Hello, my friends and welcome to another episode of Ask Marco where I answer your investing related questions.

Today's question is about How to Invest in US Real Estate from another country than that means any country. Before I get to that question, remember to subscribe. Just smash that subscribe button on your mobile device or your laptop computer and you will get notified of every episode that comes out each and every week. Today's question comes from AIJ and he says, hi, I'm a new listener to your podcast and read rich dad poor dad after you mentioned it multiple times in many of your episodes. Amazing read. Yes, it is a great book. I'm 27 years old and totally sold on the idea of real estate investing for wealth creation. How can I invest in US markets when I am based out of India? Would US-based banks be able to lend me money after I make a down payment for 20% and thirdly can investments made from outside the US also take advantage of 1031 tax-deferred exchanges? Thanks, love your podcast. AJ.





Thanks for the questions and these are great questions because we do get a number of people contacting us from other countries, particularly from Canada, the UK, Australia, sometimes in Europe and these are actually some of the common questions. So let me just break these three down. First and foremost, if you're a foreign investor, meaning that you are a non-citizen or non-resident to the U S in other words, you're out of the country, the process is exactly the same. You are still going to go through the same step by step process with our team or investment counselors or if even if you're doing this on your own, you're still going to go through the same process that you would as if you were here locally. So you're going to decide on what market makes the most sense for you and then narrow that down to the areas and neighborhoods that make the most sense for you based on your investment goals.

And then you're going to start looking at properties and you're going to just underwriter vet those and decide which one or which ones you're going to put under contract because you like them, you like the numbers, you like the location, everything checks the box. So the process is exactly the same. In fact, you're going to assemble the same team whether you're working with my team here and all the people that we work with, all the different service providers, from lenders to property managers, or if you're going to assemble your own team, you're going to build a team around you. And Robert Kiyosaki in his books talks about this all the time. That real estate is a team sport. So I'm pretty sure he mentioned that in rich dad, poor dad, but it's the same process, same team. So the same rules apply and the same laws to you.

All the laws that we have here within the country apply to you regardless of where you live. That's why a lot of people from foreign countries invest in the United States is because we have very strong rule of law. Things are very clearly defined and it makes real estate as an asset or an asset class, a very stable sound investment vehicle. The one thing that does change if you're a foreign investor is the financing. So let's kind of segue to that. If you do not have us credit and you are not a resident or citizen, then essentially you are going to be working with portfolio lenders or non QM lenders and non QM simply means non-qualified mortgage lenders. And these are lenders that do loans that are typically for borrowers that have unique income qualifying circumstances or they just don't have credit that they can show, but they have enough in terms of their profile in terms of cash reserves and the property that qualifies for financing.

So these lenders typically look at property that you're purchasing and they underwrite that and put more of the weight on the property or the asset that you are acquiring, which is their collateral. Then they do on you as an individual borrower,