How much time do you consider you waste earlier in your RE investing career?

[Jordan Frisco]

Getting rid of time wastes is a must in my life if I want to be at all successful in my RE investing career. I have wasted so much time already in my life and I need to put every minute towards clearly defining my goals and working towards them. How much time do you generally estimate that you wasted earlier in your RE investing career? How did that change throughout your career?  I need to make the choices in line with the adventure and addiction of the right things in my life and investments to supplement the other time wasters in my life. I look forward to hearing how some of you have make critical decisions that greatly improved your time management and ability to avoid mistakes. I know there are some golden nuggets out there that would shape my future in ways I never thought possible. 

What did you regard as the biggest time wasters and how did you start to maximize your time?

[Stuart Udis]

That waste is where the most beneficial lessons are learned. It's a necessary part of evolving as a business owner and something all business owners should embrace. Real estate or otherwise. Specific to real estate, the real estate investor who takes their bumps and learns through mistakes and is still standing is better positioned for sustained success than the person who attempts to eliminate all waste and mistakes by applying other investors personal experience.  There's certainly value learning from other investors mistakes but your pursuit of eliminating all mistake and waste by applying lessons from others is not realistic or helpful to your long-term growth.

For me, between 2013-2016 I acquired 30 SFH's as part of a small partnership. The homes were purchased in the correct neighborhood and the most opportune time imaginable. However my partners and I did not truly understand the business we were in. We were in the appreciation business not the cash flow business. We exited most of the homes at an avg. sale price of $150K between 2016-2017. By 2019 we could have sold the homes for $250K. My knowledge of the industry has grown tremendously since that time. There were so many opportunities that were missed exiting that portfolio the way in which we exited.

Without living those earlier deals I wouldn't have met most of the lenders I now borrow from regularly or shaped what I value in terms of investment criteria. Since then I've fortunately had more Wins than Losses both as the owner and as LP in real estate ventures. However, knowing what I know today and applying that knowledge to the portfolio I co-owned in 2016 would have greatly changed the trajectory of the earlier portion of my real estate career. Here's the catch- the lessons and experiences I would lean on if I had the ability to go back in time were learned from the transactions that experienced the most adversity.