​The Top 5 (6) Steps In Preparing to Become a Real Estate Investor

Real Estate Investing can be a profitable, enjoyable and rewarding hobby, profession or career. Its important to mentally and physically prepare yourself. Follow these 5 (6) steps to prepare yourself for a prosperous future.

Step 1: Self Analysis and Awareness

Its important to determine who you are and where you want to be. Mentally determine and figure out what you can contribute to your business.  Is it time, money, access to resources? You have to think about all that stuff because if you don’t have money (or access to money) to start with, it’s going to be hard to flip properties and buy rentals. Wholesaling might be better for you. Or maybe you have a lot of money, but not a lot of time; in that case you might want to passively involved with rentals or team up with a partner that will handle daily operations.

Step 2: Education

Real Estate Investing resources and educational content is every where and usually can be accessed for free. Investing in real estate is for big boys/girls so you really need to understand what you’re getting into. There’s money, homes and reputations on the line so all investors needs to be responsible and understand what they are doing.

Step 3: Attend Meetup Groups & REIAs

These are real estate investing focused networking events. There are a lot of them in every town. We actually host a Meetup group Meetup.com/Real-Estate-Investing-Incubator since we know the value of education and networking with like kind and local investors. You need to be networking with like minded people in this type of atmosphere to get to know the people in your industry.

Step 4: Relationships

You can develop some relationships with other investors and service providers  at Real estate investment groups, Meetup groups, Auctions, through Realtors and just spending time where other real estate investors are.  You also need to be hooked up with reputable and local hard money lenders, banks, title company's, Attorneys and a real estate agents. Form relationships with people who will help you succeed and get to where you want to be in real estate.

Step 5: Start Making Offers

You can bid on properties on online auction sites, getting with your real estate agent to make offers, doing some marketing directly to sellers, or even going on Craigslist and trying to find “For Sale by Owner” properties. You must pick up the phone and talk to people—it can be through an agent or directly with a seller. Either way, you need to be talking to people on a regular basis so you can overcome things that will happen. In theory everything is going to work out, but in reality it will be a bumpy road, so you should just dive in and make offers. It doesn’t necessarily mean you need to buy that property.

Step 6: Get a Mentor

I believe that everyone should have some sort of mentor. If you are planning to dive deep into investing it only makes sense to hire someone that has already been successful and can help fast track your success. I have had mentors and coaches for all kinds of different areas of business and personal development. The reason behind that is I would rather spend a little money getting a mentor or coach who has already been there and I can follow his or her path to help me get to the next level instead of trying create my own path.