Real estate investor and best selling author, Carleton Sheets, started BuyWithoutYourBank.com and CarletonSheets.com with the intention of providing training strategies and educational tools to the public. Mr. Sheets’ intends to let others benefit from his knowledge and experience so they can become wealthy through investing in real estate. His dedication to his students is one of the many reasons that Carleton Sheets has sold over three million copies of his No Down Payment product worldwide.
Carleton Sheets was born in Illinois. He moved to Ohio with his parents and younger brother at a very young age. Carleton had an entrepreneurial spirit at a very early age. He even experimented with no money down business ventures as a child. This, of course, foreshadowed what was later to come. As a child, Carleton Sheets completed his first no down payment transaction. His lawn mowing jobs and paper route required him to have a lawnmower and bike. He borrowed that money from from his family. He, of course, put no money into the transaction!
Before embarking on additional self employment ventures after college, Carleton Sheets decided to enter the corporate work force with a position he held for eight years at Armstrong Cork Company in California. During his tenure there he was transferred to North Carolina and Georgia. He met and married his wife and had two children. Later he chose to accept a Director of Marketing position at Lykes Pasco Packing Company which he held for two years before being terminated due to his lack of experience. This, of course, turned out to be one of the most fortunate circumstances of Carleton’s life, because it led him toward his accomplished career in real estate.
A friend urged Carleton to get into real estate. In a short period of time, he got his real estate license. As an agent, his first listing was an apartment building. He was unable to sell. Recognizing that the building had potential, and realizing that he didn’t have any money or any credit, he talked with two friends about purchasing the building. Each friend put up half of the down payment, and Carleton received an ownership interest for putting the deal together. It was a successful first venture. After 18 months, the partners sold the building and split for the profit. Carleton began putting together more partnerships, gradually building a reputation for making money in real estate. His specialty was “rehabbing” the properties. Within five years he owned almost 500 rental units—with and without partners.
In addition to his growing real estate career, Carleton began teaching local real estate courses for the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and was the sole author or author-in-partnership for at least three separate courses for NAR and the Real Estate Securities and Syndication Institute. He provided real estate education as an instructor, and after awhile eventually created his own home study programs. These programs were based on his experience in using creative financing techniques to invest in real estate.
In 1984, Carleton partnered with the Professional Education Institute (PEI) to distribute his message nationally. His No Down Payment television infomercial won numerous awards and is now accredited as being the longest running of its kind, spanning 25 years. He has appeared on other television talk and radio shows. He has personally lectured to over 500,000 people on the subject of creative real estate investing and real estate investing basics.
