I really want to start investing in real estate. My plan is to start off by fliping properties, due to the fact that I dont have money to start buying and holding properties. I want to use this tool to, generate cash, and also learn more about real estate as I go along. I also think Im not ready for landlording. Does this sound like a good plan to begin?
I have one other question. I drove around this morning looking for houses I can possibly flip. I found a few neglected, vacant, codemned homes. The problem is I dont know if the areas I found these homes in are good areas to invest in. How do you know if an area is good to invest in? Ive only been living here for about 1year and 10 months. Thank you all so much.
There are no bad areas to invest in in my opinion. Even war zone property is owned by someone. An area may not be mainstream and not wanted by the majority buy you can still make money finding a good deal in a bad area and selling to folks that want to live or invest there. Learning how to locate a deal is not hard. It takes looking at a few and getting a feel for the neighborhood and prices. Soon you will know that $100 per foot in one area will be cheap and in another area it will far too much.
Your plan to flip works for many newbies but do your homework. Nothing worse than getting a call from a newbie offering what they think is a deal to them that is just retail. Find deals and you will make money
Good luck and thank you,
Ted P. Stokely Jr
11505 Sw Oaks
Austin, Texas 78737
512-301-9171 home
512-587-6177 mobile
Hi BJ,
One way to tell if an area is a good location to invest in is to drive the neighborhood regularly to see if it is on the decline or on an up-swing. With summer coming, this should be easy. If the neighborhood is improving people will be out doing landscaping and painting etc. You can tell a lot about an area just by keeping an eye on it for a short time.
Anoither piece of advice I recently got, (and I don’t remember where from) is that if you wouldn’t live there yourself don’t invest in it.
One other thing I should mention is that so far I am not doing real well at this REI business. But I have learned to start paying closer attention to the advice of those that are doing well. I’ve made a few mistakes and am looking forward to my first REALLY BIG deal.
Dan
Your thoughts about learning to wholesale first to create cash before becoming a landlord are right on target.
If you’re going to be a wholesaler, you’re going to be dealing in ugly, neglected properties. You won’t want to live in any of them, but that’s what wholesaling is all about.