This article can be used with Land and Freedom Economics Lesson 16, on the "Single Tax", and US History Lesson 13, on The Railroad Land Grants.

The inimitable Chris Mayer, editor of Fleet Street, found a way for individual investors to inherit more than $3 billion of prime, American real estate. Believe me, this is no Halloween joke.

Ford, Gap, and Home Depot all made billions last year... by first paying millions to this company. They'll pay again this year, along with a dozen other Fortune 500 companies...and now a loophole makes it possible for you to collect some of this money, too... for under $30 a share.

At a fraction of its real value, you can own some of the most attractive real estate in America. And once you stake out your share. Dozens of America's biggest companies...including Fortune 500 outfits like Ford, Gap, Office Depot, Home Depot, J.C. Penney, SANYO, Gillette, Kellogg's and Whirlpool, will line up to pay you good money just so they can use it.

Each of these companies and a few others you'll recognize -- including the United States Postal Service -- have all signed leases to pay on this property. Many of those leases are worth millions of dollars. And some don't expire until after 2013.

You'll own the right, with this investment, to collect your share of the rent. Even though you'll never have to visit these properties. You'll never have to manage them. You'll never even have to pay property taxes on them. You can just sit back and collect the rent.

Here's the best part: normally, only the very rich can afford to do this. Income-producing property is a huge expense before it actually produces reasonable returns. And even then, there's no guarantee your property will be profitable.

But thanks to a hole that's ripped wide open in the US tax code, I've found a way for you to get in on this for less than $30 -- on property with an enormous margin of profitability and an unusually low cost of startup -- that can multiply your money by as much as four or five times over the years ahead, while still adding rental income to your portfolio over the same period.

I'll show you how. But let's start from the beginning.

Cyrus Holliday's Accidental Empire

In 1854, Cyrus Holliday was a young lawyer -- 28 years old. But he also spent a few months working for the railroads. He loved it. And it's that fact that could make a few of us very, very rich. See, at the time, Cyrus was married to Mary, his high-school sweetheart. She showed him a map. Where she saw desert, he saw a new railroad. And he set out to make it happen.

Mary was four months pregnant at the time. So Cyrus gave her control of most of their funds and promised to send for her as soon as he could. Nearly two years passed. His letters to her are still on record. He wrote from Chicago... from a steamboat... from the banks of the Kansas River... and from anywhere he could, often asking Mary to cash in a bond and send cash. Meanwhile, Cyrus slept on the ground rolled in blankets. He slept under snowdrifts. He shared a windowless log cabin with 24 other men. He survived the winter on mush, molasses and bacon. But he also invested.

First, Cyrus bought land in Kansas. Then in Iowa. By the time Mary joined him, he had turned a ferry stop into the town of Topeka. He had been elected mayor. And he was hard at work on the charger for what became one of the richest railroads in American history, the Santa Fe.

By 1900, the Santa Fe stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and out to the California coast. Towns, hotels and lunch counters sprang up along its path. Cyrus died that year. And he died very rich. But that's not all.

See, to grow the Santa Fe, Holliday had to keep on investing in huge tracts of land. Lumberyards, truck lines, petroleum and pipeline operations and vast open swaths of real estate ripe for development. If it came near the tracks, he bought it. And by 1941, the Santa Fe Railway owned or controlled over 13,000 miles of track.

Of course the Age of Railroads is over, and the Santa Fe has all but disappeared. But the land is still there. The book value on all that land is just $2.5 billion. But the real value is closer to $3.54 billion -- which means there's an extra $1.04 billion just sitting there on the table.

That's a huge opportunity right there -- but it gets even better. Almost all of these parcels are located surrounding some of the most highly trafficked and desirable areas in America. High-traffic distribution centers like southern California around Los Angeles and Long Beach... northern California near San Francisco... all around and inside Chicago... Dallas and Fort Worth... in New Jersey, not far from Manhattan... Portland and Anaheim... Phoenix and Atlanta...

And all this land is still in the hands of one group of backers -- who are using this property to make money hand over fist. More importantly, a special tax loophole makes it possible right now for other investors to share in those huge profits... and at an enormous discount to what the original investors paid.

What kind of land?

The same kind that's built the fortunes of so many of America's richest families. Take a look. Should you decide to do this, these are the kinds of income-producing properties you'll own...

• One piece of property you'll own a piece of happens to be a key part of the busiest port in the United States. Think about this. This is where China and India do business. That means huge leasing fees to the property owners. The more international trade, the more the property owners make. And you'll own a piece of that.
• In fact, in this whole area -- Los Angeles and Long Beach combined -- cargo ships from all over the world will pick up and carry off 13 million cargo containers this year. That's a record. Ships line up for days to unload. When you join this company's property partnership, 34% of the property you'll own will be right here, in this high-traffic center of global trade.
• You'll also instantly own a piece of a 588-acre lot that includes a developed warehouse and distribution space less than a mile from the California interstate intersection where 40% of all the trucking traffic into and out of California passes. Another gold mine for lease income during the growing global trade boom.

Imagine collecting rent from the biggest Fortune 500 around. Whether the market turns up or down, they're obligated by contract to pay millions to keep using your portfolio of space. Year after year, Forbes magazine lists the 400 richest people in the world. Far and away, most of them have made their money doing just what I'm proposing to you.

Three Words That Make Men Rich

Let me ask you this: How hard do you think Bill Gates works? Does he work harder than you? Maybe he once did, in the beginning. But these days, he just gets paid more. Billions more, in fact. And Michael Dell -- who is now worth $13 billion at age 39 -- has actually retired. But even sitting around, guys like these make more money than other people. It's the inverse law of extreme wealth -- the more you've got, the less hard you have to work to make it multiply.

How do they do it? It helps to have a few billion to start with, sure. But you don't have to have a fortune to make this work. And the secret is not all that hard to figure out. In fact, if you're already on your way to getting rich, there's a good chance you've already discovered what it is. The secret is simply taking what money you do have, and investing it in what the banking industry and investing world call: "Assets that sweat."

Questions for Discussion

1. What is the writer's purpose in writing this article? What are some indications that it is not an unbiased piece of reporting?

2. Do you think this is a good investment opportunity? Explain your answer.

3. The article states that the "book value" of these properties is over a billion dollars less than their market value. Why would that be the case? Why does the writer emphasize that point?

4. Do you think that investments of this sort serve a useful purpose in the economy? Is so, what is it?

5. The article mentions a "tax loophole". Are you curious about that? Why do you think it doesn't offer any details about it?

6. What is the meaning of "assets that sweat"?