If you spend a lot of time watching late night tv, smoking the crack pipe, and drinking the infomercial Kool Aid, you may think that foreclosure investments are super easy to accomplish, make you bags of cash.
Reality has to intrude sometime. Making money in real estate investing is no different than any other investment really. The amount of time you spend before, during, and after a foreclosure investment deal will determine how much money you make or you do not make.
Nobody wants to do a deal to lose money. So plan on spending a lot of time on it. More often than not the seller will not walk up to your door hand you cash and a title and say “sell it.”
While not absolutely required the more money you have available to take part in the deal, the better positioned you will be to do the deal. You can get foreclosure investments done without money if you plan on investing more of your own personal time to do it. Choose wisely.
Keep in mind that houses that are being foreclosed on inevitably need a little TLC to bring them up to Market Value. That money or personal time spent fixing the issues has to come from somewhere to realize maximum market Value.
While we would like to think you could also just fire up the MLS and have all your foreclosures listed on page one in order of the money you will make, reality seeps in there sooner or later. You need to pour throw the listings, see some properties, to figure out which deals make sense. Monitoring the opportunity is required as is beating the bushes to gather everything there is to know about that property while still staying in front of all the other investors who may want the property.
Among your major concerns should be knowing what you are good at and what you are not when it comes to evaluating and marketing real estate. Self-Assessment is critical as you will need assistance on the parts your not up to speed on yet if you want to make money on your property.
It is also important to be aware of real estate foreclosure law in the state where your property is. There may be something more frustrating than having a 100% done deal that gets hung up because of an obscure legal requirement, but I wouldn’t know what that is.
And last but not least there is the subject of money. While you don’t need to bring suitcases of bills into every deal to make it work, it doesn’t hurt and in fact will open up more opportunities to you. Never fear it is not absolutely required. It just makes things easier some times.
Keep your enthusiasm up and your goal clear in your mind. Nothing can stop you from getting that foreclosure investment done profitably if you spend your time wisely and develop your own system or learn from others.