The Successful Entrepreneur - An Inspiring Example

I have been in the privileged position to watch many successful people rise from poverty to stunning financial success. But one of my associates and close friends, Jennifer Benning did it spectacularly. She used the investment vehicle of real estate as her specialization, but its what she did with it and the results that followed that really sent goose bumps along the arm.

Jennifer took precisely 11 months to come from obscurity to over a $1 million dollar bank balance. She did it with flair and unbelievable creativity. Here's her story.

Jennifer came from a big family and she was the youngest out of 12 children. She had just left school and started her new life as a video shop attendant and was promptly dissatisfied and unhappy with her immediate prospects. Her older brother Andrew was an associate of mine and gave baby sis some ideas. She was not ready in previous years as school was an enjoyable experience and boys and friends took up most of her time. It took the drudgery and low paid demoralized experience of a 50 hours per week job to register with Jennifer that this was definitely not what she wanted from life. She had become the perfect pupil thanks to the very job she sought to abandon as promptly as possible.

Armed with the information she was given in the literature we all had read as a group of friends all those years ago, she had suddenly seen the light and answers were present where once there were only questions.

The following formula struck home with Jennifer.

problem + solution = profit

She had a few thousand saved, however the help she got from her parents was helpful even if it did work out that had she not received the help she still would have achieved the same results. Her parents offered to put the family home up as equity against the property deal she had found and it was a beauty.

Jennifer immediately began scouting for a deal at the local real estate agents and brokerage houses. She used the internet extensively and after a few weeks of hard work could not find what she had envisaged. A property with problems that could easily be fixed for a profit. At a family gathering she relayed that information to her brother Andrew who encouraged her and gave her more inspiration to keep looking. That night she was on the internet again and she was suddenly inspired to make a wider search for more expensive properties as previously she had been looking at properties for under $200,000

Her new search included houses under $1 million. There it was, asking price $520,000 She made her calls to investigate her due diligence questions and the results were interesting. The building was a large 52 room boarding house that was unused. An older lady lived there by her self and was looking to sell it so she could re-locate closer to her family.

Jennifer made an offer on the property the following day after inspecting it and traveling back home to talk to Andrew and crunch the numbers. She found the building to be in good condition, if a little run down, the foundations seemed solid. Her idea was to access the excess intrinsic value in the property by getting subdivision certificates for each and every room of the building. Her plan was to have the place painted and minor repairs taken out on the roof and exterior.

Her offer was for full price asked providing the deposit was only $3000 and the escrow was 4 months or 160 days. The vendor was in more of a hurry, but without much other competition for this building she eventually accepted the terms.

Jennifer also negotiated immediate access to the property so the work could begin on her investment. She had never picked up a paint brush in her life, but she was motivated and ready to learn by trial and error. With the help of family and some professional help on the big jobs, she completed all she envisaged within 55 days into the escrow period. The condo certificates had been applied for and were slowly starting to filter through. As soon as the first few came in she had an agent appraise the newly created studio apartments and immediately had them listed. The agents confident opinion was that each was worth between $30,000 and $40,000!

By the time escrow had come and settlement was to take place, she had 15 contracts in place. In other words she had already sold 15 of the 52 trendy studio apartments she had created. With this equity, she didn't need to use her parents equity in their family home to secure the finance required. Her existing sales totaled $612,542 which exceeded the purchase price of the boarding house.

Bank managers were tripping over themselves to offer the finance for this deal despite the fact that she had no long term work history or any immediate access to cash. The equity added up in their books and they didn't need any further security.

Of course the best part was still to come. She was the proud owner of the remaining 47 apartments which were now owned by her free and clear. The total value of those studio's were in the vicinity of $1 and a half million dollars.

But that wasn't the end of the story. She was now ready and capable of adding even more value. She noticed a large percentage of the people looking at the apartments were actually investors and not people wanting to inhabit the studio's so she employed a property manager to fill the existing vacancies of this building. This was another increase in value because with an existing tenant paying a lease the apartment was now an investment ready made package. Just what these potential investor wanted and needed to secure their own finances.

By doing so, she added even more value so her final calculated return after all costs was nearly $2 million before tax. She sold the last apartment nearly to the day of a year after first finding the building on the internet.

To your health and rapid success,
Martin Thomas(c)