My friend, Mike, from Canada, asks the following question about investing in the U.S.:

Q: Apart from seller financing, are there other sources of financing available to foreign investors?

A: Yes. There are many sources of financing available to those who cannot go straight to a bank for their real estate financing. Let's look at a couple of these.

1. Using Business Credit - The easiest form of financing is to get financing in your business. My friend, Chris Wise, specializes in getting this type of financing. In fact, we just did a webinar about this a few days ago. For more information, go to http://www.creditlinemillionaire.com.

2. Investor Financing - There are many investors who are willing to lend based primarily on property value. You may not get the same level of leverage that a bank would give you or the same rates, but these lenders are plentiful.

3. Raising Capital - Similar to investor financing, there are many people who are looking for a good investment but have no idea where to find it. Anyone can raise capital for a real estate project. The project has to be a really good one and you need to have all of your ducks in a row, including good experience in real estate. If you don't have experience in real estate, I suggest you get experience by investing in your community where you can get bank financing. You also need to learn how to sell. I would recommend my friend, Blair Singer's course, for learning how to sell. You can reach Blair at http://www.salesdogs.com.

4. Partners - There are lots of people who will get the financing for properties if you are willing to do the work of finding the properties and getting them fixed up. The reality is that there are several types of capital. Two of these are financial capital, which you need, and time capital, which you may have.

5. Credit Partners - There are many people with good credit who don't know how to find, fix up and rent properties. They frequently are willing to allow you to use their credit if you do all of the work. This works especially well if you live outside of the country you are investing in and your credit partners live inside the country. Chris Wise can also help with this.

The key to all of this is experience and education. Rich Dad has an excellent course on creative financing. Just go to http://richdad.com.

Warmest regards,

Tom