set up your Limited Partnership, take these six easy and direct steps:

1.Write a brief description of your LP, telling what you’ll do with the funds you raise. You can do any of several things, namely:

a. Buy income properties and manage them for income.
b. Lend money to real estate investors to buy, and manage, income properties.
c. Find and buy properties to flip for short-term profits.

2.Contact a competent real estate attorney familiar with Limited Partnerships. Have this person evaluate your proposed Limited Partnership and your plans for it.

3.Decide on how much money you want to raise and how many limited partners you’ll need. Today, most advisors will suggest that you have no more than 35 limited partners who are “qualified investors - that is, have assets of a certain amount, as defined by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). Your attorney will advise you on this, using the latest requirements.

4. Prepare your offering for your Limited Partners, This is a one-or two-page document covering the amount of money they put into the LP and how they will share in the profits earned by the LP. (When preparing the offering and the description of the LP, most people use, as a guide, previously written offering circulars that have successfully raised money.

5.Sell your participations to your Limited Partners. You can do this personally, or you can have a stock brokerage house do it for you. Their charge is about 12 percent of the amount of money raised.

6.Get your money and start your real estate work - depending on what your LP is organized to do. You - as general partner - will normally own one participation in the LP. This ownership is based on the work you do to conceive the partnership, raise the money, and run it on a day-to-day basis.

Typical real estate LP raise anywhere from S5 million to $50 million. Today, most new LP fundings are in the $5 million to S10 million range. Your ownership cash holding might be $100,000 to $500,000, depending on the number of limited partners in the organization. You will - of course - use these funds for investment purposes to build the LP.

While forming a LP may seem complex, it is really very simple. And the LP can be your unique way to raise money for the income real estate you want to acquire.