I want to talk about what I did when I started investing in property. I guess getting started is probably one of the biggest hurdles anyone will encounter when starting to figure out how real estate investing works, especially if it’s your first time investing in real estate opportunities.
So, I’ll walk you through the process of how I got started.
I ordered a course from e-bay and although it was used, the course was very informative. The only problem was that he had no one to consult with the questions he had. The course was very informative but I had no one to guide me. I still had a lot of questions, so I was a little on the fence on a couple of things, but being the risk taker that I am, I went ahead. I even went so far as to ask a couple of my real estate agent friends for advice on the wholesale process.
They told me they had never heard of such a thing. The course I purchased on e-bay informed me ahead of time that little to none of the real estate agents in my area would know or even have heard of the wholesale home sales process.
Knowing that this was a little-known process gave me more encouragement to keep going. The first thing I did was order 50 bandit signs which are the signs you see on the side of the road that say “We Buy Houses”. You may see them all over your area. I ordered 50 of those and actually overpaid at the time which I didn’t know and it cost me 250-300 for those signs.
I basically stopped at the first sign shop I found, which was actually a local Wal-Mart, so I started putting up signs on Sunday and started getting calls on Monday of course, and at that point I was shocked that the tips I learned. on the course i bought it worked so fast. I could have stopped at that point and felt that the cost I paid for the course was worth it. That may sound sad, but you have to understand that I have tried many different businesses and none of them have generally been successful as far as making a profit.
Anyway, I entertained the calls that came through. The first two calls that came in were offers. One was a lease option that could have been a wholesale opportunity, but I was so green at the time that I couldn’t see it.
The second call was these two sisters. She really she had no idea about the ARV (average repaired value). She only had a general idea about the sale price of the houses in that area. I was able to get that house under contract for $20,000. I was so afraid to even put the house under contract. I searched the internet and finally came up with the idea of making a one page contract. This contract would not be so intimidating for me and also for the seller.
You should always remember that even when you are in this business and doing 3-4 deals a month, the salesperson may have only done 1-2 deals in his life. This was an interesting deal because when I applied it was in 2003, I had a 1995 Toyota Celica, so I definitely didn’t seem to have enough money to buy this house with cash.
When I walked into that house, I guess it was just the way I introduced myself, they thought I was going to write them a check that day, but obviously I wasn’t. I explained that the deal process would include putting it under contract and doing a title check. This was the first deal I ever did and from that point on I have done over 350 real estate deals.