“Wish it was my idea,” said George Beardsley, Broker-President of Advanced, “but like any good idea it came from people with the need for the service,” he sdia.

“We have a presence on the Internet in buying Tamp Bay fast for people who want to sell a home or rental quickly. We even buy homes in foreclosure for cash so people can sell homes that are under water and walk away today.”

A few months ago Blackstone Group L.P., a New York alternative investment firm, announced that it would be buying a billion dollars worth of houses in the Tampa Bay area. Like Advanced, Blackstone said they would be using the homes they purchased as affordable housing.

“Lately we started getting a few calls from people up north who said can you do for me what you are doing for yourself, buying houses for us and then rent it out for us? Obviously Blackstone and other hedge funds are making this opportunity available to the rich.”

“Blackstone can offer the opportunity to the rich to get in on the low prices of Florida real estate and the opportunity for a double digit return on investments by renting the homes until prices rise,” Beardsley said.

“Blackstone is huge with big clients and we are ‘mom and pop’ real estate investment firm,” Beardsley said, “ so why can’t we offer the same type or service they offer, except on a smaller scale with more individual attention to individual people who realize how low our prices are?”
Advanced usually introduces new products and new concepts on a trial bases to see how well it works, or if it works at all, he said.

“So we are starting a pilot program offering the “Done for you” real estate investment program,” Beardsley said.

“In the beginning we will find, negotiate and purchase for client’s homes prices as low as $40,000 and provide property management by finding, screening and leasing to tenants,” he said.

“It may prove to be too low a number for us to manage, but we are going to start here and see how it goes,” he said. “We are ideally positioned for this, since we have been buying houses fast in Tampa Bay for twenty years in good markets and bad,” he said.

Advanced has been buying single family houses with the plan of making them rentals during much of the market collapse and recently announced they were expanding into the purchase of houses which are over financed, or as it is sometimes called “under water.”

This announcement indicates expanding efforts to include houses that are already in foreclosure or houses that appear to be headed for foreclosure.

“Obviously this is a risky part of the market,” Beardsley said. “Clearly there is a need to try to determine there is sufficient time before the foreclosure auction and a chance to come to some sort of an agreement with the lender.”

Beardsley said houses of any price and any location in Tampa Bay as low as $40,000 will be considered.

Blackstone reportedly was only looking for homes between $100,000 and $175,000.

Advanced Realty Team, Inc. is a creative real estate brokerage boutique founded in the mid nineties by George and Maryan Beardsley, former stock brokers who got into real estate by accident when they sold a home in Boca Raton in a neighborhood where it had been announced that a garbage burning incinerator was to be constructed. In the early years, Advanced was a brokerage company that mostly represented buyers who needed owner financing.

“We still serve the same market, but today we go out and buy the houses and then rent or rent to own,” Beardsley said.

“Now we may be expanding to representing other owners of the same type of housing we have been providing,” he said.