Hello again my friends and welcome to another episode of Ask Marco where I answer or at least try to answer your investing related questions.
Today’s question comes from Michelle and Michelle says, hello. I’ve been listening to your podcast for a couple of months now and I think in one episode you said you help people figure out a clear plan for real estate investing. Question Mark, I want to do this, but my ideas are scattered and this real estate investing stuff can be really overwhelming because there are so many options and all of these rules to follow. I can relate because we all start there, Michelle, but you will find that it gets easier as you go. Believe me, she concludes by saying, if I could get a chance to speak to someone about my goal so that I can have a clearer understanding of what I want to do and invest in, that would be great. If not, do you know of anyone that does? I really want to do this, but I want to know somewhat what I’m doing.
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Okay. This is a great question and this is actually a very common question, especially for people who are just getting started, knew what some of us call newbies, but essentially your green behind the ears and you’re trying to get clear on all this stuff that just looks and seems and sounds overwhelming and you just want to get clear on your investment goals. So for a lot of people it’s really just finding the right direction, just knowing what direction they need to go in and just someone to be a compass for you, point you in the right direction and then you will figure it out and learn what to do as you go because you’re going to have the tools, resources, the education and the team of people around you to help you get there.
And it’s just a matter of first pointing in the right direction, facing the right way, and then starting with little baby steps and moving forward. And then you’ll find that you’ll feel more competent and confident and you’ll grow and you’ll start to take bigger and bigger action steps. So the bottom line here is in what I’m saying is to educate yourself because your confidence is equal to your competence. And if you don’t have the competence level right now to give you that confidence, then it all starts with my first rule of my 10 rules of successful real estate investing, which are posted on both of our websites. And that is to educate yourself. The more you learn, the more you earn. You’ve heard that saying before, it is very true because when you start to know what you need to do and what to look for and what to avoid, you can’t help but to start taking action steps that will propel you in the right direction and get you to do the things you need to do.
So educate yourself because again, your confidence is equal to your competence and then you will find that that will magnify and accelerate as you start to get successes under your belt. When you get that first rental property, it’s a big learning curve, but you’ll feel great about it. And then you’ll look back and you say, Oh okay well I get it. That wasn’t so bad. And the next one is going to be a little easier. And then the next one is a little easier. And then you get to the point where you don’t even think about most of the steps. You just are so in tune with the process. So the question I have now is what do you consider investing? Because for some people they think that buying, fixing and flipping properties, investing and in a way it is cause you’re putting capital up in real estate and you’re turning around and flipping it for what you hope to be a chunk of cash.
And so in a way it is an investment but it’s very transactional. It’s short lived. And so I don’t actually consider that investing. For me, investing is something that creates long term, ongoing, predictable cash flow. But for some people they like to buy, fix and hold. And that’s an active approach to investing. That ultimately becomes a passive approach. Because once you’re done with the renovations, you’re holding it in your portfolio. And last but not least, there’s the simple buy and hold. Buy something that is rent ready or near rent ready and turn that into one of your portfolio properties. Or you can buy something that is essentially turnkey, like what we offer and what we sell to our clients through our network. And that is, in my opinion, the simplest, most efficient and least brain damage method of investing in building a real estate portfolio is simply buy and hold, buy and hold prudent investment properties in good markets that generate positive cash flow and grow equity to build your net worth over time.
Simple as that. And as you build that up and you start to snowball, that you get to the point where you have enough passive income to make you financially independent. And when you do that for a long enough period and you do it intelligently, you will become financially free. So that’s ultimately where I think most people want to go. Now to your second part, here are your other questions. You know, if you can speak to someone. Well, yeah, there’s a lot of people you could speak to if you’ve already started to put a team together and you’ve got your acquisitions person and your legal counsel and people who can speak to you about financing and finance and the numbers. Great. Rely on your team of people, whether it’s one person or three or five, whatever it may be or, and these are not mutually exclusive, but you can, and I think you already know this, you can speak to one of our in house investment counselors about what you’re thinking in terms of building your real estate portfolio.
And if it’s something we can help you with, great. If not, it will at least be that compass for you and put you on the right track or point you in the right direction and at least maybe give you some resources that you can look into, whether they’re books or audios or podcasts or, or whatever it may be. But there is no cost fee or obligation to speak to one of our investment counselors. But before you do that and pull the trigger too quickly, understand that we are not of the mindset that you should be buying, fixing and flipping or being an active real estate investor. If you want to do that, that’s great and a lot of people do, but we are coming from the investment philosophy of maximizing your results, minimizing your time. And so for us, that is essentially rent ready and turnkey rental properties that don’t require a lot of work on the front end.
In fact, very little, if any. So if your investment philosophy and mindset is buy and hold and build a portfolio for rental properties, then we definitely can help you with that. And it starts with a strategy session with an investment counselor. If you’re doing this on your own or you want to focus on a market that we can’t help you with because it’s not one of our 2020 some markets that we are in right now, then just build yourself a team. You know, find yourself an acquisitions person, like a real estate broker that specializes in investment property in that local market. They’re out there. You’re just going to have to do some searching and research and due diligence because most real estate agents and real estate brokers are not real estate investors nor do they understand the investment game very well and I’m speaking to that point from my own personal experience plus from many people that I know in the industry who experienced the exact same thing.
In fact, one of my friends equates that to the 99% rule, essentially saying that only 1% of licensed professional real estate professionals out there are actually real estate investors themselves. But the point is is build your team if you want, in the market that you’re focused on. If you don’t know what market to focus on, that just goes full circle back to speak to one of our investment counselors and we will help identify the different types of markets that will fit or meet your current investment goals, at least your real estate investment goals. Okay, Michelle, I hope that helps. If it doesn’t, let me know. And for the rest of you, if you have any questions about investing or finance or real estate specifically that I can help answer on the show, just go do passiverealestateinvesting.com and click on the Ask Marco button. Submit your question. I will get to it as quickly as possible. Remember to subscribe to the show. This is been a very successful ride. We are consistently in the top 50 podcasts on the iTunes store under investing in business. Thank you for all that and for being a loyal listener. Thanks for listening. We will see you on our next episode.
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