If I Were Starting Over: What Would I Do Differently?

As a kid I spent a lot of time in my Grandfather's real estate office on Center Street in Provo, UT. Part of that may have been the old time Coke machine that offered chilled bottles of Fanta Red Cream Soda, and a t.v. that I could watch Dr. J do his thing. Grandpa had done really well investing in single family homes, apartments and even as a minority partner in the Salt Palace and Hotel Utah. He passed away when I was 12, so I didn't get his mentorship.

I started real estate investing in the days of audio tapes, there were no fabulous resources like Bigger Pockets back then. (Don't call me old, some of you started when records or 8 track tapes were in, lol). Someone called wanting to sell me a $3,500 coaching program from Carleton Sheets. The T.V. commercial seemed get rich quick, and I was turned off, but I thought I would at least find out more about it. As a broke college student, I surely wasn't going to pay their price. After several rounds of calls I had negotiated the entire program with tapes, books and video tapes down to $99.

It set me on a track of:

• calling FSBO's and going through questionnaires to see if they were motivated.
• Viewing a ton of foreclosure properties to see if there were any deals.
• Putting out bandit signs "We Buy Houses: Fast, Cash!" Business cards on community boards, and ads in the "Thrifty Nickel" and local newspapers.
• Interviewing agents who often had no idea about investment properties and could answer very few of my questions.
• Visiting banks to see what foreclosure inventory they had.
• Getting lenders, construction teams, insurance agents and closing attorneys.
• Getting my real estate license to have better access.

I drove for dollars close to where I lived which kept me in the greater Athens and Gainesville Georgia markets at the time. Admittedly this involved skipping some classes to check on properties I was buying and renovating. All of this was great hands on experience, and I bought one house using a loan from the title of my car, and assigned two deals from the bank. It wasn't a bad start for a college kid. The house that I bought for my personal residence was a house hack, but we didn't call it that back then. Knocking on the door the tenant told me that the seller had inherited the house from an aunt, that it was paid off, and then they give me a list of all of it's problems. We bought it for $72,000 they were asking $115,000 and we ended up making about $40,000-45,000 when we sold it a few years later.

Learn From My Mistakes:

• However, some of the deals we did were too far out, too far from town or in towns that didn't have good property management.
• We bought in some towns that didn't have big enough economies to have enough gainful employment to not lose population. 

I learned a lot through blood, sweat, tears and sheer determination to overcome the obstacles and push through anything, that builds character but slows down success.

If I Were Starting Today: Here Is What I Would Do Differently:

Some keys to success don't change, and you always have to stick to the fundamentals, However, if I were starting over today knowing what I know now, there are a lot of things I would do differently, here are some:

• I'd set up a spreadsheet that analyzed every foreclosure, expired listing and highly seasoned listing.
• I would look for motivated sellers, would do direct mail to the place where tax bills were mailed on vacant homes.
• I would have a relationship with probate attorneys and see if they would furnish me with sellers that I could help unload problem homes.
• I would farm the notice of default list and market that, as well as divorce advertisements.
• I would skim through CraigsList, place ads all over online that We Buy Houses. I would go through Make Me Move on Zillow and search FSBO's there. If I had some money, I would have someone else do most of this for me.
• I would have a CRM that did drip emails and every person with clear messaging that built credibility and a landing page that allowed for lead capture.

I Would Reprioritize the Order Of What I Learned:

More importantly my education would have started in a different place. Instead of first learning how to find deals, prepare rehab scopes, negotiate deals, fill out paperwork, close, renovate and tenant or flip properties, I would have started differently.

• I would first learn market cycles, I would learn demographics and trends related to population growth and appreciation.
• I would learn crime mapping and how to analyze markets and submarkets. I would know days on markets, absorption rates, market supply and demand. I would know school test scores, where the new homes were being built, where inmigration was going to, where new roads and shopping centers were going.
• I wouldn't just focus on price, but on cash flow, cash on cash return and value.
• I would find an experienced mentor that had done 30-40 deals or even 10-15 that were the kind of deals I wanted to do, and I would offer to work for free for a couple of months to trail them and watch how they do every deal.
• I would have read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," "Real Estate Advantages," and "Unlimited Real Estate Profit" sooner.
• I would have gotten together with other investors and done like a co-op where we all used the same contractors, keeping them busy and locking in prices, instead of waiting until I could afford to hire them full time like I do now.
• I would have realized the advantage of staging and professional photography in advertising sooner than I did.

I'm sure I left out several things, but this is a great community, I'd love to hear what you all did well, and what you would have done differently? The market has changed, and we always have to keep up, what are you doing to keep up?