Your Guide to Being a New Real Estate Investor
To be successful in real estate investing you’ve got to have a plan that helps you achieve your goals. There are a lot of different paths that you can take to get there, but so long as you’ve got a few basic items under your belt you’ll be well on your way to success. Here’s a short checklist of items that you need to keep in mind when building your real estate investment business.
Set Goals
What do you want to gain from your real estate investment business? While there is no wrong answer to this question, you do need to have some idea of what you want your focus to be. Do you want to work with rehabs, wholesale deals, or buy and hold rental properties? Will this become a full time job or just a part time thing? No matter which path you decide to go down you’ve got to do it with confidence, a good work ethic and a goal in mind. Knowing where you want to go with this endeavor will help you to choose the right markets, property types, financing and team that will help you to achieve your desired results.
Know Where Your Finances Stand
No matter how high your goals may be you won’t get anywhere if your financing won’t line up. Over the last decade, one of the biggest changes in real estate is that properties no longer need to be financed by your own private capital or lender programs. There are several more financing options available to you today. While lender programs still exist there are also many hard and private financing options out there to help you finance your endeavor. Before you make any moves in the business you should evaluate each option and figure out how they work for you.
Build a Great Team
A lot of the time your business is only as strong as the team that runs it. Meaning: you need to build a really strong team to help you succeed. Your first option should be to find a real estate agent that is a good fit for what you want to do; keep in mind this doesn’t always mean the one that is most successful agent in your area. You may want an agent that has more experience in the investing side of the business to help walk you through the process step by step. You should also find a real estate attorney, mortgage broker, contractor, handyman and an accountant as well; each of these people will be great additions to your team and can eventually help you make additional deals. Keep in mind that you will lean on your team far more than you think you will so you need to take care to build a team that is qualified and ready to work.
Understand the Market
Since you’ve set some goals and reviewed your financing options you’ve likely been leaning to a few different markets to invest in. Limit yourself to one or two markets until you become more comfortable in the business. Narrow your focus and you’ll have a better chance at landing the better quality deals with lower risk. No matter which market avenue you land on you should do as much research as you can to know everything you can about it and how it works. The more information you have on a specific area the more comfortable you will be and the easier your decisions will be when you find a property that interests you.
Put Your Plan into Motion
The last step of the checklist is to put your plans into motion. A great deal is not going to fall from the sky; you’ve got to get out there and generate leads and find the right deals. However you plan to generate leads you need to be consistent, repeating it every single week. If you never take the steps to build your business it will never get off the ground. Be ready to work for what you want. Try a few different strategies for generating leads until you find what works and then run with it.
While there are many different paths to success you can take in the real estate investment business, one thing is certain: you’ve got to be ready to work for what you want. Create goals and plans for your business, have a good work ethic, build a winning team and understand the market before you take off on your new journey. With this simple checklist you’ll be far more likely to have success in the real estate investment business.