What’s the 1st step when starting to invest in real estate ?

Question

I’m new to investing, i just need good advices to start me on my journey. Help please and thank you.

Account Closed · Answer

Read every book you can until you realize that most of them were written by some fairly lame authors. If fact, most books are probably written by ghost authors who write a book for some wannabe expert and the ghost writers get ALL OF THEIR INFORMATION from other lame books. But, many books have maybe one good piece of advice.

Math is super critical. There are many investors who don't understand and can't do basic math. Knowing how to do simple algebra, calculate the return on investment, create spread sheets, etc. is critical. If you can't do the math then you may have to make decisions based on wild guesses and other lame investors advice. I would not make an investment if I could not do 100% of the math by myself.

Go to every real estate club meeting you can attend. Again, there are a really lot of serious idiots including really lame brokers who don't have a clue about the differences between single family and multi-unit investing and these idiots are telling their clients that single family properties is where the big money is. I seriously feel like punching some real estate brokers for being either idiots or liars.

Never mane an investment decision unless you are 100% positive that it is the perfect deal. Never guess. Never make a decision based on advice given by a broker, investment advisor, attorney, your priest, friend, another investor or family members. If you need to rely on advice from any of those people you are not ready to invest one penny.

Research hundreds or thousands of properties and don't waste your time looking at a property until after you did the math. Otherwise, you waste a lot of time going on wild goose chases. While your investment decisions may change for the better after looking at a property there is a certain amount of wild guesses you can figure out by knowing the neighborhood and seeing a street view picture.

Never buy properties solely to purchase, rent and pay down the mortgage because you will never get rich collecting rents. The big money is when your property value appreciates, or when you can do some improvements e.g. adding a bedroom and bath and increase the value of the property, but this requires many skills that even pros have because they lose money all the time.

For a beginner, the  biggest profits are with multi-units even as small as a duplex, but as the number of your units increases your profits are exponential.

Well, I need a million pages to finish and have to go back to my regular job.

It is hard to lose money if you don't do anything. You can lose your entire life savings when making one bad decision. Money is hard to earn and super simple to lose. I say this because there are too many people who have real estate fever so bad and they are so blind they think they can't lose money when investing is real estate.

Tommy Adeoye · Answer

You have taken the first step by signing up on bigger pockets . I recommend you go ahead and complete your profile like you would if you were on a dating website, that way you are able to connect with other investors in your area.  To be able to do so, go to the NETWORK tab  -> search members section, type your area, and you will say a vast number of potential mentors, prospective investors, future friends and/or partners. This in my opinion is the first way.

You will have to educate yourself with the books in the bookstore section. Imagine, you were in a random city in lets say Brazil and wanted to meet a friend but you really can't due to language barrier. This is somewhat similar to RE . Lets assume you will, in the future which i would expect that you would, attend networking events, the superstars and superstars-to be will pay attention to you if you understood very well the language of Real Estate. More  so, Getting OPM (Other people's money) could solve your financial roadblocks when you get to that side of the bridge. These few below mentioned tips are what you'll see and hear very often :

- Listen to podcasts: You don't have to listen to the full podcast, a few short minutes videos on YT is sufficient enough. I assure you willl learn a lot from other people's experience

- Ask yourself the golden question "Why do I want to invest in Real Estate"?

- Have a plan : choose your niche (Storage Units, SFH, MFH , Commercial), focus on just one for now until you are comfortable to be able to switch to another, pick your strategy( Flip, Buy and hold,BRRRR, Build).

- Deals: Figure out a way to find deals either through the MLS, foreclosure and auctions, Bigger pocket, Drive for dollars etc

- Analyze those deals daily using the bigger pockets deal calculator.

- Follow the process of landing your first deal - Analyze -> Pursue -> succeed -> repeat..

- Once you find a deal with a number that works , Find Investors, connect with your local banks , partner with someone . ( I strongly recommend the book - Investing in Real Estate with low or no money down by BT)

- Be consistent

- Read Blogs, Read books, read posts

- Attend Network events

- Connect with one member a day with a purpose(Please: do not spam members , you may loose your messaging privilege).

I doubt you will fail if you ritually follow 70% of the recommendations. Best of luck to you.