{"id":60763,"date":"2014-08-16T05:30:09","date_gmt":"2014-08-16T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=60763"},"modified":"2021-03-16T10:22:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T16:22:32","slug":"2014-08-16-tips-beginner-real-estate-investors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/2014-08-16-tips-beginner-real-estate-investors","title":{"rendered":"12 Simple Tips For Beginner Real Estate Investors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>1. Don&#8217;t blindly listen to me or anyone else. What works for me isn&#8217;t always going to work for you. You are in a different market, with different skills, and have different resources. Do what works for you.<\/p>\n<p>2. If you don&#8217;t know what works for you, keep reading and listening to podcasts until you figure it out. We have 83 episodes of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/podcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BiggerPockets Podcast<\/a>, and they are all free. Listen to all of them and I guarantee\u00a0a plan will start to form in your mind.<\/p>\n<p>3. Remember: You don&#8217;t need to know everything about everything. You just need to know\u00a0enough\u00a0about the one niche and strategy you are going to get into. Don&#8217;t get overwhelmed with knowledge. Focus on what matters.<\/p>\n<p>4. Real estate investing is not a competitive sport. Ask for help from others. Build relationships. Learn from those with more experience than you.\u00a0As the famous quote says, &#8220;You are the average of the five people you associate with most.&#8221; \u00a0Go associate.<\/p>\n<p>5. Get your spouse on board or wait. \u00a0Your marriage is worth far more than your net worth.<\/p>\n<p>6. Write out your business plan. This\u00a0doesn&#8217;t need to be super formal, but it should be written down. Where do you want to get to? How are you going to get there? Without a road map, it&#8217;s hard to stay on the right path.<\/p>\n<p>7. If you are buying a rental property, budget\u00a0for property management, whether or not you plan on using it. If you can&#8217;t make money while still paying a manager, you aren&#8217;t buying an investment &#8211; you are buying a job. If you choose to manage, great! But don&#8217;t buy a job.<\/p>\n<p>8. Do your math like your wealth depends on it; because it does. To help with this, try out the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/analysis\" target=\"_blank\">BiggerPockets Property Analysis Calculators<\/a>. You&#8217;ll love them. Then do the math again. Be conservative in your estimates and\u00a0don&#8217;t fudge the numbers.<\/p>\n<p>9. Sweat equity is a good thing. Don&#8217;t be afraid to get you hands a little dirty if needed, but also understand that you don&#8217;t have to. Manual labor can be a good trade for cash, but it&#8217;s not the only way.<\/p>\n<p>10. You will have problems, stress, drama. Don&#8217;t be surprised by it, but receive\u00a0it carefully like you are catching a water balloon. Problems are\u00a0a puzzle that you need to solve, not a dead end. Remember this when times get tough and it will help keep the stress down.<\/p>\n<p>11. Treat your business like a business, not a hobby. Create systems, processes, and rules that govern how you do things. \u00a0Pretend that you will be handing your business off to someone else very soon &#8211; so you need to have a carefully defined process for doing things. This process will change &#8211; and that&#8217;s okay.<\/p>\n<p>12. Share your stories, mistakes, lessons, successes, and more with others. We are all on this journey together!\u00a0 The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/forums\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">BiggerPockets Forums<\/a> are a great place to do this!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/store\/how-to-invest-in-real-estate-ultimate\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-103039\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/How-to-Invest-Banner.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"190\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/How-to-Invest-Banner.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/How-to-Invest-Banner-300x81.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you have any tips to add? Anything you would change? Let me know in the comments below! (That rhymed&#8230; I&#8217;m a poet and I didn&#8217;t know it!)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1. Don&#8217;t blindly listen to me or anyone else. What works for me isn&#8217;t always going to work for you. You are in a different market, with different skills, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":710,"featured_media":97755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5524],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-real-estate-investing-for-beginners"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60763","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\/710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}