new to investing

[Andrew Davis]

i am currently looking to start a career in real estate investing and am looking for resources that are going to help me get started quickly and steer me in the right direction. i have little money or credit and am looking to get started as is said can be done by all of the infomercial and internet gurus, however it is hard to find a positive review for any of them. do any of them work the way they claim? am i just looking in the wrong direction for good info?

[Bill Gulley]

Hi, welcome to BP, I'm still new here but with experience. I'd really suggest you look into other sources for your education. I'd suggest you attend a real estate school for real estate agents. For two to three hundred dollars you could audit the course (or just take it for the state credit). You don't have to get a license, but you could. It will not lean toward investing, but a big problem many investors have, especially starting out is that they do not understand the rules, regulations and laws pertaining to real estate and the industry as a whole. These classes will go over marketing aspects from a legal point of view and you'll probably hear some marketing war stories. You'll learn about different tyeps of zoning, survey methods, financing,, appraisal methods and much more. While there are many people who have made money in some niche of investing, there are many deals that they missed out on because they didn't have a good understanding of real estate basics. For example, if you can't apply the concept of "highest and best use" in a property you'll lose deals. Years ago starting out, I saw an older stone farm house in town in a great location, but the house was rough. It had about six acres or so. I thought that I didn't really want to deal with it as a fix and flip since the asking price was kinda high for what it was. The next day i checked it out again and there were four or five contracts on it. The house was refurbished, but the land was subdivided and provided about 12 lots. Two lots paid for the land and improvements! The price then was about 85K and the homes built were in the 250K range. Could have just fliped lots without alot of work! You will not learn that in any guru book that I have heard of.
Another way is to simply get some real estate and business law text books off ebay, they are pretty easy reading and you'll find out the reasoning behind things that investors do. Investors who only get a guru education only do guru transactions. Use the gurus seminars and products to get ideas and marketing strategies, but don't get stuck in a narrow vision of the industry. Good luck, sorry this is so long! Bill