September 30, 2009
Real Estate Investing Vs. The Stock Market
Today's investment markets offer investors a wide variety of options. One of the most rewarding opportunities is real estate investing, which can produce a very good income stream. If you choose to become a real estate investor, you will enjoy several benefits not associated with other types of investment.
First of all, investing in real estate has the enormous benefit of financial leverage. Even if you borrow the money for your real estate investing from a bank you can often get into a deal with a 10% down payment which means your returns are instantly magnified due to the fact that you are earning on the bank's 90% contribution as well. As an example, let's assume you have $10,000 to invest and you get 10% return on your investment regardless of the vehicle. If you put it into the stock market you will buy $10,000 worth of shares and after 12 months your investment is worth $11,000. If you put that same money into real estate with a 90% loan you earn 10% on the full $100,000 investment and finish with $110,000.
Full article… Real Estate Investing Vs. The Stock Market
Popularity: 6% [?]
Filed under General by Scott Roemermann
August 15, 2008
Real Estate Speculation: Don't Fall Into This Trap
When we become overwhelmed by uncertainty there are often two extreme behaviors which ensue:
- at one end of the spectrum we have complete inaction
- at the other end, is rash action without really knowing what we are doing, which we often call "jumping in"; or in the investing world, speculation.
In my previous post about risk reduction techniques we looked at various ideas to help reduce the risks that might be preventing you from taking action and doing your first deal. Following on from that, I thought we should address the other extreme since we want to find a happy median that allows measured but confident action.
While taking a leap of faith in some ways is admirable and often gets the desired result of creating momentum it can also mean financial suicide. One of my favorite sayings is "you cannot steer a parked car" so I would probably prefer to see people taking action rather than doing nothing but let's take a look at the differences between smart investing and just plain speculating.
The following are things you should do to ensure you don't find yourself in the dangerous territory of real estate speculation when making an effort to get started.
Full article… Real Estate Speculation: Don't Fall Into This Trap
Popularity: 19% [?]
Filed under Getting Started, Strategy by Scott Roemermann
July 29, 2008
How to Reduce the Risk of Doing Your First Deal…
I've been polling my readers for a while now about how many deals you've done and not surprisingly the vast majority of you are yet to do your first real estate deal – which is no problem at all. We're going to fix that soon enough.
It is exactly these people I want to help most because I think the bulk of the information online is quite advanced and there are few resources aimed at helping you with that internal struggle with doubt, confusion, lack of confidence and of course risks.
To help you overcome these issues and start making offers, with confidence, I am trying to go back and put myself in the shoes of a beginner again by recalling the concerns and emotions that held me up when I was getting started.
Full article… How to Reduce the Risk of Doing Your First Deal…
Popularity: 22% [?]
Filed under Getting Started by Scott Roemermann
Rather than just give you my analysis spreadsheets, my objective with this article is to show you how to develop your own. It is critical that you learn how to do so if you are to succeed at real estate and I want to encourage you to begin "playing" with Excel as soon as possible. This will be far more beneficial to you than giving a cursory glance to someone else's work because it is easy enough to understand. Consider this a case of teaching you how to fish and feeding you for a lifetime rather than giving you a fish and feeding you for a day.
You see, chances are my spreadsheets would not even be suitable for you because I am likely using a different investment methodology. Even if we are both using a similar technique there could be small differences based on our respective financing or some other aspect that means it doesn't quite fit.
But more important than any of that is this:
I have found that the greatest benefit of developing your own analysis spreadsheet is that you become intimately familiar with the numbers. By the time you've developed it and used it a few times you understand the numbers inside out and upside down and have a thorough understanding of what numbers are most important and what effect certain adjustments will have.
Full article… Financial Analysis of the Deal: A Real Estate Investor's Most Important Skill?
Popularity: 15% [?]
Filed under General, Getting Started by Scott Roemermann
April 11, 2008
Real Estate Investing's Dirty Little Secret
The Whole Truth About Real Estate Investing
I know you probably came here looking for a bunch of secret tips and methods that the real estate experts use to make "the big money" in real estate. Well, while I can and will give you a bunch of good tips, the truth is that none of them are great secrets known only to the wealthy. I've revealed a bunch of things for you to look out for in the report "7 Traps of Real Estate Investing" but in my opinion, there is one secret that trumps all the rest and needs to be exposed.
The dirty little secret of the real estate investing world is that trainers around the country are selling their courses to people, quite comfortable in the knowledge that less than 5% of them will actually do anything with the information. In other words, 95% of people will never do a deal and will never even recover the cost of that course, let alone become a successful investor.
Full article… Real Estate Investing's Dirty Little Secret
Popularity: 17% [?]
Filed under General, Getting Started by Scott Roemermann
March 14, 2008
5 Step Plan for Getting Started in Real Estate Investing
If you haven't already read them you may want to go back and check out the following two posts which really set the stage for this one:
- Experience is the Best Teacher of Real Estate Investors
- Strategic Real Estate Investing: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle?
If you've read these previous posts, it should be fairly obvious to you that I believe the most important thing for would-be investors is to TAKE ACTION early in the process. I have spoken about the concept of looking at your first deals as "training deals" because the most important thing that will come from them is the learning rather than the profits.
However, getting those first few deals done is the hardest thing about real estate investing for most people. And the reason for that is the risks (real and perceived) outweigh your risk threshold – plain and simple.
So, what we need to do is first take steps to reduce the risks and then boost your risk threshold until it surpasses the remaining risks. Factors that influence your risk tolerance include:
- practical education / experience
- theoretical education
- confidence
- skills
- upbringing
- personality
- psychological make-up
- mood
- financial situation
Ironically, the biggest barrier preventing people from getting their training deals done is the lack of practical experience itself, since it has the greatest effect on both your risk (knowledge) and your tolerance for risk (confidence). But since you can't get that practical education before doing any deals we need to utilize the other factors that will get you comfortable enough to take action.
Full article… 5 Step Plan for Getting Started in Real Estate Investing
Popularity: 8% [?]
Filed under Getting Started, Strategy by Scott Roemermann
It's time to get real. Let's be honest for a moment and look at the results the average person is getting with the masses of real estate investing information that's available today. A frightfully low percentage of people that attend the typical real estate investing seminar or bootcamp go on to build a real estate business of any significance. Why? According to Brad Wozny, 92% of all investors fail in their first three months. Why?
Why are people having such problems with real estate investing:
- buying lots of educational products but not having the confidence to use them
- never getting that first deal done
- replacing a practical education with a theoretical one
- hopping from one hot idea to the next
- trying to operate without a business model
- complete lack of focus
- no thought given to what skills are required
- no thought given to what resources are required
That is NO WAY to start a business!! And that is another key issue here. We are talking about a business, not a hobby. And yet most people spend more time planning their annual vacation than they do planning their real estate business.
Full article… Strategic Real Estate Investing: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle?
Popularity: 7% [?]
Filed under Getting Started, Strategy by Scott Roemermann
February 5, 2008
Getting Started In Real Estate Investing
The most common questions I get from would-be investors time and time again are about how to get started in real estate investing, or some derivative of that question.
Then a reader named Telly recently asked about how I got started. Specifically, Telly asked:
"I am curious about your first time buying a home. Was it easy? Were you nervous? And how did you do it?"
Two things struck me about Telly's query:
1. First of all, it suddenly dawned on me that telling my story might be a more useful way to help people get started rather than giving them more theory about techniques they can use.
2. Secondly, I think the questions "Was it easy?" and "Were you nervous?" highlight that the thing stopping most of us from getting started are more emotional obstacles rather than knowledge obstacles. We tend to convince ourselves we need more and more information before we can get started. In some cases this is right but the reality is that someone who has made the decision and mental commitment to do their first deal will find the information they require as they go. It's a given.
Full article… Getting Started In Real Estate Investing
Popularity: 4% [?]
Filed under General, Getting Started by Scott Roemermann
