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Boston Herald

By SCOTT VAN VOORHIS

Newly divorced and trying to make ends meet, Maura Hennigan was in a financial jam.

Unable to pay the bills on her elegant Jamaica Plain home and keep up with the expensive demands of public life on her city councilor's pay check, Hennigan took a gamble.

She made her bet, not in a casino, but in something that can be every bit as risky - the real estate market.

Enticed by the clarion call of Carleton Sheets, the late night get-rich-quick real estate infomercial king, Hennigan got hold of some of the great man's tapes and began studying up.

"I was really struggling to pay my bills. Honest to God, I saw Carleton Sheets on an informercial," Hennigan recalled in an interview last week. "I had to do something. I had to do something to pay my bills."

That was 1998.

Seven years later, Hennigan, who's sat on the city council for 24 years and is now challenging Mayor Thomas M. Menino in this fall's mayoral election, has boosted her net worth signifcantly, at least on paper.

Menino has been chided as the million-dollar man for his campaign contribution warchest.

But Hennigan's worth, based on her real estate portfolio - including her own home, a one-time Jamaica Plain fixer upper with downtown skyline views that is now worth a cool $945,000 - may be more than twice that. The long-time city councilor is now tapping into that real estate wealth to the tune of $915,000 in an underdog bid to unseat Menino.

"I will spend what I need," she said.

Still, Hennigan gives the credit not to any latent real estate skills. Rather, she credits Sheets - and some seriously good timing.

"It was very scary. It was very scary for me with all the horror stories, but again, I had very good tenants," Hennigan said. "A lot of it was luck. Thank goodness nothing major went wrong."

Teaming up with a real estate agent friend of hers, Hennigan began cruising for deals.

"What do you think Carleton would say," Hennigan would ask her friend as they drove by a house that perked their interest.

Hennigan checked out at least twenty homes before landing a trim three-family in a solid Hyde Park neigborhood.

It was all in line with another piece of Sheets wisdom - "80 to 90 percent of the deals are not for you."

Put more simply, it means don't overpay, Hennigan explained.

"Carleton said, you make money when you buy it, not when you sell it," Hennigan said.

The owner wanted $145,000. Hennigan offered $135,000 and was off to the races.

Or to the bank, to be more exact, where she took out a $40,000 home equity line.

Hennigan used that for adownpayment, took a mortgage out, and then used the rents to make the monthly payments.

That deal broke the ice, and set her up for her second deal a couple of years later for a $180,000 four family home.

Using another Sheets tactic, Hennigan borrowed money against her Hyde Park three-family, which by then had risen in value.

"I was able to leverage that to buy the four-family," Hennigan said.

And she could have gone on buying properties, rolling one deal into another. But that was a leap she didn't take.

"The only reason I was doing it was to pay my bills and survive and to keep doing what I am doing," Hennigan said.

Along with learning the art of the deal, Hennigan has been given a hands on education in the trials and tribulations of landlord life.

She speaks of some tenants fondly, others not so much.

Such as the supposedly reformed drug dealer with a five year old son, who pledged to turn his life around. It was a case that tugged at her heartstrings.

But it ended in heartbreak when her tenant was arrested and Hennigan was forced to tell him to leave.

"I know the pitfalls of being a property owner and a lot of people have no idea how difficult it is," Hennigan said.

Despite her own success, Hennigan isn't rushing out to convert future Carleton Sheets devotees.

In fact, she is skeptical whether Sheets' methods would work in today's overheated Boston real estate market, where multimillion- dollar condo sales are greeted with yawns.

If you want a deal, forget the Hub. Try New Bedford, or Rhode Island, she suggests.

"You probably couldn't do it in Boston today," she said.

"I don't know how you would make the numbers work."

Caption: LEARNING TO DEAL: It watching an informercial featuring Carleton Sheets, whose Web site is pictured at right, that gave mayoral candidate Maura Hennigan the idea of using real estate as a path to getting her financial life in order. Now she's using the proceeds to finance her campaign. STAFF PHOTO BY TED FITZGERALD (above); COURTESY CARLETONSHEETS.COM (right)