Do what i say, not as i did.

I have made several big mistakes along the way of my real estate career. I am sharing these with you folks so you don’t do them. As I always say, “There are 2 types of people in the world; those who want to learn by their own mistakes and those who want to learn from other people’s mistakes”. The second type will be much more successful.

The first mistake I made was not realizing how rich you can get with real estate. I always knew you could make lots of money but it never sunk in that little old me could be really rich. I was at the right place at the right time but was not aggressive enough. If I had only held onto more properties instead of fixing and flipping, oh boy would I be rolling in it. Each property that I kept from 1998 until 2005 increased in value at least 3 times what I paid for it.

I was worried about carrying so many properties that were not making me much of a positive cash flow. When these dodos did not pay their rent, I had to cover the mtg anyhow. There were months that I was laying out $7000 and not getting anything back. It was scary.

However, that should not have kept me from holding more properties. My mistake was not finding a partner who was looking at to the future and could afford the negative cash flow. There are many people with money in cd’s or 401 k’s who don’t care about negative cash flows.

It’s good to fix and flip also, but don’t do only that. Look towards the future yourself.

Want to hear the dummy way to get rich in real estate?

Find a partner like we discussed above who is looking towards retirement. Buy a bunch of properties in nice areas with 15 year loans and let the tenants pay off the loans. In 15 years, it will not matter what the economy does, what prices are, what interest rates are, what appreciation has happened, If you have a bunch of free and clear houses, you are ready for retirement. – case closed!.

The wonderful thing about California is its expensive properties. Don’t be bummed by that. I had all these houses in Florida. When things tripled, they went from 20k to 60k. Big Deal. In California these same types of junky properties in junky neighborhoods went from 60k to 230k. A lot bigger profit.!!!

Look around you- find a partner (like me) who has cash and not very much time and is looking to expand my retirement portfolio.

So learn from my mistakes as well as my successes. A lot of what I teach my students comes from the mistakes I have made along the way so you don’t have to repeat them Trust me- the school of hard knocks is costly. It’s a lot better financially to do it right the first time.