What’s up, guys? By the end of this video, you’ll know the five simple steps that you need to make in order to add your next investment or your first investment or your fifth investment to your portfolio. And if you follow these steps, hear me, you will become a highly successful real estate investor just like me, I guarantee it. So if you like this video, please do me a favor and click that thumbs up button below the video and subscribe to the channel. That way I know the content we’re working really hard to put together is reaching the right people. Now let’s get into the good stuff. Number one, decide to do it, then get educated. So we hear Tony Robbins talk a lot about the fact that the word decision is the same as the word incision, which essentially means to cut away any other possibility other than the thing that you’ve decided to pursue.
Make the Decision
Cut away all other possibilities. So a lot of times we think that the path is really complicated and difficult to get something done, particularly when talking about real estate investing. It can seem really daunting but in reality, it’s just our lack of action and the lack of movement that makes it a little more daunting because we haven’t decided to do anything yet. Once you decide the path gets much, much clearer, it’s easier to get tunnel vision, focus on the thing that you want to do because you cut away all possibilities except the thing that you absolutely committed to achieve. So as it relates to real estate, you have a lot of options. One of the reasons I love real estate investing actually, because there’s always something new to learn and there’s always a different thing going on in the real estate cycle.
So you’re constantly having to evolve and adapt to the market at large. So for someone that has A.D.D., such as myself, it’s a very interesting and fun asset class to be a part of. So if you want to buy skyscrapers, you can do that. If you want to buy tiny little houses, little green houses like in the board game Monopoly, you can do that if you want to buy a mobile home park. I have friends that are slaying it, buying mobile home parks. I have other friends that are slaying it in Airbnb, short term rental investing, and they’re buying vacation spots in all of these destination locations and destroying it. So there’s tons of different angles on how you can approach the game. What you’ve got to do is make a decision for yourself and pick something.
If you don’t have a real clear idea of what you want to do, you’re just going to keep wandering around and wandering around and wondering why nothing is changing. So you have to get some clarity. For me, that usually looks like getting away with two or three books my laptop, a pad, and a pen, maybe a little bourbon. But yeah, just getting away from all the noise and getting clarity and getting going with my education so that when I come back, I’m ready to totally commit and deploy into action mode.
Analyze Deals Daily (A.D.D.)
Step number two, become hear me, become, I don’t know why my voice went like that. Become a deal analysis expert. So I want to recommend something. I want you if you’re serious about this and you’ve made a decision you’re going to do this. I you analyze one deal a day starting today, every day until you get your first deal. People have different opinions, but I’m of the opinion that knowing how to analyze a deal is the bedrock, foundational skill that you have to have to be a successful real estate investor. Everything starts with your ability to identify what is a good deal versus what’s a bad deal. And it’s actually more important that you can identify what a bad deal is. Now, don’t get me wrong, in real estate, it’s very forgiving over time, rents go up, values go up, debt goes down, so over time. You can even overcome a bad decision.
And especially with house hacking, it doesn’t have to be a perfect deal because with house hacking is just as long as you’re offsetting a portion of your expenses and starting to build equity, that’s a huge win. However, if you’re trying to get into kind of bigger deals or you’re bringing in private money or partners, you’re bringing in investors into the deal, it’s extremely important to know your numbers. And especially if you’re working with limited capital and you can’t afford a mistake like for instance, this month I’m borrowing over $3 million to acquire real estate. What do you think my margin of error is for that $3 million is? I’m bringing in partners. Zero. I better be daggone. Sure, the numbers work on that deal because I don’t have any I don’t like I don’t get any do overs or words from dumb and no I don’t get an IOU.
There’s no sticky note that I’m going to stick in a shoe box and hand to my investors. So I’ve analyzed that deal probably 15 times and that might sound like a lot, but I assure you it’s actually really not that big of a deal compared to the people that we hang around with. Another example, I’ve probably flipped over 60 houses in my career. I’ve only ever lost money on one this isn’t to brag. This is to express to you the extent to which I go to make sure that I am picking out really, really good deals. So make sure that you analyze enough deals and have enough margin built into the deal that even if the numbers don’t go perfect, you can still come out, make money and make sure that anyone that you’re bringing into the deal makes money as well. So there’s a saying in real estate that you make your money going in. My favorite thing about real estate is the level of control that you have on the outcome. So if you’re buying like a stock or stock options or cryptocurrency, you don’t have any idea how that’s going to turn out because you have zero influence on the outcome.
It’s a totally different story in real estate. For instance, let’s take a buy and hold single family property. You can look at the historical electricity bills for that property. You can look at what the water costs for that property. You can predict what your mortgage payments are going to be. You get a quote from a lender to know how much your mortgage is going to cost.
You can then look at the property and see what cheap updates you could do that would increase your rent like painting or flooring, or maybe replacing the kitchen cabinets or countertops. These are all things that you can do to create and control the parameters on the investment. You have none of those levers that you can pull on stocks or even on things like gold or silver or any kind of commodity. Real estate is the most controllable asset class for the normal person that exists that I know of is why I’m all in on real estate. So now is it going to be perfect? Of course not. No one’s claiming there’s no such thing as a zero risk investment, but can you get good enough to predict it with reliability and on a consistent basis? Absolutely. Yes, you can. Just like anything repetition breeds mastery. And if you analyze enough deals really, really closely, you’ll be able to know what a great deal looks like versus what a bad deal looks like.
Get that Pre-Approval BABY!
All right, step number three, go get preapproved from a lender. Now, there’s a lot of ways to buy real estate, especially if you want to get creative. I’ve gotten really creative over the years. I’ve done a lot of like no money down deals, really. I’ve built my whole portfolio, most of my portfolio using primarily other people’s money. Well, that’s actually the road less traveled. It’s very stressful. You have to have a lot of contacts and it’s just a different approach. Frankly, what I suggest is that if you are getting started, just go get pre-qualified and develop a relationship with a local lender.
It is by far the easiest and most stress free way to go now for an investment loan is probably going to be 20, 25% down. So if you don’t have that kind of money, then you’re going to need to get a little more creative. Which, by the way, you should check out our other video on house hacking where you can get into an investment with as little as maybe three and a half percent down or in some cases 0% down. But either way. Step three is to go to a bank or a lender and go get pre-approved and figure out what your workable investment budget is going to be. And you might be surprised how close you are to being able to get a reasonable loan to go buy your first investment property or next investment property. To step number four, analyze your criteria and start making offers on a regular basis.
Rinse and Repeat
And step number five is rinse and repeat. Step number four, analyze deals, offer on deals, analyze deals, offer on deals until you finally land a deal under contract. This, my friends, is a 100% guaranteed process to ensure that you get a deal under contract and close on your first investment. You just got to stick with it and that’s it. It’s that simple. It’s not easy. But it is simple. You don’t have to over complicated. Just figure out where you’re at in the process and get to work on it just like anything else. So like right now, stop what you’re doing. Make this the last YouTube video that you watch today. Go out, work on your business, grab a group of properties and start analyzing deals and dialing in your investment criteria.
If you get started today, you’ll thank yourself five years from now. So that’s it. If you like this video, please give us a thumbs up, maybe a liking to subscribe. I’m Jonathan Beasley with That Fit Team. We are professionals in real estate and passionate about people I hope to see you on your investment journey very soon.