My Story: Starting Out, Buying Properties to Grow Plants

Bill's Life and his Lessons Learned and Opinions, Part III When I was twelve years old, I had bought and sold many shares of stock on the NYSE. I was a motor mouth even then. I always was eager to talk to anyone who liked to invest and discuss stock picks. One of my fathers friends John was such a person. John only had a 3rd grade education. His mother was a prostitute and his first job was collecting and selling leaches to whores in Trenton to be used to remove hickies on their...Well, you got the picture? John could hardly speak, he studderd so bad that it was a labor to talk to him. But John was no dummy. He had gone on to become a noted designer of transformers and had built up a large company. He lived on a large estate that overlooked a huge pond which to a twelve year old was an eye opener. What ever John would say or do had to be noteworthy. John would also talk of the lastest electronic gadgets, hottest stock picks, Trees, hunting stories, and about real estate. Just what I was interest in. One day John came to our house. He was so excited that he could hardly talk to us. He handed me a book and said," Re...re...re..re...re...read this. "It was a book on stock options. The book detailed about puts and calls and how powerful they are in investing. At the time there were few options offered. I read this book. I reread this book over and over. I was amazed at how powerful an option could be. I did not buy or sell any as I did not have the funds to risk on them but I said to myself , "This is something that I am going to do some day." Most options on stocks or commodities expire as worthless. Some estimates are that 80% expire as worthless. Not a very good track record for an investor. Now for every option buyer there is a seller. Someone is making money, not just the brokers. Option buyers aquire what can be called leverage. An occasional winner can make up for a bunch of losers. The option sellers don't necessarly lose unless they trade options naked, ( they don't own the underlining security) they just don't have potential gains that they would have had. Options clearly define an investors loss liabilities. When you buy an option it defines the price of the asset, the time you have to excerise the option, and the capital that you risk. If the value of theoption cotract goes down the most you lose is your inital investment. There are two basic options, a put and a call. A call allows the buyer of the option to buy the asset a established price for an established peroid of time. A put allows the buyer to force the right to force the seller to buy the asset at and establihed price for an established peroid of time. What I decided to do when I purchased real estate is to acquire real estate options for farms which had long term contracts. I sought contacts that went out 5-10 years. If I could put together a contract that would run long enough, the rising real estate market would make the contract price a bargain price in afew years. I would offer yearly option renewal payments to the sellers. I made those payments applicable to the purchase price so as time flies the property becomes cheaper. Now I know that your thinking that this can't work. I know it does for I have done many of these contracts. Most people who have sold me these contracts want just what this contract offers. They can remain on their property and have the option payment which suppliments their income. They just don't own any appreciation in the property which they would not have if they sold it. There are also great tax reasons for selling an option. When an option is written it is considered an opening transaction. Taxes are assesed on completed transactions. If a option is not closed revenue is generally not taxed. (see your investment advisor and make sure the contract is properly formed.) Once this contract is in place one could lease the fields from the owners. This could be known as a lease purchase contract. Now you have ground on which you can plant trees. In many instances I have aquired land this way for less than the cost of the taxes on a yearly cash flow basis. You can see Bill's web sit at http://www.seedlingsrus.com