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“I
made a tremendous amount of money on real estate. I'll take real estate rather
than go to Wall Street and get 2.8 percent. Forget about it.” Ivana
Trump
My background and
experience is in the real estate industry. I have trained and spoken to thousands of real estate professionals; you
would be surprised to learn how few real estate agents, lenders, title and
escrow people actually invest. As a real
estate professional, real estate investing is a great opportunity to create
huge amounts of wealth for yourself as well as for your clients.
The largest time
commitment to investing is doing the research necessary to understand real
estate and rental markets. If you are
already working day to day in the real estate business, what better opportunity
could you have? In addition, working in
real estate gives you the opportunity to learn about properties often before
they hit the market - so why not take advantage of that?
So, decide now to
invest in real estate, even if you don’t think you can afford it. You can at least start to plan and make it a
priority, so that when an opportunity does present itself you will be able to
act on it. I have missed out on many
deals over the years because I wasn’t prepared to act fast enough or wanted
more time to think about it. In the
meantime, you can become an income property expert by assisting your clients in
buying, selling or financing income property.
Selling homes
and originating loans is a great business, and rewarding both on a monetary and
a personal level; but once the transaction is complete, you need to go out and
find more business. Through real estate
investment, you can build your personal real estate portfolio and get into a
position where you can pick and choose your clients. You also will eliminate the “roller coaster”
many real estate professionals experience in their income levels. You’re so busy opening escrows and working
towards closing them, you forget to market yourself and bring in new
business. Then all your escrows start
closing, and you realize you need to get out there and bring in more
business. When you work like this, you
can often go weeks or months without a commission check. I see it everyday. Don’t do it to yourself.
I know a
26-year-old agent, only three years into the business, with whom I am very
impressed. She actually could retire now
if she wanted, because she decided her first year in the business to invest in
real estate. She started off with her
first home, a condo; then a year later, used some of the equity to buy a duplex
; at last count, she was buying seven investment
properties this year alone. Her
investment approach, and mine, will likely differ from yours. But the idea is to find a plan that works for
you, and do it!
Casey, a Tucson
REALTOR®, has been in the business over 20 years and buys property whenever she
can. She currently has 17 rental
properties, and takes several weeks or a month off at a time. Her goal is to pay off her current properties
and live off the income. Her approach is
to pay down the mortgage of one property at a time, then focus on the next
property. She has six years left in her
plan before she can retire and replace her real estate income with rental
income.
Nadra has built
several properties. She tears down older
single-family homes and builds two newer town homes in their place. She keeps them as rental properties and gets
much more rent for them, since each unit is larger and newer; plus, she has two
units instead of only one to rent out. She also buys multi-family units, land and has speculated on new
construction. Like Casey, her goal is to
pay off all her mortgages and have enough money from her rental income to live
comfortably once she decides to retire. She is well on her way to achieving her goal; her home is owned free and
clear, and she owes very little on most of her other investments.
Bill, a Long
Beach REALTOR®, has been flipping property and building on his own as well as
with various partners for years. After
over 20 years in the California market, he sold his property and moved to the
Pacific Northwest, where he’s currently building 200 homes in Oregon. He spends the rest of his time on his passion
- sailing.
Maria, an
escrow officer, owns a house with a small rental in the back. It’s not enough to support her family, but it
pays for lots of extras, like family vacations.
If you would
like a way to supplement your existing real estate income while also becoming
an investment property expert, focus on the investor market. Owners of single-family homes may buy and/or
sell every 5-7 years. Investors, on the
other hand, will often buy or sell more than one property each year.
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