BiggerPockets

What a Newbie Investor Should Do

Tuesday, February 09

A newbie investor approached me, "Trace, I want to succeed in real estate investing. What should I do?

Instead of telling him to go out and buy all the books he can find about real estate investing, I told him to network with as many investors as possible. I told him the money in real estate investing is made from relationships. Yes, you can make money from one time deals but the more you can think win-win and long term relationships, the more money you're going to make. 

This newbie investor has no money, bad credit and so buy-and-hold strategies jus won't work for him right now. I told him to focus on wholesaling and become good at finding good deals. Moreover, since he is broke he does not even have the money to buy some bandit signs or do some marketing. I told him to do the following:

1) check out Craigslist for properties being sold by other wholesalers. I told him to help these wholesalers sell their properties for them;

2) check out Meetup.com and join all the groups in 3 cities about real estate investing. Start networking with the members and try to find out who the "players" are in the market - who are the ones still buying houses or properties right now. If there's a match between what other wholesalers are selling and what these real buyers are looking for, then you can structure deals where you get paid a fee for doing so.

Does this advice make sense to you? These are the two things I would do if I am just starting out.