Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

There’s a dark secret that many investors know but that no one seems to talk about much. It’s a secret that every full-time investor eventually discovers for himself or pays the consequences. 

To illustrate, let’s take 2 imaginary real estate entrepreneurs, Investor A and Investor B. For the sake of simplicity, let’s imagine that both investors start from the same place. Same income, same credit, same skill level. Then, both attend a real estate conference one weekend in hopes of finding a way to quit their jobs in short order and become full-time real estate entrepreneurs. 

The story of Investor A 
Investor A latches on to a landlording course. He’s attracted to the idea of building wealth and loves the tax-advantaged nature of rental properties. On Monday, he sets out to build a rental empire that will allow him to become financially independent in short order. 

“A” is very successful in finding under-priced rentals in his hometown. His typical deal looks like this: 

ARV:     
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When you’re doing your first few deals—or doing your first few deals in a strategy that you haven’t explored before—you need help.

Maybe it’s help evaluating the deal. Maybe it’s help with negotiation or contracts. Maybe it’s help understanding how to ‘price’ the rent or sale price. Maybe it’s help understanding how the financing will work. But you’ll find yourself needing advice from people who’ve ‘been there, done that, got the T-shirt’ over and over again throughout your real estate career.

This is no small matter; it’s easy to lose a deal (or worse yet, do a bad one!) because there’s ONE hangup. ONE question that needs to be answered or ONE problem that needs to be overcome

1-4:  EVERY Friday morning at our online Haves and Wants meeting. It’s very common for members to attend with the “Want” of “I need someone to walk me through how to do this subject to deal I found” or “Can someone help me with evaluating a property I’m trying to buy?” and to get assistance either then and there, or later
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I was having a discussion this week with leaders of 12 real estate associations about why:

1. “Small investor sentiment” is way down right now. Surveys are showing that nearly half of small rental owners and rehabbers think that this is a bad time to acquire properties, find deals, invest etc.
   
   
2. But at the same time, REIAGC members are finding, buying, holding, and flipping deals that are PROFITABLE ones, even when viewed in the light of a possible downturn

When I’m hearing one thing but seeing another, I get curious. So I asked this mastermind of 30 or so very experienced, long-term investors what THEY thought the difference was. See if you agree.

Most small investors, like 99%+, have a single end-to-end strategy for ‘doing” real estate that looks like this:

1. Find deals “On MLS”
2. Finance them with conventional, DSCR, or Hard Money loans
3. (a) Rent them at market OR

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     I see it every day: budding entrepreneurs who have the EDUCATION to get going and (at least say they have) the MOTIVATION to get going but don't do anything today, tomorrow, or the next day that's likely to GET them going. It's a brain lock that we ALL get about certain things at a particular time, and it's about the fact that creating an entire real estate business from scratch is just too overwhelming to deal with.

     I ran across this article that I want you to read if I just described YOU...I think if you follow the advice here, you can get over that hump and on to the job of getting successful, one day at a time.

     It's called "How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List, or Why Writing it Down Doesn't Get it Done." http://zenhabits.net/how-to-actually-execute-your-to-do-list-or-why-writing-it-down-doesnt-actually-get-it-done/

     What do you think? How do you motivate yourself to do boring, difficult, overwhelming, unpleasant things?

One of the critical questions that beginning  and intermediate-level real estate entrepreneurs struggle with is, “How do I know when it’s the right time to hire help?”

I’m not talking about VA-type help here; your lowest-level administrative work (sorting lists, looking up names in the public record, etc.) and your high-skill but non-real estate work (designing logos, creating websites) can be quickly, easily, and above all CHEAPLY farmed out to VAs practically as soon as you understand what that “work” is.

I’m talking about “inside team”—people who work with you on a day-to-day basis, who understand your business more deeply than an outside team member like a VA, who may, by necessity, be ACTUAL rather than VIRTUAL employees.

THIS decision—bringing actual “staff aboard” is always challenging. It seems as if the point at which your business grows to where it’s difficult (or impossible) for you to keep up with the day-to-day activities does NOT usually coincide with the availability of a ton of extra income to pay an employee.

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Do you ever get confused by how one self-proclaimed expert can swear up and down that the best, or even ONLY, way to do a certain strategy is to [fill in opinion here], while another guru, who seems just as successful and passionate, says that the truth is just the opposite?

I did, too, back when I was just getting started and thought that there must be an exact right way to do any given thing in real estate.

But as it turns out, with wisdom and experience comes the realization that they’re all right and all wrong.

Because the TRUTH is, we often become convinced that certain things work and don’t work because we already believed that it would or wouldn’t work, and that becomes a limiting thought that actually predicts the outcome.

In other words, the guy who swears up and down that his experience is that you MUST tell sellers that you can do ‘X,’ or they won’t accept your offer, is telling the absolute truth. HIS EXPERIENCE is that sellers won’t accept an offer without ‘X’ because he believes that they won’t, and thus they never do.

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Ya'll do realize the irony of asking the question, “I know you’re in a hurry, but is there any quick advice you can give me about how to get started?”, right?

Because I get asked some version of that question at least 100 times a year, always by a newer investor hoping that there's some wisdom I can drop on them in the time it takes to get from the elevator to my car when I'm running from one event to another. Wisdom, preferably, that will make their entry into the business rapid, painless, and above all profitable.

The irony is that there IS no single answer to the question, "How do I get started?".

In order to properly get into that topic, I'd need to know about you: your goals, resources, preferences, exit strategies, needs, wants, and and and...and in no circumstance would that be "quick" advice.

If there were such a thing as "quick" advice, there would be no need for coaching programs like Express Success. Or, for that matter, for workshops, REIA groups, or any of the other support systems to which we are all so devoted.

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You and I both know that you aren’t gonna be reading and digesting a long business article at this time of year, so we’ll keep it light this week.

Don’t ask me why, but I have, over the years, accumulated an enormous amount of real estate poetry. The muse usually strikes me around Christmas time, which explains the “Night Before Christmas Meets Dr. Seuss” nature of a lot of this. Anyway, it amuses me—hopefully, it will give you a little smile, too.

Ode to Holyoke Lane by Vena Jones-Cox

‘Tis the night before Christmas

And I bring a tale

Of five hard-learned lessons

From one little sale.

It’s a story of heartache,

Of trouble, of loss,

Of hassle and torment

And headache and cost

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When I was 2 or 3 years old, my mother took me on trips to the library almost every week. While she checked out the latest mystery novels, I always went to the same shelf in the children’s section and pulled down the same worn, tea-colored book called “I Can’t, Said the Ant.” I must have made my mom check that book out 50 times. I had every word memorized, every illustration emblazoned on my brain, and every character befriended in my daydreams.

In case you missed out on this epic, the basic plot is that a teapot falls off the counter and breaks its spout, and if it isn’t put back up, it will die some horrible teapot death. All of the denizens of the kitchen—from the dinner bell to the pie to the pot—beg the (oddly, single) ant in the kitchen to get the teapot back to the counter and repair the broken spout.

Much rhyming ensues (“I can’t bear it, said the carrot” is one that still sticks with me), and ultimately, the ant, who in
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There’s an old piece of advice generally given to husbands regarding arguing with their wives that goes, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?”.

And the longer I’m in the wholesaling business, the more I realize that nearly the same advice applies to negotiating with sellers—only it’s, “Do you want to be right, or do you want to get the deal?”

Don’t get me wrong: I have more than my fair share of gotta-be-right-ness. In my younger days, I often found myself debating with sellers about the “facts”—how much their house would sell for fixed up, how much their neighbor’s house sold for last week, what it would really cost to re-do the roof and gutters, and on and on.

Back in those days, I think I had some of the same psychology I see in you folks when you say to me, “I’m afraid to talk to sellers because I’m afraid they’ll be able to tell that I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’ll lose all credibility.”

This assumption that sellers sell to you because you’re intelligent, experienced, or a bigger expert than they are about houses in their neighborhood is just dead wrong.

Sellers sell to you (at the crazy prices and terms that you offer) because

1. Your offer
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