{"id":173699,"date":"2024-06-12T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-12T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/?p=173699"},"modified":"2024-06-11T09:44:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T15:44:37","slug":"how-i-mastered-real-estate-deal-finding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/how-i-mastered-real-estate-deal-finding","title":{"rendered":"From a Panic Attack To My First Deal in Just 90 Days: How I Mastered Real Estate Deal Finding"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the story of my journey to finding real estate deals\u2014or rather, my journey to learning how crucial real estate deal finding is to solving the puzzle of becoming a successful real estate investor. The best way I know how to tell this is through a story, which starts with my first real estate deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Early-Morning Anxiety Attack<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many people might not know this, but I did my first real estate deal 90 days after experiencing a panic attack. I had this panic attack in the middle of the night, triggered by the realization that the poor financial decisions I made as a single man were now negatively impacting my new wife. We couldn’t buy a home together because my credit was in such bad shape. I couldn’t even be on the loan for our house, and we almost missed out on our first home purchase because of my credit issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I grappled with the fact that I couldn’t help purchase our first home, it dawned on me that many of our future dreams\u2014like having kids, buying our dream house, living in a great school district, and going on vacations\u2014were out of reach, given our financial situation. This realization led to a panic attack at 3 a.m. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Desperate for a solution, I began Googling ways to make extra money. This search led me to articles on BiggerPockets, where I saw that ordinary people were buying and owning real estate to build wealth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Plan of Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At that moment, I made a decision: I would figure out how to be a successful real estate investor no matter what. Despite having bad credit (sub-600 score) and only $1,000 in my savings account, I felt a sense of peace about this. I believed that if others on BiggerPockets could figure it out, so could I.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew I needed to surround myself with other real estate investors to propel myself down this path, so I started attending meetups, being very purposeful about which ones I went to, how often I attended, where I sat, and how I offered value to others so I could learn from them. I also began telling everyone that I was an investor. Even though I didn’t know how to be one yet, I understood that you get what you give in this world. By putting it out there that I was a real estate investor, I hoped the universe would return the favor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My First Deal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This approach led to my first deal. A friend called, saying he heard I was buying houses. He had to sell his house in 30 days to purchase a property from his church and offered to sell it to me at a significant discount\u2014$116,000 for a house worth between $165,000 and $175,000. I agreed, even though I had no idea how to proceed. I literally Googled “how to buy a house<\/a>” and learned about putting it under contract.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the contract in hand, I went to the nearest bank, which was a small community bank, and asked for help. The commercial loan officer in the lobby saw it was a good deal and offered to finance it if I could provide a 15% down payment<\/a>. I didn’t have the $15,000 needed, but I considered this good news. It meant I only needed $15,000 instead of $115,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Securing My Financing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I reached out to my network of real estate investors from the meetups for advice on finding the money. I learned about borrowing against a 401(k) without incurring penalties and taxes. My wife had a 401(k) and agreed to borrow against it so we could buy the property. We had the money within two weeks, bought the property, and rented it out. The cash flow<\/a> paid back the 401(k) loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This experience taught me that you can get good funding if you have a good deal. The bank later offered me a line of credit on the equity in the property<\/a> to use as down payments for future deals. This made me focus on finding good deals because I now had the financing in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started studying the art of real estate investing, learning from successful investors and wholesalers about generating leads and finding deals. While I didn’t want to wholesale, I adopted this strategy to generate leads for myself. I focused on direct mail as my primary strategy but learned various methods for finding off-market and on-market deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finding the right strategy involves balancing your resources\u2014time or money\u2014with your personality. For me, direct mail worked best, and I consistently implemented it to find good deals. Every strategy for finding deals works; you just need to find one that suits you and stick with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The foundation of a strong real estate business is finding good deals. A good deal with equity gives you options\u2014whether to sell, rent, flip, or wholesale. It\u2019s your safety net in the real estate industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you all for being part of my journey. See you at the closing table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Find and fund incredible deals\u2014even in a tough market.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Real Estate Deal Maker<\/em>, On the Market <\/em>podcast co-host Henry Washington shows you how to close on incredible deals, expand your network, and supercharge your approach to investing. Learn from his experience with 130+ rental properties and take your deal-making skills to the next level!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n Get Your Copy<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/main>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A moment of desperation sparked my journey to become a successful investor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":613735,"featured_media":173705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4252],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deal-analysis"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/613735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}