The book titled Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, written by Stephen Covey, was first published in1989. I found my old copy of the book the other day, and as I flipped through the pages I started wondering what the seven habits of highly effective real estate investors would be.
After some thought, I realized that a successful real estate investor is not a special breed; I personally believe that anyone could become one if they really wanted to. However, they would need to practice these seven habits:
Habit One: Know Your Goals
The majority of the real estate investors I know set out with a goal in mind. I know a man that started investing by selling his house to buy two lots, on which he built a townhouse complex that had 8 units. Since then, he has started his own company and is building and selling hundreds of homes in Toronto every year. So, in this case, it shows how some goals may be simple, but can lead to much bigger things. Or, if goals are large they should be broken down into numerous shorter term goals.
Habit Two: Make Your Money when you Buy
It’s not a good plan to pay above current market value for a property with the expectation that the rent you will be able to charge will increase, the neighborhood will become more desirable, and/or the value of the property will go up. The tried and true principle for success in real estate investing is to buy a decent property below market value in a neighborhood that has potential for future growth.
Habit Three: Hire Help
Unless you plan to handle everything involved with the ongoing maintenance of a property, you should plan to hire a property manager. You may also want to hire an accountant to do the bookkeeping and the taxes related to your real estate investments. Additionally, a real estate agent is also someone you will want to find to help you in your ongoing quest to find properties to purchase. It shouldn’t be hard to find one that will understand your goals and will work with you to achieve them.
Habit Four: Use Just the Right Amount of Leverage
Every single money-making real estate investor that I have met has made money in real estate, in a big part, due to the ability to use leverage. Even the richest people will eventually run out of cash if they keep buying property. Leverage allows you to use a small portion of your own money to buy a property. The less money you put in, the higher your potential return on investment. In really simple terms, if you put in $10,000 on a $100,000 property and earn $5,000 in a year, your return on investment is 50%. If you had paid cash for that $100,000 property your return would still only be 5% ($5,000). Too much leverage equates to too much risk though, so find a balance. If you buy a $100,000 property and only put in $2,000 of your own money and the market value of that property drops to $90,000 you now owe more on that property than it’s worth.
Habit Five: Find Good Partners
I love the success stories where someone with nothing but big dreams and a lot of initiative ties up one or more properties with contracts. They had little to no money, so while they had the properties under contract, they went out and found people who did. If you aren’t starting out with a big bucket of cash, it’s tough to make millions in real estate if you aren’t willing to partner with others. Your partner might be a family member, a friend, a colleague, a company or even someone you haven’t met yet. We are millionaires from our real estate investing thanks to a couple of great partners that contributed equity to our investments along the way. We would likely only half of what we own now without them.
Habit Six: Be Persistent
When starting out in real estate (or even when you’re established) you’re going to hear the word “no” a lot, so make sure you don’t stray from your goals. Some of the people you could hear “no” from are as follows:
– Potential partners that do not want to partner with you on a deal,
– Banks- banks can be very picky when it comes to lending money. This means you might have trouble with financing and other lending issues,
– Family – parents are the most likely place to start. You may often be turned down, but when they do say yes, interest rates will probably be pretty low,
– Insurance companies – so few companies want to deal with out of province landlords and it seems like we’ve been turned down by nearly every company in Ontario where some of our properties are located (we live in British Columbia),
– Property Management Companies – it’s possible that the property management company that you would like to hire doesn’t want to manage your property.
But even when we’ve been turned down by all of the above at some point or another, we don’t lose sight of our goals and keep pushing forward.
Habit Seven: Research – Always be learning
– The best investors are the ones that ask a lot of questions, keep their eyes open for new opportunities and do a lot of research. Many get right into the details of a city. They go to the municipal offices and pull the official plan. They get zoning details and applications. They talk to the city councilors about plans, they attend city council meetings and know everything that is happening in an area.
Not every good investor I know possesses every one of these habits. And I know there are habits that many good investors have that I haven’t covered. But as I thought about the most effective and successful investors that I have met or read about, I realized that almost all of them did possess each of the above habits. And, that anyone could really do what they did if they set out to establish these habits and practices in their real estate investing.
Learn How to Retire a wealthy real estate investor with Julie’s free Real Estate Investing Starter Tips Guide. Learn how to create financial freedom, positive cashflow and massive wealth with tips like: How to find quality investment properties, finding and keeping great tenants, and easy ways to make investment property recordkeeping simple and more profitable.
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