Some people have the wrong idea that you need a lot of money before you can invest in real estate when the reality is that you should be leveraging your money and your credit to invest. When I purchased my first investment properties back in 2003, I was fresh out of grad school and didn’t have the money, but I had the basic principles of leverage right. A guy I was dating at the time partnered with me and put the $5,000 down payment need to purchase the property and we ended up splitting the proceeds when we got paid. In the same way, some of the largest real estate transactions are done through syndication and joint ventures. You don’t have to go at it alone, and friends and family are your earliest investors.

If I only had $5,000 to invest, here’s how I would leverage it…