My Top 10 Real Estate Investing Mindsets

Something I knew I wanted to create for you was thinking about the top 10 traits of successful investors and really what I have uncovered during our journey from a single house to financial independence. I thought I’d share them with you.

10 key mindsets of successful real estate investors which have come to me from doing a hundred interviews, and really looking at what others have done.

Be positive.

First and foremost is you need to think in abundance and be positive. You’ve gotta be happy. Real estate investing offers plenty of opportunities to get down on yourself. You can’t find deals, deals blow up, tenants do this, property managers do that, general contractors, etc. If you’re going to be negative and go that direction, it’s going to be a hard slog.

I couldn’t imagine doing it for the length of time it takes to be meaningful. So if you can think in abundance and be positive, and what I mean by abundance, I think the greatest example is I’ve been talking about Fresno as the area that we’ve been investing in pretty much since day one. I’m very clear. I think Fresno’s a great market. I think anybody who lives in Silicon Valley should look there. If you want my help, I’m game. If you’re in Southern California, heck, if you’re out of state and you want some of the California appreciation that we’re known for cause of the weather tax and all the other things that we have going for us, I think Fresno’s a great place to be.

What I mean by that is I’ve been sharing that openly creating competition. Right? I can’t tell you how many times just today in today’s market, I find out that there’s a could be a student of mine. It could be someone else looking at a house that I was thinking about bidding on. There’s always another deal out there. Back during the crash as I kept talking about and highlighting and writing about deals that we were doing, more and more people were bidding on the stuff that we were bidding on and it was all good. So, I have found life is far more enjoyable when you think abundance versus scarcity and, at the end of the day you’ve gotta be happy cause life is so much better when you’re happy and sharing and growing.

I think you’ve got to do everything you can to make sure everyone wins. Now that doesn’t mean you lose while everybody else wins. You’re included in that. The deal must make sense for you. And if it doesn’t, don’t do it because everybody else wins and you lose that. That should be obvious. But I wanted to put that out there.

Live below your means

I’ve been saying this a long time. I kind of feel like a broken record, but you’ve got to live below your means. You’ve got to sacrifice short term and short term could be up to a decade so that you can have longterm success. I sacrificed from my 30th birthday to my 45th birthday and now I’m able to buy what I called two decades of freedom. It’s a trade-off I would make every time. That’s, that’s the message I want you to take from this is even if you just got one or four rentals, you’ll have a better financial future because somebody else is paying for your assets.

Support your significant other.

Be supportive of your significant other and have one set of goals. I’ve told this story many times about our first rental. The ending is if we were not on the same page, we would not have gotten our second rental. Do it together, have one set of goals and make it a joint mission. You’re going to be on this road for 10 years. It’s far more enjoyable to have your significant other side by side with you.

Never get too high. Never get too low.

Never get too high or too low in real estate investing is you’re going to have good and bad days. There are lots of bad things that happen in real estate. You just need to move through them. You need to learn from them. You need to put in processes and procedures so they’re not repeated.

The most expensive mistake is the one that’s repeated. You’re going to have lots of successes. You’re going to rent for more, you’re going to a 1031 exchange, you’re gonna pay off your mortgage. There are lots of days that are great, but there are also days that are bad and if you’re too high or too low at any one time, I think that could be very stressful and hurt some other parts of your life, whether it’s your health or relationship. So try to stay in the middle and try to stay closer than the peaks and valleys. You’ll be able to get through the journey much faster and with a lot less stress.

Learn your market.

Never stop learning your market. It’s always telling you something. Sometimes I hear people that get in, they get excited, they buy my course, they do their homework, they buy their first investment and then they stop.

You need to keep learning cause you need to understand or at least keep watching your market to see what’s going on. You can see it turn, go up, go down, see what’s different. You never know when those, “once a decade deal” comes along and you could put it together somehow. Some way, get a partner, get a joint venture, a borrow gets you forward, sell one of your cars. But you’ve got to keep watching because the market’s always telling you something and it’s the people that listen that will learn. I saw this a lot during the crash where people would come in and buy something and then not do anything for six months and tried to come back and then the market’s different. The market’s going up all the time and if you’re not paying attention, you’re not going to see what’s happening. So don’t just look when you have money. Look all the time.

You make your money when you buy.

This is one I didn’t really fully appreciate until the last couple of years is you really do make your money when you buy. You find somebody who doesn’t want something for some reason, which is the sellers and those are where you can find the best opportunities. They don’t know we screen “buy me now” “any offer taken” but you know sometimes there’s reasons for it and the ability to find those and work with them, listen to the problems, help them, those are where you can create the best opportunities. Create win-win transactions and really add a good or great deal to your portfolio.

Don’t buy a deal that doesn’t fit your model.

We bought 99% of our portfolio off the MLS before we retired. There were two deals that we got not from the multiple listing service or realtor.com. We had no access. We had no one feeding deals, no marketing, nothing. One was an auction during the crash auction.com just went on and made a bid on the other was a bank who came to us on a property we were working on cause they had the one next door. Other than those two, everything we were bought was just out of the listings that any of you could see on Redfin, Zillow, or multiple listing service. So when I bring that up for is 99% of the listings don’t fit our model.

If you follow what I tell you and I teach, most of the deals are either bad or average, but it takes you learning your market to understand what averages so that you can find the 1% or 2% that are good or great. If you’re following what I teach in one rental at a time, or how to get started, one rental at a time, you’re going to see the good and great deals and those are the 1% or 2%. I believe that’s a skill. I believe finding good deals or great deals in your market is a skill and it’s a skill you can learn. More importantly, once you learn how to do it for your market, you can take it into any other market, which is pretty cool. So if you’re having difficulty, you think your market’s too expensive, you can’t find anything to buy my course.

99% of the stuff you look at as average or bad, and unless you know how to uncover the 1%, you’re stuck. Make offers that work for your model. When you take my course, you’re going to understand how to compare deals. If the average is 5%, say you’ll understand how to write an offer to make that a six or seven.

Now the sellers have every right to say no and no it perfectly acceptable answer, but many times you’ll get a counter and you can start working these things together.

You have to think in decades.

You’ve got to think in decades. You have time. You know, Gary V likes to talk about the 40 somethings which we’re in, I’m in with him. We have a whole nother life to live. So thinking decades, put 20%, 30%, 40% down, have your tenants pay it off over time, lock in 30-year money. That’s ridiculously cheap today. It’s half what I was paying when I started.

Don’t be in a rush.

Don’t be in a rush. Fast money is dangerous money. I’m thinking about decades. Have your tenants pay stuff off and you’re going to be in a good position.

So that’s my top 10. Which one resonated with you? Which ones have I forgotten? Are there other traits of successful investors?

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