Bringing Learning to Life:Day 4: Where to buy real estate?

Finding a market to buy and work in can be the most difficult part of real estate investing. When we were trying to make that decision, I spent a lot of time reading, researching and comparing essential components.

When choosing an investment location there are many questions you must ask:
1. What is the employment rate in the area?
2. What major industry/companies have headquarters based in the area?
3. Are there new businesses projected to be in the area?
4. Are there new development projects such as sports arenas or malls?
5. What is the cost of living?
6. What is the status of any military bases in the area?
7. Is the market satiated with local and out of town real estate investors?
8. What is the average investment property selling for?
9. What are average rents?
10. What are typical vacancy rates in the area?

Some places you can find answers to these questions:
1. Home page of the town/city
2. Bureau of Labor Statistics: www.bls.gov
3. Global Property Guide: www.globalpropertyguide.com
4. Realty Trac
5. Foreclosure.com
6. ALL investor clubs in the town or state...this is a must
7. Yahoo groups about investment real estate in the area
8. Money Magazine
9. Fortune Magazine
10. Entrepreneur Magazine Real Estate Radio

Once you decide you strategy, deciding where to invest is your most important decision. this decision took us almost seven months. Remember, you don't have to invest locally. You have to invest in an area that you can reasonably afford, will support your investment strategy, and has viable property management. Good luck with your research. Hopefully you're buying some of those Rich Dad books that I highly recommend. Just click on the link below for great prices. Happy Reading

Learning: Day 2 Decisions in Real Estate

Once you decided that you want to consider investing in real estate, you must think about a strategy. A strategy is important so you can focus your efforts and decide how you make your money.

Examples of real estate investing strategies:

Appreciation: One achieves this through buying pre-construction or buying in new high appreciation areas.

Flipping: Buy low, renovate, sell quick and high. Buy low by purchasing foreclosures, short sales, auctions, corporate relocations...

Cash flow: By an income property that you can receive a rent for a minimum of 10% of the purchase price. The rent should cover your mortgage and give you extra every month, called your cash flow.

When you choose a strategy, steps and procedures will become more clear to you.

Bringing Learning to Life:Day 1

Starting today, I am going to walk you through our trip and education process toward buying investment real estate. When this set of posts are complete, I will move on to starting your own businesses.

Let's begin.
After reading Rich Dad Poor Dad, we both read



I feel like I should have paid thousands for this book. It will walk you through every single step of buying real estate. It even gives you scripts for speaking with property owners and checklists to insure you complete a stellar due diligence process. We both read this book at different times two years ago. We have referred to it so often that I refuse to sell it on Half.com or loan it to a friend. If you are seriously considering real estate or if you are a seasoned investor you must read this book.




After reading this book, we attended the Learning Annex's Real Estate Expo. I'm not sure if I would recommend it because it moves you in many, too many, directions. But every storm has a rainbow. It was amazing to see Robert Kiyosaki and his entire team speak. It was not a bunch of garbage. His financial advisor specifically went into investing in gold and oil. Kim Kiyosaki discussed why women need to ramp up there financial IQ. In addition, every other team member spoke about investing in depth.
Afterwards, they were all available to speak to individually. The company is so dedicated to educating investors. It was really an amazing experience.




The best part of it all...we were able to attend the small session hosted by Ken McElroy who wrote The ABC's of Real Estate Investing.

After seeing how experienced, personal and professional Ken was, we knew that purchasing more of his information and materials would be one of the best investments a real estate investor could make.

Bringing Learning to Life

As I have mentioned, Jeff and I did not always have the philosophies we have now. Maybe we did, but they were so buried that it took a genius to reveal them to us!

Back in the spring of 2006, we were at a dinner party hosted by an old climbing friend of mine. There was a hair stylist there with his girl friend. He seemed to take to Jeff and they both got talking about real estate and the power of making your own money for yourself. At the end of the evening, he recommended we read


That was it. That was the first step to freedom. Jeff read the whole paperback in a matter of days, I read the audio book




The best step we could have taken was to read the book by ourselves. It gave each of us time to struggle with money beliefs that had been taught to us by people and relatives. Once we sat down and talked about our reaction to the book, we knew we had something. We were struggling with infertility, we had some time and money (not a lot) on our hands, and we both genuinely wanted to go in the same life direction.
If you are flying solo, or want to leap into life with someone special, this is the book to get your head in the right place.

This week I will be talking about the many books that we read by Robert Kiyosaki. Quickly, I will walk you through the exact steps I took to find our first piece of investment real estate using all of Robert Kiyosaki's plan.





Following that I will discuss how we transitioned into business, what books we read and what steps we took. Are you ready to try something new? If you need a direction and a road map...get ready! Over the next month, I will give you free information that is priceless and costed us more than we would like to admit.

I am so excited about sharing with you our steps to success. Sleep well, we have a lot of learning ahead. Be Brave and Buy the Book.