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4 Mistakes You Won’t Want To Make With Real Estate Investing

By: Sam Zherka

The idea of real estate investment is attractive to many. It is a solid form of passive income that could make you quite wealthy and an engaging, exciting form of investment. However, there is a lot of work, preparation and research that goes into building a real estate portfolio. This guide will go over the questions you need to ask yourself and answer when starting to build a real estate portfolio.

What Is Your Objective?
What are your goals in building a real estate portfolio? This is the first question you should ask yourself when you set out to get serious about real estate investment. As when forming a business, you will need to have a plan formulated when you start buying properties. What do you want your portfolio to ultimately look like? What steps will it take for you to reach those goals? These are considerations you need to take into account.

Have You Done Your Research?
Successful real estate investment requires a lot of research and thorough understanding of real estate trends in particular locales. For example, different neighborhoods, even ones located right next to each other, have different trends and values – properties in one might be better or worse investments than in the other. Because real estate is so localized, national trends are important, but not nearly as important as local trends where you are looking to buy.

What Is Your Brand?
Like businesses, real estate investors are advised to formulate a brand. Will you primarily focus on single-family homes, condominiums or other forms of dwellings? Would you like to invest in a certain type of property, like luxury properties? What about by location – are you interested in only having local properties in a major city or owning properties across the country? When you start building your portfolio, have your brand in mind.

What Kind Of Capital Do You Have?
Building a real estate portfolio is impossible without some kind of capital. Real estate is an expensive investment and you will need to have the money in the first place to start buying up properties. Procuring loans might be the answer to getting your portfolio started. A solid tactic when starting out is to buy cheap or foreclosed properties, fix them up and then rent them out. With the money you get from those, you can buy new properties. Also, don’t be afraid to sell if doing so would be advantageous.

Do You Want Property Management?
For many people looking to build a real estate portfolio, partnering with a quality management company is key. A management company can professionally maintain the property while you are not on-site, perform tenant interviews and collect rent on your behalf. It is the better option if you are planning on buying many properties or are not particularly handy.

Starting a real estate portfolio is a little more difficult than just buying properties. You have to do research on real estate trends, build a brand and have some plan for both maintaining the properties and attracting tenants. When you figure those out, then your real estate investment business will really take off.

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