Day in the life of a real estate investor

[Mike Schelske]

Hi,

I am looking to leave my 9-5 and use real estate to eventually do that. I've read books, blogs, listened to podcasts. I get the basics on how to analyze a deal but as Lance Edwards says 'As entrepreneurs, our job is to go out and market to find the deals and market to find the dollars, and we match make. We marry deals and dollars together and that's how we create value and that's how we generate profit. We are match makers.'. What does that look like from say day one to first deal? Are folks on Zillow and Redfin constantly analyzing deals talking to agents and brokers, reading books and blogs? From deal one and on, how do I scale my knowledge and portfolio. Do I read more books/blogs, or build my network? Last, how do folks find deals without wasting a agent, broker, or lenders time?

Mike

[JD Martin]

Quote from @Mike Schelske:

Hi,

I am looking to leave my 9-5 and use real estate to eventually do that. I've read books, blogs, listened to podcasts. I get the basics on how to analyze a deal but as Lance Edwards says 'As entrepreneurs, our job is to go out and market to find the deals and market to find the dollars, and we match make. We marry deals and dollars together and that's how we create value and that's how we generate profit. We are match makers.'. What does that look like from say day one to first deal? Are folks on Zillow and Redfin constantly analyzing deals talking to agents and brokers, reading books and blogs? From deal one and on, how do I scale my knowledge and portfolio. Do I read more books/blogs, or build my network? Last, how do folks find deals without wasting a agent, broker, or lenders time?

Mike

 Well, being an "entrepreneur" generally means you're creating something, usually a business. Like pretty much all businesses, that means you either work in the business until it's profitable enough for you to make yourself unemployed, or you deploy enough capital to buy a business that's already functional. The functional word of "investing" assumes you have something to invest. Beyond that, you are likely just working in a RE related profession - broker, flipper, PM, etc. So the first part of any of it is deciding if you want to own an investment or have a job. It sounds to me like you really want to collect "passive" money, rather than work a job. That means you should save some cash, find property you can either rent out to others or add some value to it and resell it (still a type of job), buy it, then rinse and repeat. 

I don't have any average "day in the life" like Paul, who drags a comb across his head and finds his way downstairs to drink a cup. Sometimes it's all quiet on the western front and nothing much is happening at all, as close to "passive" as it comes. Other times there's a bunch of turnovers going on at the same time and I'm either managing workers or doing work myself to get things ready. Beyond that there's always the occasional repair issue like a dead AC unit or some roof damage. I don't spend much time looking for properties these days because in my narrow niche there's not much that makes sense for me. How much time you should spend trying to hunt down deals and such depends on how much capital you have to deploy and how big you want to get.

Don't overthink it. If you want to bail out of working a day job you either need a night job or enough money available to buy something that someone else will rent from you for more than the cost of owning the asset.