One Thousand Ways to Make Money by Page Fox

$500, bought a tract of land in the outskirts of a suburban city for $1,500. The tract contained twenty acres, and he paid $500 down and gave a mortgage for the remainder. He had the property surveyed and divided into lots, eight to the acre. The tract was located on the bend of a river, and he called it “Riverside Park.” Lots were advertised for sale at $100 each. The first year he cleared off the mortgage by the sale of lots. He had remaining 145 lots. In five years he sold all these lots at an average price of $85. Total amount received for lots, $13,825. Price of land, $1,500. Taxes, $625. Surveying, grading, etc., $762. Advertising and other methods of booming the property, $1,272. Total cost and expenses, $3,534. Net profit, $10,291. By repeating this process on a larger scale in another city, this young man, who started at sixteen years of age with nothing, and by hard work and economy had save $500 at twenty-one, found himself at the age of forty with $100,000. The secrets of his success were four: Shrewdness in foreseeing where property would be likely to advance; energy in quickly changing the property from a farm into building lots; taste in making them attractive, and giving the place a pretty name; and, most important of all, the knowing how to create a market. We have known this process repeated by others with almost equally marked success. In all our large cities there are land companies developing suburban property and making money rapidly.