Transcription
This is Corey Dutton. I’m a private money lender. And today I’m going to give you a little “Real Estate Investing 101.” So, you’re a beginner investor, a beginner real estate investor.
How many investment properties can you handle?
Don’t take on too many projects and so you will prevent yourself from crashing and burning. I see this happening all the time, new real estate investors that have a one size fits all mentality. And what do I mean by that? I mean that they look at other real estate investors doing multiple deals simultaneously and they say, “That’s what I have to do. That’s where I have to be.” And that’s not true.
One size doesn’t just fit all. Not in real estate investing. And this is the biggest mistake that I see beginning real estate investors make, which is, taking on too much and not having enough cash flow to support the multiple deals that they have going on simultaneously.
There’s a lot of real estate investor education out there that encourages you to be able to quit your day job and have multiple projects going on simultaneously so that you can’t be a full-time real estate investor. The problem with that is, again, the “one size fits all” mentality.
That may take you five years to do, where it may only take “Ed” the guy over here a year to do. So, keep that in mind. Don’t drink the kool-aid that you’re getting from these real estate investor education courses that push you to become a full-time real estate investor before you’re ready.
The Story of a beginner real estate investor who crashed and burned.
Seth is a beginning real estate investor who came to us for a hard money loan to fund his first rehab deal. We funded that rehab purchase for Seth, and we funded a few deals after that for Seth, and on every one of those deals, Seth made money. But after about the first year, Seth decided that he had to be like those other guys, he had to do it.
And so what did he do? Seth took on too many projects at once. And what happened? How did that happen?
So in this story, Seth purchased one rehab that we did a loan on, and that rehab took forever to sell. There was just something about that property, and it just kept falling out of contract. Meanwhile, while he was rehabbing and trying to sell this property, he purchased two more properties!
So Seth had three rehab projects going on, with three different hard money loans. So what happened? I mentioned to you, that the first property that Seth had purchased was not selling, it was taking forever to sell and had fallen out of contract many times.
Well, Seth’s plan, his “exit strategy” was to get the funds from that first rehab and use them to rehab the other two properties.
But when that property, that first property didn’t sell, Seth quickly found himself in a downward spiral. And why?
Because he had three hard money loans on three different properties, one of them wasn’t selling, one of them wasn’t rehabbed yet, and the other was also still sitting.
And when you have a hard money loan on a property, you’ve got a monthly payment. Not only that, but you have a cost of hazard insurance.
So, you’ve got three major expenses in these rehab projects:
• Rehabbing them,
• Making interest payments on the hard money loan that you use to purchase the property,
• Keeping insurance on these properties.
• Not to mention all the utilities and other expenses associated with maintaining these properties while you own them.
So what happened to Seth in this example?
The first house wasn’t selling, he didn’t have money to rehab the second and third project, he didn’t have money to make payments on the hard money loans, and he didn’t have money to make the insurance payments. So the houses weren’t even insured!
So, the lesson learned here with this story about Seth is, don’t take on too many projects unless you know you’re going to have the cash flow to support the rehab, the interest payments on the hard money loans, and the insurance payments at the bare very bare minimum.
So if you’re a first time real estate investor, and you’re going out looking for hard money loans to purchase your rehab properties for “fix and flip,” remember the story about Seth, don’t take on a “one size fits all” mentality and end up in that position where you do not have sufficient cash flow to support the projects that you have on hand.
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