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Welcome to the many new recipients of this newsletter. Our names are Matt Whitnack and Jules Roman. We are business partners with David Tischler and AJ Todd. The four of us own a Florida-based real estate company called LeaseOptionProgram.com. Jules and I have moved to Florida to more actively manage and grow our company and our investments. Matt has his real estate license and processes the many transactions of the company. Jules is a licensed mortgage broker and sources the many mortgages for us and our investors. We are also developers involved with several projects in Southwest Florida. The purpose of this newsletter is to inform you of our activities, the status of our market and to make you aware of the many investment opportunities we have available. Please feel free to forward this on to your friends, family, and colleagues. If you would no longer like to receive this email or would like us to add someone to the distribution list, send us an email at Matt@LeaseOptionProgram.com.
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 When we looked back, we could not believe it's been 9 months since we last took the time to update you on the many things happening here in Southwest Florida. Our last newsletter went out during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. It was a catastrophic time in our history that saddened the country and had all of us yelling at our TVs to get our fellow countryman and human beings the help they so desperately needed. We are deeply saddened to report that this newsletter also goes out after another tragedy, but one which is much closer to home for many of the people who receive this newsletter. On Tuesday, February 28, we unexpectantly lost a fellow University of Michigan alumnus and good friend Matt Anderson. In addition to being a classmate during our Executive MBA program, Matt was a member of the six-person team that spent many, many hours over our five-month capstone course researching, designing and drafting the business plan that ended up making LeaseOptionProgram.com a reality. Matt was a great husband, father, and friend whose infectious laughter and great smile will be sorely missed. Please keep Matt's young family in your thoughts and prayers.
On a happier note, congratulations go out to many of you who took a chance a little over a year ago and went to contract on preconstruction coach homes at a project called Gulf Hideaway in Ft. Myers. I am happy to report that all but one of the units has now been flipped and everyone came in right around a 300% cash-on-cash return on their $20,000 investment. Great job! I would also like to congratulate several of you who have begun investing in lease-option properties with us. You have realized the superiority of this type of rental property investing when compared to buying vacant rental properties. More on that later.
Both Jules and I continue to enjoy being out of the rat race and in charge of our own destinies. We look ahead, not back, and urge all of you to also begin taking control. I think it is has become clear to most of you that having a job is not a guarantee of continued income and benefits. Many of you are in the Midwest and are watching both blue and white-collar jobs disappear at a record rate. The local economies are suffering and there is an air of uncertainty.
Many of you have expressed your admiration at the risk Jules and I took quitting our jobs and moving to Florida to become entrepreneurs. I would argue that our move was not all that risky. We simply put ourselves in a position to better control our future. We had limited control of our futures in the rat race. We could work hard and maybe we would be rewarded with a promotion. That promotion might mean more pay, better benefits, or possible future paydays from stock options that purposely chained us to the company. But that promotion also meant more responsibilities, more stress and more time away from our families due to longer hours and or more travel. Jules and I enjoy setting our own schedules and spending a lot of time with our families and friends.
So what are you waiting for? Why don't you start taking control of your own destiny? You don't have to quit your job. You don't have to move. You don't have to have lots of disposable income. You don't even have to spend all of your extra time learning about investments or studying finance. What if you were in a position that you were no longer dependent on the income from your job? You could decide that you enjoy your job and want to continue or perhaps you would rather retire from the rat race and take control of your destiny. I urge you to leverage us. Learn from what we are doing and get involved!
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 The majority of the Southwest Florida real estate market has now shifted to a buyer's market. There is a lot of discussion about a "market correction." I hate that buzzword. Not because it paints a picture of drastic decreases in prices, but because it is a misnomer. While the real estate market is regulated in many ways, it is a free market driven by the economics of supply and demand. The price of a product in our market is driven by how much a ready, willing an able buyer is willing to pay for a product offered by a ready, willing and able seller. If the buyer has the luxury of choosing between many sellers offering the same product, then the competition will force sellers to offer incentives such as a lower price than their competitors. So how could the conditions of a free market ever be wrong and in need of "correction"? The market is always in a state of flux as the market conditions driving it are never stable.
 One of the main drivers in our local southwest Florida markets is supply. We have an excessive supply of both new and resale residential real estate. The market in the last 3 to 5 years was driven primarily by investors and second home buyers who foresaw the onslaught of retiring baby boomers. The builders could not take orders fast enough. Thus unmet demand naturally drove the prices up to a point where the price of residential properties doubled over a three-year period.
So what's changed. Higher interest rates, higher insurance costs, higher impact fees to builders and the lack of enough end-users to actually buy and occupy all of the properties coming online at a record rate have impacted the market. The investors have pulled back and the 1,000+ people a day that continue to move to Florida is not enough demand to consume the large supply of properties. As a result of all of this, properties are staying on the market for much longer. Prices state-wide continue to go up at the rate of about 10% over last year, but many regional markets are seeing prices decline as sellers get more realistic about what a buyer will pay for their product.
So I am bullish on the market. That's right not bearish, I said bullish. Your thinking its because I wish for things to be the way they were. Blind optimism. But that's not it. I like to buy when everyone else is selling and sell when everyone else is buying. A year ago, a property would come on the market and in order to buy it I had to compete with 5 other buyers all willing to pay more than the property would appraise for. As a result, I had a very hard time securing houses for our clients at reasonable prices. Now when I negotiate a purchase, the leverage is on my side. The house has been on the market for 145 days and the price has already dropped a few times. So even though I can more easily negotiate better terms for a purchase, that in itself does not make me bullish.
I am bullish because Florida nets 1000+ new citizens every day. People move here for the climate and for the tax friendliness the state offers. That number is only going to go up as the number of retirees skyrockets over the next 30 years. The peak year of baby boomer retirees is not even projected to occur until 2022. I believe in free markets and in understanding what drives them. Once you understand the drivers, you buy low and sell high no matter the product. But it takes courage to sell when everyone else is buying and sell when they are buying. But that's how large fortunes are made.
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— By Matt Whitnack and Jules Roman
We are happy to report that LeaseOptionProgram.com is hitting its stride. Our shift from public advertising to focusing our efforts on getting our message to mortgage and real estate professionals has been a huge success. Our efforts are resulting in much more qualified leads that translate into higher home values and higher rates of return.
We are now using our lease-option program to bailout people facing foreclosure. The number of properties heading towards foreclosure is increasing rapidly across the country. This is the result of a very competitive lending environment that saw the creation of lot of aggressive loan products. Those loans are adjusting based on increasing interest rates and mortgage payments are increasing. I recently saw a statistic that 1 in every 366 homes in Colorado is in foreclosure.
We have recently expanded our operations to the Nevada and Arizona markets. We are mainly focusing our expansion on the foreclosure bailout model, but we are also selectively doing regular lease-options. This multi-market approach offers us and many of you lease-option investors a more diverse portfolio of properties and markets to choose from.
Congratulations to several of you who have begun investing in real estate. You are taking advantage of a hassle-free way to get into single-family rental property investing and all of the benefits that come with it. Aside from collecting above market rents allowing for positive cash flow at 100% financing, we have helped you setup your own companies. You are now taking advantage of all of the many loopholes and tax benefits that come from real estate investing and owning your own company. We have even shown you how you can write off huge passive losses against your active income. It's all legal. The loopholes were purposely created by the government to encourage the private sector to provide housing for the citizens.
For those of you that are new to this newsletter, LeaseOptionProgram.com is a company that seeks out people who are having a hard time obtaining an affordable mortgage for a new purchase, to refinance, or to stop a foreclosure despite having a good income and a sizeable down payment. This can be due to poor credit, lack of enough funds for a down payment and closing costs, lack of income outside of self-employment sources, being behind on payments and for many other reasons. Customers apply for our program, and we qualify them for a maximum home value. Our customers choose the neighborhood and the home, and we buy it. They live in the home under a lease and have an option to buy the property at a later date. This gives them time to improve their situation so they can obtain an affordable mortgage allowing them to successfully exercise their option and buy the home. This is a far superior way to invest in rental properties as vacancies are significantly reduced, cash flow is vastly improved for the landlord, and the tenant is 100% responsible for all maintenance. This eliminates the famous midnight call to the landlord regarding a backed up toilet.
In the News
 LeaseOptionProgram.com was recently back in the news. Matt wrote an e-mail to the real estate editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Harold Bubil, in response to his weekly column. In the column, Harold described an e-mail exchange he had with a couple from Indianapolis looking to relocate to the Sarasota area. They were torn between renting for awhile or immediately buying. Harold advised them to try and find a seller who would do a lease-option and if they didn't like the house they could walk away from it leaving their option unexercised. Matt saw an opportunity to both promote LeaseOptionProgram.com and to point out that suggesting that people walk away from a lease-option commitment was bad advice. Here is a link to Harold's column the following week in which he published almost all of Matt's e-mail.
http://www.leaseoptionprogram.com/Affordability_is_falling_HT_Feb_25_2006.pdf
I am excited to announce that we are now offering turnkey lease-option investments to the members of this network. We are offering you the opportunity to buy rental properties in some of the best real estate markets in the country. But these are very special rental properties. They are far superior to most other types of real estate investments. Here's why:
- You can get into these investments with zero money down and in many cases, you will actually pocket (not pay!) thousands of dollars at the closing. Our best deal to date netted us over $90,000 at closing.
- You already have a tenant who moves in the very first day and begins paying you rent even though your first mortgage payment can be two months away.
- You cash flow nearly even each month even though you financed 100% of the purchase cost. You can further improve your cash flow and return by putting money down if you want.
- We manage your property
eliminating your need to get involved with rent collection or maintenance issues. No calls at 3am about the toilet being backed up!
- We approve only those applicants who pass a rigorous background screening that includes a nationwide criminal record search, credit check, interviewing current and previous landlords, and verifying both employment and income.
- You have a profitable end-game for the investment already planned as the tenants 2-year option price is booked from the beginning and is based on 10% per year appreciation.
Here is an example deal that we recently offered to an investor in the network who is working hard at planning his own exit from the rat race:
We have added content specifically for investors (such as more example financial data) along with a sign up form at www.leaseoptionprogram.com/investor
. You can learn all about this completely hassle free way for you to buy rental properties in Florida. We find the lease-option tenants, we qualify them, we help them find the right house, you buy the house, we manage the property, and the tenant takes care of maintaining the property.
There is no better way to get into rental housing in the top markets in the country! In order to reserve your place in line for upcoming opportunities, it is imperative that you sign up with us on the website at www.leaseoptionprogram.com/investor as soon as possible. We will be presenting this investment opportunity at the upcoming webinar as well.
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McCall Professional Center
— By Jules Roman & Matt Whitnack
 During the last few years, there have been thousands of new homes built in northern Charlotte and Southern Sarasota Counties. Rotonda, a huge development to the south, has recently exploded with new single family and multifamily construction. Residential prices have doubled during this time, yet developers continue to build more homes and condos in anticipation of the continued influx of population. Fueled by retirees migrating from the north, evidence of this continued housing boom can be seen in the new residential construction sites everywhere you look.
In the Englewood, FL market, commercial development has not kept pace with the explosion in residential housing starts. Even with the intensive retail and professional developments along one of the main routes through Englewood, SR776, there is simply not enough retail and professional space available to the companies who offer goods and services to the exploding population. It is our intention to help fill this need by developing an attractive Professional Center. Our preliminary four-acre campus plan consists of seven building sites. The current plan is to pre-sell the building sites to investors and end users. The entire site will be developed with utilities and the condominium documents will be put in place. Building packages with complete design will be made available to the individuals purchasing each of the sites. Long term property management will be available.
Owning income generating commercial property in Florida is a great way to build equity and generate passive income for many years to come. The opportunity for investors with interest in long term commercial leasing is to buy building sites at preconstruction prices and utilize turnkey construction packages at cost. The buildings can then be sold upon completion or leased for the long term. For more information on this opportunity, please contact Jules.
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Our Contact Information
Matt Whitnack
CEO, LeaseOptionProgram.com LLC
Developer, McCall Executive Center LLC
Real Estate Agent, Gulf Island Real Estate Inc.
941-375-2721
941-735-0885 C
435-203-4093 F
Matt@LeaseOptionProgram.com
Jules Roman
VP Business Development, LeaseOptionProgram.com LLC
Developer, McCall Executive Center LLC
Loan Officer, Prime Financial
941-735-4974 C
435-203-4093 F
Jules@LeaseOptionProgram.com
Please Note:
The information contained in this newsletter is based solely on the opinions of the authors. Real estate investments, like other investments, contain a high level of risk. Independent research should be conducted prior to making an investment. Actual investment results can and do vary.
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