Tom Butler

Tom Butler first started his career roofing in Alaska working 16 hour days, 6 days a week. He knew if he ever wanted to become financially independent he would have to do something differently. For his 21st birthday his mother gave him a book on investing in real estate and it forever changed his life.

He began buying and renting out properties in California. In 1991 the bottom fell out of the California real estate market. Tom lost half of his net worth. He wanted to find a more secure way to invest in real estate.

A short time later, he purchased a home that was damaged by fire using a short sale strategy. Because of the fire damage, the bank wanted to dump the property quickly. He considered that if the bank would accept less than is owed for a home with fire damage, they would also accept a deal for less than is owed when the homeowner was in distress. At the time, he was not even aware of the term "Short Sale" or if had existed as a real estate investment strategy. He just knew it was a great way to get a great investment deal.

He became an expert in real estate investing through the school of "hard knocks." He bought hundreds and hundreds of homes both through traditional investing strategies as well as short sales. For the past 10 years he has specialized exclusively in short sales. He believes there is great opportunity in this real estate market to get deep discounts on properties through short sales.

Tom thinks that a down market is the best time to get started investing in real estate. He believes there is great opportunity to buy low, accumulate as many properties as you possibly can because eventually the real estate market will recover. Tom sites many real estate investors who have vastly multiplied their wealth each time a downturn has occurred. As the downturn in the early 70's and the Savings and Loan debacle proved, these crises created unprecedented opportunity.

He states that in a seller's market, you can use short sales to quickly flip properties and in a buyer's market you can complete a short sale and rent out the property or do a lease option.

Tom decided he wanted to pass on his knowledge of real estate investing and wrote the book Short Sale Magic. Tom has helped thousands of people learn about investing in real estate with short sales for many years.