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Your First Real Estate Investment

Unlike many real estate investment “gurus” I make my income from investing in real estate and financing real estate investments … not from selling seminars, CD’s and books. I’ve done over 60 seminars and have never received one dime from admission fees. I’ve given away literally thousands of CD’s. So why do I do it?

Simple: If you help enough people get what they want you’ll be greatly enriched which may also (and in my industry does) include becoming wealthy.

My industry, the real estate investment industry, is filled with many very wealthy people. It is also filled with a great number of very benevolent people; People who give a large portion of their profit to support charities. There is, however, a dark side. There is a disproportionate number of so called “investment gurus” who have little or no actual experience in the industry who publish books, conduct costly seminars and who literally prey on your eagerness to learn. Many of these people learned from seminars and books and have never had success in the industry.

Because of my depth in the industry and exposure to new investors I spend a great deal of time correcting inaccurate or outright dishonest information which has been gleaned from books, radio shows, seminars, etc. In fact in a direct example I recently participated in The Learning Annex’s Wealth Building Seminar with Donald Trump and Robert Kyosaki among others. Where I had been stationed on the program I was seated next to a woman who hosts a Sunday afternoon radio talk show on the largest Atlanta AM radio station. Her show deals primarily with real estate.

Listening to her answer questions about real estate investing, mortgages, transactions, etc., it didn’t take long to realize that although she had some information probably gathered from the internet, she really didn’t know what she was talking about. Yet here she is every Sunday answering questions from dozens of callers heard by thousands of listeners and her answers are often completely wrong!

So I asked her later in an email, in what I believed to be a nice manner, if she could tell me where she has experience or education in real estate, financing, business or investing. According to her online resume her experience is as a journalist (reporter and writer) and her education is in journalism.

Hmmmmm….

So let me tell you now, as a new investor, that you cannot and should not believe every word out of the mouth or off the pages of any source. Including, but certainly not limited to, the national news media. If you do you’ll eventually lose or get burned badly unless you are extremely lucky.

So am I going to tell you that I’m always right? No – I’m just going to tell you that I’m never wrong. Simply because if I do not know the answer I’m not going to make one up like my friend from the radio in Atlanta. I get paid when deals are done. I don’t charge for my educational projects (at least at this time I do not) but rather make income from financing deals and doing deals myself.

Now I have just Three Short Points for you as a new investor:

1) Don’t let fear stop you. If it’s fear alone that is holding you back then you’re probably missing on a great opportunity – EVEN IN A DOWN MARKET. Fear is the number one success killer and it has no boundaries. Whether you are a prince or a pauper or anywhere in between you can succumb to fear and lose a lifetime of opportunity.

2) Don’t even take your first step without a business plan. Why do you want to invest? (Write it down) What types of investments do you want to make? (Write it down) What are you going to do with your investments? (Write it down) Moving forward in any business without a plan is crazy. You’ll always be swept away by emotional impulses if you don’t have a plan and you don’t stick to that plan. You can make minor adjustments along the way but don’t deviate from that plan without a great amount of painful consideration.

3) Use leverage instead of cash. ALWAYS use other people’s money even if you think it’s too expensive because it’s never as expensive as using your own cash. I recently had a very wealthy first time investor come to me wanting to pay cash for properties. I showed him how it would take only a few deals to completely delete all of his savings efforts but could leverage what he has and amass a great number of income producing properties in a very short period of time.

There is one more point that I won’t include in these three main points but as a new investor I always require (if I’m providing the funding) that you be able to afford to make the payments on the property for a lengthy period of time even if the property is not leased. On additional properties this isn’t as crucial because you’ll have had some experience turning or holding properties. Regardless of what I say and how intelligent you are you’re going to fail to follow advice and direction in some areas on your first deal. I’ve made several millionaires and can only show you what I’ve shown them. You CAN do it … whether you WILL or not is up to YOU!

As one of the top performing brokers in Georgia I’ve seen it all. I do more deals in one month than most real estate investors do in 10 years so there aren’t many surprises left. If you want to invest in Georgia or Florida I can definitely help you. Feel free to email me from anywhere in the nation at any time for my opinion on something you’ve heard or something you want to attempt to do.

At your service!

Ken