Asset Exchange group offers many different opportunities to use your IRA or 401k for investment purposes. We will show you how to buy real estate, buy a business and buy foreign real estate. Asset Exchange group also offers 3 different strategies to help your retirement and your business such as the Tax Favorable 1031 Exchange and the Cost Segregation Study.

Self Directed IRA assets in real estate is hot and getting hotter...  Stay tuned to this blog for more information about self directed IRA strategies.  If you like this article below by Beth Orenstein, then I know you will like a previous post called "Get More Out of Your IRA"
An IRA asset
By Beth W. Orenstein
Special to The Morning Call

Congress created Real Estate Investment Trusts in 1960 to give more people the opportunity to invest in commercial real estate.

Today, there are about 183 publicly traded REITs in the United States with assets totaling $375 billion, according to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts.

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There are several types of REITs. Equity REITs own and operate income-producing properties.

Properties can range from residential and office buildings to shopping centers and industrial buildings.

Mortgage REITs lend money directly to real estate owners and their operators or indirectly through the acquisition of loans or mortgage-backed securities.

REITs also can be hybrids, owning and operating properties and making loans to owners and operators.

According to NAREIT, publicly traded REITs saw an average 12.91 percent annual return from 1971 to 2003. That compares with an 8 percent return on the Dow Jones Industrials; 9.37 percent on the Nasdaq Composite; and 11.45 percent for the S&P 500 over the same time period.

Institutional investors — organizations such as pension funds — routinely include REITs in their portfolios.

According to NAREIT, 8 percent of the nation's 401(k) plans offer participants the opportunity to invest in real estate stocks. Individuals with self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts also can invest in REITs.

Leona Robinson, a partner of Robinson & Robinson in Allentown, says REITs are often a good way to invest in real estate market without the hassles of being a landlord.

Deborah Harry, 57, owns a three-bedroom, 21/2-bath twin home in Womelsdorf, Berks County, that she rents to a family of three.

Nothing unusual about that. Lots of people own rental properties.

What is unusual is that Harry's investment property is part of her retirement portfolio. She bought the house in March for her Individual Retirement Account, which means the money she earns on the investment grows tax free.

The investment strategy is not well-known and the rules are complex. However, individuals can own real estate in an IRA just as they can individual stocks, mutual funds, certificates of deposit or other more traditional investments.

Indeed, direct investment of IRA assets in real estate is hot and getting hotter.

According to the Investment Company Institute, the percentage of retirement investments in real estate has more than doubled in recent years. In 2002, it says, 1 percent of the $2.45 trillion in IRA assets was in real estate. Today, a little more than 2 percent of the $3.01 trillion in IRA assets is in real estate investments.

Carl Fischer, manager of Entrust CAMA in Spring House, Montgomry County, attributes the growth to the Internet. Individuals have been able to invest their self-directed IRA money in real estate since the government established the accounts in 1974, he says. (Self-directed IRAs are those in which the investor can choose his or her investments.)

However, originally, only the very wealthy took advantage of the real estate investment option, Fischer says. Since the advent of the Internet in the early '90s, he says, more people have been learning about how to invest in real estate for retirement.

Over time, real estate also has proven to be a good investment, Fischer says. ''With real estate, people like the returns that they see, and want to use that money to fund their retirement.''

Also, Fischer says, more people are trying to diversify their investments. ''Baby boomers figure they have to protect themselves because the government isn't going to do it,'' he says.