Don’t Waste Your Time

Are You an Investor – or Something Else?

A lot of Realtors will tell you they don’t work with investors. Want to know why?

Chances are it’s because they’ve been burned by so-called investors in the past.

Ask any Realtor and they’ll tell you: “investors” can be a serious time-suck. They’ll ask a Realtor to spend hour after hour, week after week, showing them houses all over town and doing lots of research on available properties and going market rents. They’ll come back again and again – but never actually buy.

Any Realtor worth his or her salt has no patience for that. In their business, time really is money – and they’re not about to waste either. The time they waste with a less-than-serious investor is time they could have spent closing another deal with a real buyer – a deal that will actually put money in their pocket.

I hear this all the time from people. They brag, “I looked at 50 properties this week,” as if looking at properties made you an investor.

Next time you hear someone say that, ask them how many offers they made. That’ll take the air out of their balloon. The truth is, friends, you can’t be an investor until you invest – and the first step in investing is making an offer. Otherwise you’re just a professional house-looker.

Now, I understand that when you’re just starting out, that first offer can be intimidating. And you do want to take your time and find the best deal before you make your move. Until you gain some experience, it’s natural to be a little apprehensive in the process. I certainly was, with my first few deals.

But I quickly learned that making offers was the only way to make money at this – and I knew I wanted to make money. I learned as I went, by feeding my mind with other investors’ book and programs, talking with people, and just keeping my ears and eyes open. Sure, I made some mistakes along the way, but I just kept going.

For your first deal, you’re in a much better position that I was. You have the benefit of being taught everything I’ve learned in 20-plus years of real estate investing. Instead of learning by trial and error as I did, you can start your real estate investing business already knowing everything I’ve done.

You know what they say, knowledge is power. Power means confidence – and confidence translates into action, as in making offers on good deals.

Remember, no one is going to pay you to look. If you want to be a real estate investor, you’ve got to buy – and to buy, you have to make offers. Otherwise, you’re not just wasting the Realtors time – you’re wasting your own.