“Nothing Down” is a book written by Robert G. Allen in 1984. The theme of the book is how to get involved in real estate investment, specifically focusing on how to buy real estate with little or none of your own money. The book came out just as I was beginning to get involved in real estate investing in my early 20s. My early properties were in Ocean City NJ and Bala Cynwyd PA.
Eventually I switched to rural waterfront, residential, commercial, agriculture and aquaculture sites. In all of these property investments, I never did find a way to own with none of our own money. The best I ever did was to borrow the downpayment.
Now, after 40 years of real estate investing, I finally see a path for some folks to invest in real estate with nothing down. It turns out that our rural area is rich in real estate, blooming with private equity investment, but still poor in people and talent. After several years of working out the details, we now have a community investment plan that allows a few people to turn their labor, talents and sometimes their equipment, into real estate investment. It’s a novel untested plan. But our economy, it might well be the case that people are more important right now than capital.