Today 1 want to talk to you a bit about six things to think about before getting started with real estate investing. Before actually jumping into real estate investing.
A lot of people want to get involved in real estate and they think about it but they
don’t really do a lot of upfront thinking about various things.
If you do some of this kind of thinking and just try to determine what you want to do and where you want to go you’ll have a much better chance of success in real estate investing. So let’s get started.
1. What is your Why?
Why do you want to become a real estate investor? Is it that you want to make a little bit of money is it that you want to make a lot of money? is this a new career change? Are you doing it for retirement or do you just want to buy one home to add to your income?
So you want to be clear about what your objective is when you invest in real estate. Starting out with a good defined WHY at the start is the #1 thing
2. How much time do you have?
Is real estate investing something that you can dedicate a lot of time to or are you very busy? Do you have a busy personal life? Do you have a family? Do you have a full-time job? How much time are you willing to spend as a real estate investor or is this something you’re totally committed to? You’ve quit your job or you don’t have a job and you want to become a full-time real estate investor. So this will help you decide what type of real estate investment strategy you will go into because the more time you have the more options you have. The less time you have, then you’re limited to a few different options
3. What are you good at?
What kind of skills do you have? Are you a good handyman? Do you have good skills? Are you a tradesperson? Do you have good financial capabilities? Do you know how to look at a spreadsheet? Do you know how to determine if a deal or if an investment is good or not? Do you have to partner with someone … or do you have some skills, but you want to take more training to get more knowledge on a skill. Everything is required but before you start you have to decide what you’re good at and what to need to get better at.
4. How much capital do you have?
Do you have any money to invest or are you going to be starting with zero money
down? A lot of people hear about getting started in real estate investing with zero money down and certainly, that’s an option and there are a few strategies that you can get started that way if you don’t have any capital to invest. But if you do have the capital and you don’t have much time that’s an approach as well.
Let’s say you’ve got a lot of money in the stock market today and really you’re just looking at how can you can become a better investor with your money or how can you invest your money more effectively and how can you use real estate to do? That’s one strategy you can look at.
There are many ways to do that. You can joint venture with people. There are mortgages and various different things to invest in.
5. Education
How much time should you spend educating yourself?. We talked about skills earlier but this is now determining what gaps you have and what skills you do need. Maybe it might be as simple as just understanding what the different strategies are and making an assessment of which strategy fits best with you in your profile … based on your current skillset; based on the time; based on what it is you want to get out of real estate investing.
What is your WHY? Also, if you become a full-time real estate investor, or if you just buy one property, there may be some property management or project management. Those are things you have to keep in mind as well.
6. You want to develop a business plan
Maybe that business plan is a one-page plan. It doesn’t have to be a lot. In that business plan you have to define what it is you hope to get out of real estate investing why you’re getting started in real estate investing. What your marketing strategies are going to be. What your investment strategies are going to be. How you’re going to finance your properties. Basically … just a quick snapshot.
