Learning how to become a real estate investor is not necessarily text-book information. When it comes to real estate investing, you need to combine your book-smart knowledge with the street smart pizzazz. However, what happens if you have no book-smart knowledge at all? No street smart ‘pizzazz’? Here, we provide you with steps on how to become a real estate investor with little to no knowledge.
1. Educate Yourself: Be Your Own Professor
Finding out how to become a real estate investor is not rocket science, but it needs some education. Now, we’re not saying to go to college and gain a degree in real estate, but a smart idea to start off with is to educate yourself on the basics of what real estate is and how it functions.
Real estate investing for beginners is possible, and you can be successful at it so long as you get a gist of what you are getting yourself into. The more research, education, advice, and understanding you acquire on your path to becoming a real estate investor, the better off you will be. With time, you will develop a keen eye for the best real estate investments.
2. Maintain High Ethical Standards
You may ask yourself: “What do standards have to do with how to become a real estate investor?”. It is crucial to stay up to date with any laws and regulations that may be updated and circling around the real estate world. This is especially true if you decide to invest in Airbnb rentals as the legal regulations governing short-term rentals are constantly changing across the US housing market.
The last thing you want to do is run into trouble with the law because you were unaware of any rules, especially as a striving real estate investor. Investing in real estate involves actively working with people, meaning an investor’s reputation is a crucial indicator on how his/her rental property business will run.
An investor lacking in ethics causes a number of damaging consequences. A prosperous real estate investor understands it is better to run a fair, legal business than testing what they can get away with.
3. Get to Know Your Market
In order to make smart business decision, an investor should understand how the market works. Getting to know your local housing market is just as important as that comparative market analysis real estate investors use.
Stay informed of any trends or changes in renters’ habits, mortgage rates, or any other factors that could affect your real estate investment business. Understanding the local housing market will allow you to become a savvy real estate investor and also prepare you for any competitors going after your investment opportunity.
Gain confidence in the area of real estate investment you decide to choose, whether it is house wholesaling, fix and flip, or rental properties.
4. Choose a Real Estate Niche
It is important to choose a suitable real estate market to specialize in when learning how to become a real estate investor. Knowing what niche you are interested in and gaining that specific real estate education will allow you to narrow down your focus, become an expert, network with other investors and experts within that niche, and begin building your wealth by executing a plan of action. Some niches to choose from include:
- Small apartments
- Single family homes
- Condos
- Luxury rentals
5. Partner with an Expert
When you are still on the path on understanding how to become a real estate investor, having the help of an expert can come in handy. Instead of risking both time and money to solve a difficult problem on your own, it is recommended to start out with a real estate investment partnership with someone more knowledgeable and experienced as an investor than you.
Successful real estate investors understand that is is worth the additional costs and troubles, both financially and when it comes to your ego, to find help when it is needed. Embrace other’s expertise, as it is there for a reason!
6. Pay Attention to the Location
The location of the real estate properties you plan to own is a fundamental aspect of economic geography and the basis for your profit. When experimenting how to become a real estate investor, you want to avoid investment properties that are in the middle of nowhere. Search for investment properties in which rent will take care of all expenses associated with the property.
Choose locations that have low crime rates and are near good schools, job centers, and public transit as it will reflect on how your property stands. Diversity, diversity, diversity. Strive to find communities with a diverse economic base and which are not dependent on one or two large employers.
Related: Location Location Location – Is Location Really All in Real Estate Investing?
7. Utilize Your Real Estate Investment Tools
There are so many real estate investment tools you can use when you’re learning how to become a real estate investor. All of them aim at one common target: find an income generating asset.
In this case, that income generating asset is an income property that will produce the positive cash flow all real estate investors aim for. Two tools that are commonly used by real estate investors like your future self include:
- You
The most important tool in that real estate investing tool box of yours is yourself. As a real estate investor, you are mainly marketing yourself. The moment you begin to speak to others in the real estate business, your brand is being built around your, so work to guard it.
Maintain your integrity, as it is what will cause people to keep coming back to you and refer you to others. Act as you would like to be seen. You are not required to be a millionaire to run a million dollar business. How you act reflects on how you will run your rental investment property.
- Investment Property Calculator
On the road to riches, or, learning how to become a real estate investor, you are bound to encounter a little friend we like to call an investment property calculator.
Mashvisor’s investment property calculator provides you with predicted financial outcomes of potential investments based on the costs provided by the calculator or input by the user. This investment property analysis tool is a huge advantage to you as a real estate investor.
Analysis of accumulated big data from other rental properties in the same city and neighborhood gives investors unlimited opportunities to find an income property suitable for them, all from the click of a button.
Mashvisor provides a number of analytics and metrics to value your potential property, and the investment property calculator is a tool just waiting for you to utilize. With this tool, you become one step closer to owning successful and profitable income properties.
Related: Rental Property Calculator: The Must-Have Real Estate Investment Tool
To start looking for and analyzing the best investment properties in your city and neighborhood of choice, click here.
9. Have an Exit Strategy
Let’s say first time was not a charm for you, and your first real estate property is not as financially successful as you anticipated, where do you go from there? This is where your exit strategy comes in.
Having investment strategies is important, but having an exit strategy is just as important. When looking into how to become a real estate investor, you understand why an exit strategy is needed.
Some exit strategies to keep in mind are selling with a real estate agent, selling as an owner, or selling using seller financing. This is your defense mechanism, your back up plan, your protection. Do not go into war without any armor.
Related: The Exit Strategy – Key for Successful Real Estate Investing
What This All Means
Taking part in the real estate world can be intimidating, but it is within your reach. So long as you are determined and ready to make the needed sacrifices, you can learn how to become a real estate investor.
Once you have those basics down, Mashvisor will be ready to provide you the analytics such as rental pricing, return on investment, occupancy rates, and overall financial investment analysis. It is a hungry real estate world out there.
You may feel you’re starting out at the bottom of the food chain, but you have the potential to work your way up. In due time, you will learn how to make money in real estate, master the tricks of financing investment properties, and become the real estate investor you were destined to become. Your personal growth with the help of Mashvisor will give you the push to shift from prey to predator.
To learn more about how we will help you make faster and smarter real estate investment decisions, click here.