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6 Critical Lessons Every Newbie Needs to Know About Real Estate Investing

Six months ago, one of my rental property tenants burned down part of his home as he was moving out.

Whether it was intentional or not, we’ll never know — but the end result was the same: $60,000 of damage to the kitchen. (Thank God for insurance!)

Within 24 hours of the fire being put out, I called a local fire-restoration contractor to handle the rehab of the property. This week it’s finally getting finished… six months, almost to the day, after the fire.

If I were to ask you how long this restoration project took, you would likely say “six months.” However, did it really take six months? Or did it actually take far fewer days, spread out over a six-month span?

If you guessed the latter, you’d be correct. The actual work done to restore the home took about 20 days of actual work. Those 20 days, however, took place over six long months.

I tell you this story today not because I want to convince you never to buy rental propertiesbut because it perfectly illustrates something that has been stewing in my mind for quite some time; a business principle that, if applied to your life and business, will help you accomplish significantly more in drastically less time. I call it: Dead Space.

If you want to accomplish more in your life at a rate faster than you’ve ever imagined, you can. You have to kill the Dead Space. Here’s how.

Dead Space: the silent killer.

Most tasks in life are significantly easier than we’d like to believe. In fact, nearly every goal you have is really just made up a series of small decisions followed by short actions. However, it’s the in-between that consumes the most time. That’s the Dead Space.

For example:

  • When it takes you three months to read a novel — did it really take three months? Or did it take three hours spread out over a three-month period?
  • Or for those looking to write a book — does it really take two-years from conception to publishing or just a few hundred hours spread out over a two-year timeframe?
  • Or for those looking to raise money for their startup — does it really take six months or a dozen meetings over that six month period?

When you break apart a large task, how many actual physical hours of work are needed to accomplish this task? Probably not a lot. So why do tasks take so much time?

Because of Dead Space. It’s all the waiting that lives between moments of action or decision.

Dead Space could manifest itself in numerous ways, such as fear, uncertainty, lack of focus, distractions, limiting beliefs, waiting on other people, or even physical restraints. It doesn’t matter what form this Dead Space takes, nor does it matter who caused it. The cause could be 100 percent your fault or 0 percent your fault — but if you want to accomplish significantly more in far less time, the solution is 100 percent on your shoulders.

Supercharging productivity.

Dead Space is the real reason you aren’t accomplishing your goals. It’s the real reason that the latest John Grisham novel is still sitting on your nightstand, why your half-written book manuscript is still sitting on your desk, why your startup is six months from running out of money.

So the simple truth to accomplishing more, faster is this: when you reduce the Dead Space, you reduce the time needed to accomplish your goal.

Dead Space is the reason why Parkinson’s law exists. Parkinson’s Law, if you are unfamiliar with it, is the adage that “work expands to the time allotted for its completion.” When you have less time to complete a task, you subconsciously decrease the Dead Space and knock it out quickly. When you have more time — you fill almost every moment.

Think of it: the last time you had a looming deadline, did you stop to check your Facebook every five minutes? Did you take a break to read the newspaper? Did you wait a week for a phone call back from your company’s legal department? Of course not! You got it done, no matter what it took.

So how do we reduce this Dead Space? It’s easier than you think.

Three steps to reducing Dead Space

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

6 Critical Lessons Every Newbie Needs to Know About Real Estate Investing

I was 21 years old when I bought my first investment property.

I’d like to pretend everything went smoothly — but that would be a lie. Sometimes it was downright messy.

Why?

Because I didn’t really know what I was doing!

That’s the story for most newbies. It’s a scary thing venturing out into the world of real estate when you don’t have a lot of experience. I still remember the fear, the uncertainty, the excitement — it all comes with the territory.

It’s my goal here at BiggerPockets to help you avoid the mistakes that I made in my real estate journey and to help you find your own path toward success. Therefore, let me share with you six critical lessons that every newbie (and advanced investor, I suppose) needs to know about investing in real estate.

1. You won’t get rich overnight.

Sorry, it’s just not going to happen.

You will likely get rich someday if you stick with it. But that’s the key: sticking with it. Ninety percent of those reading this article won’t.

So when things get tough, will you lose your passion? Or will you fight through?

2. No one is going to learn for you.

You can’t hire someone to do your pushups for you. It doesn’t work that way. In the same way, you can’t just start buying properties hoping that other people (your agent, your spouse, your mom) is going to make it work out.

The responsibility is 100 percent on your shoulders.

So take your education seriously!

Stop listening to the radio — you’ve heard those songs a thousand times. It’s time to turn your car into a mobile university. Listen to audiobooks about real estate, business, and productivity. Listen to real estate podcasts, like The BiggerPockets Podcast, and glean wisdom from the guests who share their stories. Get an Audible subscription and start listening to audiobooks like The Book on Rental Property Investing.

Pick up books from your local library, Amazon, the bookstore, or BiggerPockets.com/store — and then actually read them!

Attend local real estate meet ups and clubs and get to know people who are doing amazing things with real estate — and listen to them!

Remember, no one is going to do your learning for you.

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

4 Tips for Finding World-Class Tenants for Your Rental

I once bought a rental house that came with an existing tenant. Things were fine for a few months — but then she started paying her rent late.

Then she stopped paying entirely.

She decided illegal drug use was more fun than paying rent!

Soon after, she was evicted — and she left me thousands of little cockroaches, a death threat note, and the worst smell you can imagine.

Sometimes being a landlord is such a joy.

On the other hand, I’ve had dozens of incredible tenants who pay rent on time, take great care of the property, and are helping me build wealth and financial freedom in a spectacular way.

So, how does someone find more of the great tenants and fewer of the bad ones?

If you want to succeed as a landlord, you must do just that. You must learn how to discern which are world-class tenants to avoid renting to scumbags.

How?

Well, today I want to share four tips for attracting word-class tenants.

4 Tips for Finding World-Class Tenants for Your Properties

1. Think like a funnel.

In business, a sales funnel is the idea that you want to get a lot of leads coming in, knowing that only a few will ever buy from you. For example, 1,000 people might see an ad for a pair of socks in the newspaper, but only a few dozen of those will go to the store, and maybe just a couple will buy a pair of socks. That’s a sales funnel, and it’s found in almost every industry — including landlording.

Your job as a landlord is to use this exact funnel to attract tenants — a lot of them.

Think of it this way — if you get just one person to call about your vacant property, what’s the chance they are going to be a great tenant? It’s kind of a gamble. But what if 1,000 people called about your property. Could you find one that is going to be perfect? I would hope so — or else you probably need to move towns.

The point is, the more people you can put in the top of your funnel, the more picky you can be to get the one ideal tenant at the bottom.

So how do you do this? You need to have an advertising system that’s going to bring you qualified leads. This could be Craigslist, Zillow, Postlets, the newspaper, a sign in the yard, a post on Facebook — or, if you are like us, you could do ALL of these. The more marketing we do for tenants, the greater chance we have of finding that needle in a haystack.

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

How to Become a Millionaire

So you want to learn how to become a millionaire.

Great. Good for you.

I want six pack abs.

I want an Oreo cookie right now.

I want my feet massaged each night by a female body builder. (What? They get sore!)

But it’s not enough to want something. As Michael Jordan says, “Some want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.”

Wanting is never enough. Especially when you want to know how to become a millionaire.

A lot of people want to become millionaires. It’s the epitome of the American Dream. It’s a solid, tangible number that most people believe will classify them as “rich.”

Yet so few ever make it to that point in life. In fact, of the 7 billion people on earth, less than 20 million are millionaires. That’s far less than 1%.

This is absurd given one simple truth: Becoming a millionaire is simple. This article will prove that.

Becoming a Millionaire is… Simple?

Simple? Really?

Yes.

BUT… not easy.

There is a difference.

  • Running 50 miles is simple — but not easy.
  • Staying up for 60 hours is simple — but not easy.
  • Avoiding that chocolate cake is simple — but not easy.

Simple means there are not a lot of steps; it can be understood.

So becoming a millionaire is simple, not easy.

  • You don’t need an MBA.
  • You don’t need to go to Harvard.
  • You don’t need to come from a rich family.
  • You don’t have to be exceptionally smart.
  • You don’t have to know the right people.

So are you ready to learn how to become a millionaire?

Good — because I have one goal with this article:

I want you to read this and become a millionaire.

I want a million people to read this and have their lives rocked to the core.

I want a million people to share this post on Facebook with their family and friends — because this stuff changes lives.

This is about to change YOUR life, if you’ll allow it.

Becoming a Millionaire

The One Thing That Qualifies Me to Write This Post About Becoming a Millionaire

Now you might be wondering, “Why is this kid telling me how to become a millionaire? He looks like a bearded Justin Bieber.”

So besides my beard — why am I qualified to talk about this?

One reason:

Because I did it.

I don’t talk about my net worth very often, but I crossed the $1,000,000 net worth level about the same time I turned 30 years old.

Related: 4 Powerful Ways Real Estate Can Make You a Millionaire

I didn’t start out with a rich family. I never went to an Ivy League school. I didn’t win the lottery.

I simply (and correctly) used The Wealth Tripod.

If you want to learn how to become a millionaire — you, too, must correctly set up The Wealth Tripod.

The Wealth Tripod: 3 Things Needed From You to Become a Millionaire

In order to fully understand how to become a millionaire, you need to know what’s stopping you from achieving that status.

I know you are thinking, “Duh, Brandon! My lack of money is stopping me!”

False.

Your lack of money has NOTHING to do with you becoming a millionaire.

Sure, over the long run, if you never begin collecting money, you’ll never become a millionaire, but that’s not stopping you today.

It’s not the balance of your checking account that’s stopping you. Or the balance of your investment accounts. It’s not your heritage, your skin color, your location, your intelligence, your lack of innovative ideas, or your bad luck.

Want to know what’s really stopping you?

It’s you.

In order to become a millionaire, you must change who you are. As Les Brown said, “To achieve something you have never achieved before, you must become someone you have never been.”

Specifically, there are three things about you that you must change if you want to become a millionaire. I call this “The Wealth Tripod” because without all three, you’ll never become wealthy. All three steps are required if you want to build and maintain wealth. Like a camera tripod — if one of the legs is broken, the entire tripod will fall down.

So, what are the three legs of The Wealth Tripod?

  1. You must believe wealth is actually possible for you.
  2. You must learn how wealth is built.
  3. You must live out the steps needed to make it happen.

Let’s spend a few minutes and talk about each of these to make sure you fully understand the importance of mastering each.

1. You must believe wealth is possible for you.

A friend of mine recently remarked, “God must have known I would be bad with wealth, which is why He never saw fit to give me any.”

While I don’t believe every person should become a millionaire (money often causes more problems than it fixes), I do believe every person has the ability to become a millionaire. This is especially true if you live in a capitalist society where the government doesn’t dictate how high you can rise.

As I said earlier, it has nothing to do with your skin color, intelligence, location, or any other excuse you might have for not building wealth.

Like my friend’s comment suggested, many people believe that because they do not currently have wealth, they do not have the ability to gain wealth.

The fault in this thinking, however, is made clear in this simple quote:

Who you are today is the sum of all the choices you have made up until this moment. 

Think about that for a second. Reread it a couple times. Everything you have, everything you believe, and everything you are is a result of the decisions and actions you’ve made previously.

  • If you are overweight, it’s because you made poor food or exercise choices.
  • If you are too busy, it’s because you took on too many commitments
  • If you are broke, it’s because you spent more money than you earned.

While that might sound depressing, that’s actually some of the best news in the world! Because although this principle reveals the source of all negative aspects of our life, it also reveals the positive changes that can happen if we only change our choices going forward.

Think about it:

  • If you are overweight because of poor food choices, you can choose RIGHT NOW to change your diet and exercise.
  • If you are too busy, you can choose RIGHT NOW to say no to things that monopolize your time.
  • If you are broke, you can choose RIGHT NOW to change your earning and spending habits.

A total life transformation won’t happen overnight, but it will start to slowly take shape with each choice.

Think of a rocket blasting off into space. A course correction of a single degree can mean the difference between landing at the International Space Station and colliding with the sun. In the same way, a course correction in your life, starting today, can result in a massively different future than before.

Therefore, understand that just because you aren’t a millionaire yet doesn’t not mean you can never become one.

Because…

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

Earnest Money

When you join the mob, they likely will ask you to kill someone, just to make sure are serious and not wasting their time.

In real estate, people also hate to have their time wasted. Lucky for us, though, murder isn’t required to prove our sincerity.

Instead, we rely on the earnest money deposit.

The earnest money deposit, also known as a good faith deposit or simply earnest money, is money provided by the buyer when an offer is submitted as a way of showing the seriousness of the offer. This deposit is essentially the buyer saying, “Look, I really want to buy this property, and I’m putting my money where my mouth is.”

The earnest money is pledged, and should the buyer not fulfill his end of the contract, the seller can keep the money. So yes, you can lose your earnest money! However, there are certain conditions that allow you to back out without losing it, which we’ll talk about.

But first, let’s talk about how much the earnest money deposit is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3o4ll8Jh20

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

When I was a child, every Saturday morning was the same: Wake up early, pile into the minivan with my mom and three siblings and start looking for . . . garage sales! Yes. I was raised by a “garage sale mom.”

Because we didn’t have a lot of money, we bought nearly all of our clothes, furniture, toys and pretty much everything else from someone who no longer wanted those items. And, let me tell you — my mom was the master at those sales. She knew how to find the coolest gadgets, toys, games and appliances for pennies on the dollar. She could negotiate a 50-cent t-shirt down to 10 cents, and regularly did. She would even buy far more than we needed, just so she could resell those items at her own garage sales and make a profit to fund our family vacations.

Today, I do far less garage-sale shopping than my mom, but the lessons I learned from her haven’t changed. I still want to find a great deal. Today, however, instead of 50-cent t-shirts, I spend much of my time hunting down great real estate deals, because I’m a real estate investor.

Whether I plan to flip that house, hold the property as a rental or go for something entirely different: Everything begins with a great deal. Here are four simple tips you too can use to find better deals on your own real estate, whether you’re looking for an investment, a property for your business or simply a home for your family.

1. Consider buying a bank-foreclosed property.

When someone fails to pay a mortgage payment for an extended period of time, the lender will ultimately repossess the home and remove the occupants. Once the home is empty, the lender generally lists the house for sale on the market, using a local real estate to list it.

While the foreclosure, in itself, is of course sad (no one rejoices when someone loses a home), once the deed has been done, these properties can be some of the best deals you’ll find in real estate. Banks want to be in the business of lending money, not managing property, so they are often quick to offer large discounts just to get the deal off their books. Translation: You can get a great deal on foreclosed properties, if you know how to buy foreclosures right.

(Click to read on BiggerPockets…)

P.S. looking for hard money loans in California? Be sure to check out my friends over at northcoastfinancialinc.com. They have very competitive rates, can fund within a week and specialize in fix and flip loans and other hard money loans.

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