Real Estate Strategies

Learning the strategies of real estate investing are the third element of being a successful real estate investor. Once you get your life success and business building foundations down… it’s time to be a student of the real estate investing business and learn the strategies that will help you create the lifestyle you are looking for.

Real estate investing strategies range from:

Wholesaling Real Estate
Income Properties / Landlording
Lease Options
Short Sales
Foreclosures
Pre-Foreclosures
Probate Investing
Rehabbing and Flipping Homes
Commercial Real Estate

… and on and on. Really, each strategy helps you as an investor reach different goals and you should base the types of strategies you are going to use on the type of lifestyle and real estate investing business you want to create.

You DON’T Need To Know Every Real Estate Strategy To Get Going

One of the biggest misconceptions of new real estate investors is that you need to know every strategy before you get off the fence and take action.

WRONG!

This type of thinking is dead wrong and will lead to a lack of physical action as far as implementing strategies to begin bringing in real estate profits. Believe me, I studied every real estate strategy known to man for 2 years and probably knew more than some investors who had already done several deals (book knowledge anyway) and I NEVER did one deal during that 2 years because I was so tied up with all of the knowledge I had… and I didn’t know where to start.

Knowledge is great… but it is useless unless you put it to use.

Start Your Real Estate Investing Education With This Approach

As I’ve said time and time again, I studied up on real estate investing for 2 years before I ever bought a property. 2 YEARS! That’s just crazy when I look back on it.

What finally got me off my arse and into the game was a mental mind shift and the realization that the reason I didn’t take action… is because I really didn’t know what I wanted out of my life or why I was real estate investing in the first place. All along I just thought, “It would be cool to invest in real estate and make a bunch of money”. That’s what killed my action before I ever got started.

It wasn’t until I figured out what I really wanted out of life (if you haven’t done this yet, head over to the life success area where I’ll walk you through it step by step) that everything clicked and I bought my first property.

Here’s what you need to do right now before you start studying real estate investing strategies:

Determine the lifestyle you want and write your life plan (not just money, but time off, time with family, stress, etc.)
Determine how you envision your real estate investing business to be in the ideal world (buying 10 properties a month and fixing them up, wholesaling 5 properties a month, buying 2 properties a year, etc.)
Match the right real estate investing strategies to your answers in #1 and #2

This is where most new investors miss out when they first get started. They see the “glamorous” world of rehabbing and flipping real estate on TV and automatically think that’s what they want to do.

But, when it comes down to it… they realize that rehabbing and flipping real estate full time requires:

A solid team of contractors
A steady stream of qualified leads each and every week (2 houses a month might require 50-100 or more leads a month… this requires marketing)
Source of funds, whether it be yours, the banks, or a private investors
Up to date and detailed knowledge of the real estate market you are working in (every investor should know this anyhow)

… etc. Not that any of this is bad. But being a full-time rehabber and flipper is a time commitment and can be somewhat stressful. Also, in order to put food on the table you have to keep a steady flow of leads and deals coming through the pipeline. Once again, not a bad thing at all… most every business requires this.

However, some people go into it with an impression that they can put in minimum work, not market, and sit back and cash checks. Not the case.

What I Learned

For me, I thought I wanted to be a wholesaler… then a rehabber… then a lease option guy. I spun my wheels for 2 years not acting on any of them because deep down in my core I kinda knew none of those would provide me the lifestyle (remember… not just money) I wanted.

Deep down in my core I wanted a lifestyle that:

Let me go where I wanted… when I wanted
Let me not work at all for a month and still earn a passive income (if I wanted to…)
Didn’t involve me managing a team of employees, which would be required if I ran a rehabbing business full-time and wanted to truly sit back and not be in the day to day operations
Let me go after my other business passions… which I enjoy a bit more than real estate investing everyday
Allowed me to create passive income and accumulate wealth for retirement

Unless I created a full rehabbing business with employees, I wasn’t going to get where I wanted going that route. So, I looked at my options and saw that owning multi-family rental properties was perfect for what I wanted out of life… and within 2 months I had bought my first 4 unit apartment building (when I was 21).

So, I hope you take a quicker route to finding the type of real estate investing that truly fits what you want out of life deep down in your core.

If you want to run a rehabbing team and love being in the action and have the resources and skills to generate leads, close deals, rehab homes, and sell the properties… by all means… that’s exactly what you should do.

If you want nothing to do with getting your hands dirty on rehab projects and don’t want to have to manage a rehabbing team… but really love marketing, networking with other investors, and closing deals… hey wholesaling is a great avenue.

If you are perfectly fine with just buying a couple properties a year and holding them for the long-term, keeping up on the maintenance, managing the properties (or outsourcing the management… which I recommend)… hey… buy up rental properties.

Or…

Who’s to say you can’t use multiple real estate investing strategies and diversify your business by going after different types of properties and sellers… and approaching them with customized solutions? That’s a great business as well.

Bottom line is…

There are a ton of ways to make a great living in real estate investing. Just don’t get too spread thin by trying to become an expert on everything. Find out what you really want out of life, find the real estate investing strategies that will help you get there, and focus your energy on making those strategies work.

Think of a magnifying glass under the hot sun for a second…

What happens to an ant on the sidewalk when the plain old sun hits it? Well… nothing at all. The ant walks on its merry way.

But, what happens when you take out that magnifying glass and focus the sunlight on that ant? (sorry all of you ant lovers!). The sunlight becomes more powerful and it is capable of doing much much more than it is when its energy is spread out.

The same goes with you. When you focus on mastering one or two real estate investing strategies for a long period of time, your results will skyrocket versus trying to master 3, 4, or more strategies. Believe me… and please don’t waste 2 years of your life like I did.

Okay, now head over to the Real Estate Investing 101 Section and learn the basics about each real estate investing strategy. That’ll give you a good start to see which strategies fit your goals and your ideal life.

Then, to learn the in-depth “secrets” of each strategy, follow the links on this page below for the resource and article pages that are packed with original, pitch-free, and up to date real estate investing information that will help you take action today.