How many times

General Real Estate Investing
1

My friends and I have a campfire at my house every Friday. We talk about everything, including our goals later in life. I bring up that I’m going to do Real Estate, and I get quotes like these.

Quotes like this make me want to do Real Estate even more and more just to prove everybody wrong. I hear these quotes all the time from many people.

How many times you guys heard quotes like the following?

“Real Estate is like 1/2 luck, if your rental house is vanent your F***ed.”

“If houses arent selling at all, you will be stuck without income for maybe a 1/2 a year”

“Im going to go to college and get a good paying job, thats the key to being wealthy” :bs

“You never know what could happen, somebody might burn down your house and your left with NOTHING, yeah thats a good way to make money Josh”

“Your better off investing in something that people will always need, like a Graveyard, that’ll make alot more money than houses, because people need a place to be buried”

One of my favorites… (Which I know is not true.)

“It requires money to buy houses Josh, and you don’t have any money, so your going to be working and saving every penny you make for like years before you can buy anything”

This one is my absolute favorite

“Josh, you are simply not open minded enough to understand that, what if, WHAT IF, Real Estate fails? Your so hooked on Real Estate, if it doesnt work out, your f****ed”.

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I would change friends… which is going to happen anyway once you start making a ton of money…

Get it over with and enjoy…

Michael Quarles

PS in the mean time use them to practice your objection handlers…

3

Josh,

Your friends are probably concerned about you because REI has become the latest fad. It has been a fad for the last several years since the previous fad (day trading) fell apart. Much of what they say is absolutely correct and you should learn the answer to all their questions and refute them with facts. That will increase your preparedness and your ability to succeed.

Here is how I would answer their questions:

"Real Estate is like 1/2 luck, if your rental house is vanent your F***ed."

Luck has almost nothing to do with real estate. Being successful with real estate primarily comes down to ensuring that you have positive cash flow and that is determined by understanding the real world income and expenses. Vacancies are a normal part of the rental property business and are accounted for in the expense numbers used to calculate cash flow.

A landlord is at the greatest risk from vacancies when he only has a few rentals. As your portfolio grows, the chances of having a large percentage of vacancy expense declines.

"If houses arent selling at all, you will be stuck without income for maybe a 1/2 a year"

That is true. If you are flipping a house and can’t sell it, you are without income for that period of time. In fact, you’re losing money with holding costs during that period. However, the key to being successful with flipping (and every other aspect of REI) is to buy right. If you buy right (at a big discount), then you can always drop the price to sell the property.

"Im going to go to college and get a good paying job, thats the key to being wealthy"

Getting a college is a great way to ensure that you can find a higher paying job. However, having a college degree does not make a person wealthy. In fact, the median net worth of all households in the United States in 2003 was only $86,000, Even the top 10% of all wage earners only had a net worth of $833,000 - CERTAINLY NOT WEALTHY! Owning rental properties is one business that does allow you to increase your wealth.

"You never know what could happen, somebody might burn down your house and your left with NOTHING, yeah thats a good way to make money Josh"

Yes, somebody could easily burn down one of your houses, and that is exactly why you have insurance.

"It requires money to buy houses Josh, and you don't have any money, so your going to be working and saving every penny you make for like years before you can buy anything"

It does not always require money to buy houses, however it certainly does require money and/or credit to successfully run a business. Claims to the contrary are just guru nonsense.

"Josh, you are simply not open minded enough to understand that, what if, WHAT IF, Real Estate fails? Your so hooked on Real Estate, if it doesnt work out, your f****ed".

The vast majority of newbies fail in a relatively short period of time. To be successful, you’ve got to be willing to learn the business and then work HARD for several years as you build your business. You will have to sacrifice now so that you can enjoy a better life later. If real estate doesn’t work out, you’ll get a job and do something else.

Good Luck,

Mike

4

Mike that was a great and through reply. This is a business.

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Your friend(s) is/are a/an idiot. “What if someone burns your house down?” What kind of retard says this? Anyones house can burn down for any reason…and thats why you have insurance like previously stated.

I just ignore people that say things like this to me that try and put me down.

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“What happens if somebody burns your house down”?

I reply : “That would be why you get insurance dumba**”

They reply by simply shaking there head like I dont understand. Its almost comedy.

People ever say stupid comments like this to you guys?

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Yeah - but I learned decades ago, there are always people who are much better dissing something than creating. Even when I was a licensed RE agent - half of the sales staff huddled around the coffee pot in back and bemoaned how tough it was. I didn’t have time for it - I was one of the four high producers who were hustling for business while they drank their coffee and cried.

No matter what you do - you are going to run into naysayers. It does no good to give them facts or encouragement - most people would rather sit back in a comfort zone and watch others do. Watchers watch and criticise the Doers, even if they don’t understand what the Doer was doing. If they really understood the Doer, they would still sit back and criticise, because to admire the Doer is to realize they have something that a Watcher will never have. People don’t like to think that others are better than they are - which is why the public is so quick to turn on the famous.

I’m not a Watcher. I am a Doer. if you want to make it in REI you need to ignore the uninformed and bitter words of the Watchers and get out - listen to the words of the Doers - then Do.

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Get new friends, these friends are losers. :biggrin

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To their fairness, they are only sophomores and juniors in highschool. Perhaps when we get older and they see im doing well, they will wise up :slight_smile:

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Hoosier,

I suspect you are really verbalizing a vague concept of an investment strategy that will get you to your goal. Your friends may appreciate where your head is and even collaborate with you on ways to achieve your goal if you state your goal as

By the time I am thirty, I want to be financially independent so I don’t ever need a job to support my lifestyle

Real estate is just one vehicle to get there. Winning the lottery, inheriting a fortune from a rich relative, investing well in the stock market, starting your own internet business, inventing a better mousetrap, writing a best seller and selling the movie rights for a share of the gross, are just a few of the 100s – even 1000s – of other vehicles to get there, too.

Turn your campfire into a brainstorming session and your friends will begin thinking more like you. Some may even join you in a future venture. If anyone says “That is just a pipe dream”, then respond “Without pipe dreams, there wouldn’t be any rich plumbers. Now let’s figure out how I can be the next Donald Trump, or Sam Zell, or whichever real estate icon is your hero”.

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I go into plenty of detail on how you must check for cash flow through evaluating the house, and so on.

Some people just dont have the midset that you must “Live the way most people dont want to live now,so in the future I can live in the way others cant” or somethin like that, its a quote I heard along time ago on this board.

Instant gratification is a terrible thing that most kids growing up seem to have, luckily, even though my parents would give me anything I wanted, I dont need a whole lot.

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My point is that you are not relating to your friends on a level they can appreciate. You are focusing on how you might invest in real estate but not upon what that will accomplish for you. Becoming a real estate investor is not a goal, it is an avocation. How will you define success as a real estate investor? Answer that question and you may be closer to a goal statement.

From what you have posted, I am not sure you really have a well defined goal. You say you want to be a real estate investor, but you don’t say why. What will you accomplish with real estate investing?

That is why I say you need to define your life-goal in terms your friends will appreciate and may even embrace for themselves as well.

I suspect your real life-goal is to have enough passive income that you never have to work for a living. Since you have decided that real estate investing is the vehicle you will use to get to your goal, you just need a real estate investment plan to get there and a timeline to achieve it.

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AHHH!!! Stop picking on me!! LOL

The point of this thread was to see how many times yall’ ran into people who told you this before you started out.

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I’d say 1 good friend did nothing but try and pull me down and discourage me, the rest was kinda just silent and never said anything.

But they’re not your friends, only people you know that try to bring you down to their level of mediocrity.

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Unless you are speaking to people who are actually investing in real estate, the people you are talking to are not really interested.

That is true on just about any topic you can think of. It isn’t just real estate. How many hours do you want to discuss opening a candle making business with someone else if you aren’t interested in candles? Or how many hours do you want to discuss the breeding of watusi show cattle? Well, your friends who aren’t interested in real estate have a limit to how much time they want to discuss real estate.

If you have a passion, you will find that you need to split your friends into two groups: one group who shares your passion and wants to talk about it. The other group will be your good beer drinking buddies who want to talk about football, girls, and cars.

Always at any school, there is a club for young business persons. Have you checked into that group?

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Here’s my rule of thumb.

I don’t talk to idiot’s about topics they couldn’t possible understand.

You need to do the same thing.

Sometime when you don’t have anything going on, just go somewhere in a public place and sit an listen to the conversations people have.

Everytime I do this it boggles my mind. It makes me realize how few people in this country have any idea how money works.

YOU and YOUR friends ARE NOT investors. All you’ve done is ask some questions here.

My question for you is what are you doing RIGHT NOW to increase the probablilty of a great deal on a property coming your way? I know your young, but sitting here talking about cash flowing properties is like me sitting with Rick Mears and talking about winning the Indy 500. (I have never even driven a car on the track, he has won 5 Indy 500’s)

The best way for you to get started at your age is by bird dogging properties. So lets hear it. What have you been doing to actually become INVOLVED in Real Estate investing??

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Your right fdjake. The only thing Iv’e done has been sitting here on these boards. Iv’e called a few investors and sellers. I almost had 1 deal fall through which I would of had that referral fee. But he was already busy with another property and didnt want to take on another one even though it was a decent/good dea; but mostly no find yet. So I guess I havent been doing all I can do OR I would have a referall fee by now.

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Here’s where you have an advantage…

YOUR YOUNG, use it.

Because you have no experience, no training, no knowledge, you shouldn’t be constrained by traditional thinking when it comes to investing in Real Estate.

This is what you need to think about…

How can I get people to contact me who WANT to sell their homes at a reduced price???

That’s it… That’s all you should be thinking about. If you can come up with an innovative why to reach these people BEFORE they list their homes, YOU WILL MAKE MONEY. Investors will pay you for these leads and we can show you how to structure the deals so you make the most money on each one.

THINK man THINK.

Who sells their homes cheap? Where are these people? What do they have in common? How could I put myself in a postion to be around these folks?

Calling on listed homes and talking to investors is a joke. If you want this as bad as you say you do…

PROVE IT!!!

I’m not trying to give you a hard time here. I wish I had your desire when I was that age. I’m just trying to get you off the COMPUTER and on the STREETS. It’s called Parris Island MOTIVATION!!

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Think I should go to a store and get business cards that say

“I Buy Houses, Contact me at 555-5555” in order to accomplish that fdjake?

Then just keep passing them out to alot of people so I can get my name out there?

Then I could just screen the houses that look good by using Carleton Sheets methods.

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That method is posted here atleast once a day…I dont see why you wouldnt use it.