By Grant Trevithick
Are you interested in becoming a real estate investor? Do you want to be your own boss? Keep all the fruits of your labor for yourself, instead of making some company or someone else rich? Do you want the freedom of owning your company, working whenever you desire?
Most of us have watched the TV shows of other people buying and flipping houses. It is amazing to see that someone can search an entire city, find the property they want, do the research to determine what the offer should be, negotiate the deal to purchase the property, secure the financing, close on the purchase, prepare the repair budget, do all the repairs, market the property, find the buyer, negotiate with the buyer, and negotiate all the requirements to finally get to the closing table. It is amazing that each of these investors do all this in only 50 minutes, with 3 to 4 commercial breaks, and always seem to make allot of money out of each house.
Wow, if it were that easy, I would want to jump into the game as well. It surely would beat having to get up each day and head into an office, attend meeting after meeting, make nice with an incompetent boss, do all my work, and then go home and do the same thing every day for the rest of my life. That does not sound like fun… so perhaps we can escape this trap by being a real estate investor. After all, I can make as much money as I make in a year doing 3 to 4 houses, at least according to the television shows.
WRONG!
Virtually every real estate investor that I have ever met only talks about the glamorous part of the business. They only talk about how much money they make and how much fun they are having. First off, most of the ones that do the talking are the ones that have never bought or sold a house (at least according to my experience).
The reality is there are two types of real estate investors: the normal real estate investor and the successful real estate investor.
The normal investor attends allot of classes and reads allot of books or online. They may even sign up with one of the local or one of the traveling mentors / gurus. They attend allot of the networking groups for investors. They may look at several properties, but have never pulled the trigger to actually buy one. They talk a good game, but are more of the posers than the doers.
Then you have the 1%. Yes, only 1%. The statistic that I heard many times is that the top 1% of all real estate investors make 98% of the money. My experience proves this out. We have trained thousands of people, while we have one of the industry highest success rates for those that have attended our training (allot of our students ended up buying houses), yet very few of them have the dedication that is required to truly be successful.
To be a successful investor, you must know What Is Your Why? Why do you want to become an investor? Are you doing this to escape a boring and a mundane life? Are you doing this just to become rich? Why do you think that you want to be an investor?
Are you willing to work hard? Are you willing to work 6 days a week, and sometimes 7? Are you willing to work on the holidays? Are you going to be available to do business whenever your clients are ready? (My definition of an entrepreneur is someone that is willing to work 100 hours a week so you do not have to work 40.)
Are you willing to fail more times than you succeed? Are you willing to be discouraged and disappointed?
Are you willing to spend hours and hours in your car each day? Leaving early in the morning and get home late in the evening? Are you willing to put 30,000+ miles on your car / truck each year?
Are you willing to work when it is 105 degrees in the summer? When it is thundering and raining? How about when it is 5 degrees and snowing? Or icing?
Are you willing to clean out dirty nasty houses? Dealing with flea and bed bug infested houses? Drug houses? Are you willing to clean dirty kitchens, with food left over for weeks or even months? Scrub toilets that just plain nasty and disgusting?
Are you willing to listen to the most heartbreaking excuses and still ask someone to get out of the house? Are you willing to spend thousands of dollars on lawyers taking houses back when the seller uses the law to avoid paying their mortgage payments and yet do not want to move out?
Are you willing to be discouraged, wonder if you will ever buy and or sell another house again, feel like a total failure? And still get out of bed each morning and do what has to be done?
Funny, they do not show that part of the business on television, do they?
If you cannot answer, “absolutely, sounds like fun” to each one of these, then real estate investing is not right for you.
If you can think of anything else to do that would allow you to reach your goals, then my best advice is forget being a real estate investor and pursue that other avenue. If, on the other hand, you cannot imagine doing anything else, then perhaps you might have what it takes to be successful.
Real estate investing is a marathon, not a sprint. If you do investing right, it is not a get rich quick scheme. Working our model, you can become a millionaire in a short period of time, if you are willing to work hard enough and run the business in an honest manner.
But only if you know your Why. And only if your Why is strong enough.
For me, I love helping people. In our company, our first and primary goal is to always put our clients first and do whatever we can to help them. We buy houses that people are trapped in, giving them the financial freedom move on without the burden of their mortgage. We then sell those houses to good families that desire to have a part of the American Dream, owning their own home, but cannot get a mortgage from a bank (for whatever reason). We help investors by realizing their dreams of becoming a successful investor. And last but not least, we donate the first ten percent of all our profits to charity to help those less fortunate.
That is my why. That is what yanks me out of bed every morning, excites me to make each day as full as I possibly can, with me ready to contribute and help as many people as possible. Of course, along the way we make enough money to become financially comfortable, but our Company never makes money our number one priority. And I think that is what makes us successful.
What is Your Why?
Grant Trevithick, after a successful career in EDS and AT&T, is now the owner of Owner Finance Homes LLC and Owner Finance Academy LLC. Owner Finance Homes LLC operates throughout the Dallas-Fort Worth area in Texas, buying houses and selling with owner financing. Owner Finance Academy trains people to become real estate investors using owner financing. The Company is accredited by the Better Business Bureau with an “A+” rating.
