HOW TO GET A FREE HOME IN FLORIDA

...OR ALMOST ANYWHERE ELSE YOU WANT TO GO

The secret of this strategy is arbitraging the
difference between local and tourist rental rates.
Typically, business and vacation travelers pay
much higher rental prices than locals. You have only
to contact an agency to find the truth of this.
In Florida, for example, an especially attractive
spot for visitors, it can cost a lot of money to rent a
house. But as a friend of ours discovered recently,
not much of that money ends up in the hands of the
landlord. Our friend paid $4,000 to rent a house.
While there, he made friends with the landlord, a man
who lived nearby. The landlord only received $1,500 of
the rent our friend paid. The rest went to middle men.

Houses in that part of Florida sell for about
$100,000. So, here's the obvious strategy. Buy the
house and use your connections to rent it out. All you
have to do is to run ads in specialized travel
magazines...in your local newspaper...or in foreign
travel and lifestyle publications to reach tourists
visiting the U.S.

Here is how the numbers work. You pay $100,000
for the house. Just to keep it simple, borrow the money
from your local bank...maybe using a home equity line
on your dwelling. You might have to pay about $12,000
a year to pay off that loan. But look, if you can rent
the house for just three months of the year at $4,000
per month -- you've done it. You've got the house
FREE. Plus, you have free use of it nine months of the
year.

Or perhaps you could rent it for another couple of
months and make a profit of $8,000. Or maybe you'd
rather lower the rent to get a more steady tenant...and
be content to acquire the property FREE over the period
of the mortgage.

We have used the example of a house in Florida.
But it could be almost anywhere you'd want to go.
Because if you would like to travel somewhere, chances
are, others would, too. The only hitch is that the
place must have a two-tiered rental market that you can
take advantage of. In top, prime resort areas, the
local rental rates and the tourist rental rates tend to
run together.

In that case, you'll be lucky to get enough in
rentals to cover the mortgage. But in many, many
places...you will be doing your fellow tourists a big
service by letting them rent your property at two to
three times the going local rate.