psychological barrier

i found this on an other forum:

the experience that it gave me was: the real barriere is a PSYCHOLOGICAL barriere. after you make ur first deal, you break the barriere. so dont think about millions, think about that first deal. when you made ur first, the rest will follow.
this barriere is really big, so big that it scares the sh*t out of 98% of people. so to everybody here that wants to get into it, i suggest to just do the first deal. even if you lose 10.000 you will break a barriere that allmost no people break and learn a lot.
making the millions is not hard, braking the barriere, and then discipline is hard. so give urself the chance to break it, and just do the first deal!
no book or whatever theoratic information can give you the power of breaking the barriere by doing the first deal. save money, do it.

anyone who agrees, wanna comment on that?

how did all you successful investors first broke this psychological barrier? i’d love to hear your stories!

That’s about the dumbest advice I’ve ever seen. If a person “just does it” and loses $10,000 on his first deal, there probably won’t be a second!!!

It takes a certain kind of person to be self-employed. Common traits are self-motivation; the ability to make quick decisions and stick with them; the ability to deal with uncertainty; the ability to invest money without a guarantee of the outcome; the ability to work hard; the abililty to multi-task; and self-confidence.

The “gurus” will tell you that everyone can do it. The “TRUTH” is that only a very small percentage of newbies will ever do even one deal. Of those that do a deal, most will never do 5 deals. Of those that do 5 deals, only a small percentage will ever make a living at REI. Look at this site with hundreds of posters. Of all these people, only a very few are making a living at REI. How many are millionaires from REI? Maybe a handful.

Mike

I think that doing your first deal is very important also. You should never be reckless at any time. What happens to most people is that they get paralyzed because of confusion. In sales you are taught that the confused mind always results in inaction. The problem most people have is they get so much knowledge about all the different ways to make money in real estate that they are paralyzed by confusion and fear of not being able to pick the right strategy. I recommend that you find a strategy. Only look at one. And scour your town looking for that 1 type of investment and do it. Do it again and again. Don’t do owner finance over here, flips over there, 10% down traditional over yonder. Just find the one deal that you understand the most or the one deal the works best in your town and do it. I my case my first 5 houses were all the same. They were 3-2-2 around 1500 sqft, they were valued at around $100k, they were for sale for less that $80k I put $5000 to $8000 down and bought them traditionally. I understood the process. Even if the acquisition prices were not the best, I made $300/month positive cash flow because I bought the mortgages down. I didn’t have to be able to find the best deals because I used so much money up front. But I understood it. The key is don’t try to understand the whole array of real estate strategies, just do the one you understand the best and do it.

The first REI book I read…is still my favorite:

Real Estate Riches by Dolf de Roos

I have both the hard copy and the audio version, (I really like the audio version).

In it, Dolf stresses to look at 100 properties before you make your first REI purchase.

There’s a great temptation to be hasty and not go through a due diligence process like this…but by analyzing at least 100 homes I think you’re much more likely to find that needle in a haystack.

I also think a minimum of a 6 to 9 month learning curve is important before any purchases.

-Mike

I have to agree with both propertymanager and bluemoon - the first deal is HUGE. The problem though is that as a newbie, you never know if you know enough to get through the unknowns (how’s that for a toungue-twister).

I spent about 4-5 months scouring web sites, reading books, listening to tapes, etc., before I decided what it was I wanted to do. I hooked up with a RE agent, and started submitting 3-5 offers/week through her. I understood what types of deals I was looking for and my exit strategy for each even though I had never even done one before. I knew what my financial picture was beforehand, and based my offers on that and other criteria I decided upon.

Basically, I was looking at homes that were relatively new and needed very little, if any, repairs. They were in bread-n-butter neighborhoods, on the MLS, and were priced at a discount. I went through about 20 offers (some private sales, some HUDs, some REOs, some FNMA’s, and so on) before one of my offers was accepted (a HUD f/c). No matter how much you think you know or don’t know, NOTHING - I repeat, NOTHING - is a better teacher than living the process. I learned 1,000x more from the point of actually submitting offers to closing to doing cosmetic rehabs to getting a tenant in my rental than any book can ever teach.

You will never know all there is to know even about a certain niche in REI as each property is different. Just understand the basics of a certain niche as Bluemoon said, understand what yor criteria is for that niche, including your finances, and then put the book down and live the process.

I agree with propertymanager, a very small percentage will do one deal. Most people won’t take the risk, not capable of taking the risk or just have no clue. I just closed on my first deal this Monday and I am off to the races. I’m going to rehab then sell.

There was no barrier for me, I did a lot of researching and I am going to make this happen.