All Forum Posts by: Marlon Thomas

Marlon Thomas , Scott Choppin gave you some sage advice up there. I’d only elaborate and add one thing: rinse, and repeat!

A sales license— the education and practice that goes along with it— will give You a solid approximation of the following skills and experience: a smattering of local jurisdictional law; it will teach you a bit about valuations, (and you’ll learn more about those and an asset’s place in the overall market and market analysis as you go); it will also teach you about fiduciary duty and negotiation, and you’ll get a ton of soft skills like networking, contact engagement, and marketing...All while you’re learning a thing or three about the physical assets. It’s a great start. But the part that rings truest in Scott’s reply is the part where he says that Development is extremely complex.

Once you have about 6 moths or a year in, you should jump into another one of those areas: take a Construction Management course to learn about project management, contracts, and the IBC/IRC. Or if Construction doesn’t thrill you, then find a REFA-associated finance education program and learn more about dealmaking and analysis, and how those vary from asset class to asset class. Or maybe you grab one of your new attorney friends that you’ve made (and made money for!) and ask them to accompany you to a local Bar-CLE course to get better-acquainted with transactional real estate law, due-diligence, leasing, or land use/Zoning. Maybe you decide you love Agency and brokerage, and aren’t quite ready to develop yet— you should still take a few courses, and you can consider a designation in luxury residential, buyer’s/tenant’s Agency, affordable housing, or commercial RE.

Once that’s done, rinse and repeat again!

The complexity of the General industry— and even more so for development, proper— demands that we are well-rounded professionals who understand as much as possible about our craft and our own deals. Everyone from bankers to surveyors to the Tenants themselves play a part in a successful property development project.

@Marlon Thomas

Sounds like a good plan. If your going to be an agent and be in sales actively, I would HIGHLY recommend getting some serious sales training, look up a guy named Grant Cardone, he has killer sales training courses. I have "Sell or Be Sold" on my desk right here as I type, another "10X Rule" in my bag on the chair. Your brokerage company may offer sales training, take advantage, but keep going, go see Grant Cardone.

My view is do all that you can to expose yourself to as many of the aspects of the real estate process as possible. Ask a TON of questions, ask title, ask escrow, ask the lender, as the appraiser, ask other agents (just make sure they are taking care of you, and not steering you wrong to lessen competition). Ask the broker you work for, ask the home inspector, ask everyone everywhere all the time.

On your investment career path, sounds good also, although I would say that flips can lead to new builds more directly. Nothing wrong with commercial flips, but you build expertise in specific product types and you want to build new offers on your base of expertise, rather than branch out to a different product domain, i.e. residential vs. commercial. They're both good, you just want to build competence in a specific area, before moving to another.

~ Scott

@Marlon Thomas

What did you end up doing to get into real estate development?

Maybe he got discouraged after the comment "blooming idiot" was said. I mean, what a good way to talk to someone who is trying to get into the real estate industry. SMH! 

WOW! Is that a way to help someone? I mean, you may have been around for quite sometime in the industry but that was very arrogant and mean-spirited of you to explain that. I am all about being honest and telling me the truth of what I would can expect in getting into something that I am interested by anyone who is seasoned and veteran, whether I want to hear it or not but just come straight out nasty like that, that is definitely not have an attitude of being a good leadership and teacher. My goodness! 

I guess he got tired of hearing our takes on his plan and no longer loves reading our insight and adivce.

How can I say this nicely? Hmm, I can’t, so here goes. You’re a blooming idiot. You reek of greenness, naivete, and ignorance. You speak in terms of “flipping” houses and wholesaling when you’ve probably never done either. And of selling them for a profit. Correction, and I suggest you learn this fast. You can only “Try to sell for a profit.” If you did enough things correctly, and your market timing was fortunate, and you had a little luck, you probably can sell for a profit. If so, thank your lucky stars but never take it for granted or get too cocky, because plenty of investors have lost money. Boatloads of money. Real estate is not always as challenging, interesting and enjoyable as you seem to think it is.  Try making mortgage payments when  you're paying out more than you're bringing in income.   Try looking for investors with money and only being told "no." Try using your creativity to come up with a solution to get yourself out of a bad financial jam, yet the only options are bad and worse.  That for damn sure will take the glint from your eye, the bounce from your step.   You really need a few failures and setbacks, not to mention enduring some grinding moments like scraping peeling paint or cleaning toilets before anyone is going to take you serious about developing real estate. Good grief! Give me a break. By the way, why the hell is your account closed already, one day after posting?