adpapa Editor
26 May 2020
I had a conversation the other evening with someone who was keen on buying her first real estate investment property. Over almost an hour, I shared with her what I have written below. I hope you find this article as useful as this young lady did.
I’m going to share with you five proven and essential steps that really help new investors in getting into the real estate market. These steps are easy for you to follow and if you do them all, then you will have a better chance to becoming successful in real estate.
Just like running and growing your own small business. You need to learn a heap about business, and then you need to be constantly developing your business strategy so you have all the plans in place.
So let’s get into it, and get you working towards your first real estate investment property.
Educate yourself
Ok, so education is key here, it starts with this article, podcasts, online articles, blogs, magazines and the works. You may know exactly what you want to do, however many people dive in with no education or self research, and it all becomes really complicated and difficult to achieve.
So go out and get yourself a basic education on real estate investing. I don’t mean paid courses, but just consume everything you can about real estate investing. Look at all the options, research land and strata properties, apartments, houses and everything in between.
Analyse deals constantly
You need to constantly practice by analysing real estate deals all the time, make it a habit until you are an expert at it. I believe knowing how to analyse a deal is the number one skill a real estate investor needs to have to be successful. The best part of real estate is, with the right amount of information, you can be confident that you have fairly accurate predictions on what the future holds for a particular property.
Once you know how to analyse these real estate deals, you will be far more confident when you go to get your first real estate investment property. You will be able to forecast next year, five years, ten years, etc. Obviously it will not be perfect of course, however you will have a pretty good estimate of what your future looks like for that particular property.
Get pre-approved
Way before you feel like you are ready to dive in, you should go and get pre-approved from a lender, anyway. This takes time to do, and you don’t want to get to the last stage of research and then stumble out of a deal because you didn’t have your bank or lender ready.
There are obviously many ways to buy real estate, especially your first real estate investment property, so if you want to get creative with using other people‘s money, go ahead and look at all your financing options now.
Hunt for great deals
This may seem like the second tip, however this one I want you to start narrowing down to only the best deals as soon as you feel confident to. Sign up for alerts on sites such as Domain and RealEstate.com.au and other websites, and start shortlisting deals that you would be willing to buy.
In a way this is like physically working out at the gym every day. Soon you would understand every machine in the gym, and would build up some momentum and you’d start getting in shape in no time at all. It’s the same with growing wealth through investment properties.
Start making offers
Once you are super confident, and you start analysing seven deals every week, you should get the one that’s closest to what you are after, and make an offer. You know how much money it costs to make an offer?
Nothing, nada, zip. It’s free to make an offer, so why not? So many people I speak with, are actually afraid of making an offer, and they tell me they don’t seem to find any good deals. What that says to me is that actually, they just are not looking hard enough.
In Summary
If you do all of the above, and you continue to keep looking and analysing and making low ball offers on the perfect investment properties, then soon you’re going to get better at all of this, and be ready to buy that first real estate investment property.
To recap, the main steps are;
- Educate yourself
- Analyse deals constantly
- Get pre-approved
- Hunt for great deals
- Start making offers
I wish you all the best on buying your first real estate investment property!
About the Author
When not working on his next real estate deal, or on his motorcycle exploring, you can find Glen Forsyth reading about real estate or motorcycles. He also loves writing guest posts in between his motorcycle dreams.
