To really reach your full potential as a real estate investor, it is highly advised that you form your own investment team. While success is certainly possible on your own, I guarantee that you will achieve success quicker and more efficiently with an intelligent and professional team supporting you. Finding the perfect people to correspond and work with requires time, dedication, and commitment. However, once you have put together the perfect team, you will be quite frankly unstoppable in all your pursuits. Investing in a team equates to investing in yourself. By utilizing recognition, respect, loyalty and negotiation with your peer members, you are bound to success.
Every real estate investment team requires five primary players: an accountant, a realtor, an insurance agent, a lender, and an attorney. Below, I will attempt to summarize the essentials that each player should have.
An Accountant
Every real estate deal involves the transaction of money from a buyer to a seller. To get the best out of your deals, it is highly advised that you hire a good and competent accountant. An experienced financial advisor will prevent you from wasting your money on bad deals. He or she will be dedicated to serving your financial needs by providing detailed recommendations on profit reinvestment, tax payment and entity structuring, as well as locating and determining good deals from bad deals. Employing a skilled and well compensated CPA will save you an extraordinary amount of time by taking care of all your bills, tax returns, and other financial obligations. Remember, real estate investing is not a simple process. It is a multifaceted system that if done alone, requires that you be your own receptionist, stock clerk, office manager, bookkeeper, lawyer, and accountant all in one!
A Realtor
Realtors are the men and women that will take care of buying and selling property for you. They are your front trench infantry units, if you will. It is vital that you establish a strong relationship with your realtor from the very beginning. Your realtor needs to be informed of what your short term and long term goals are and entail doing. They are the individuals with access to the “Multiple Listing Service” real estate database that catalogs all available property, as well as the property owners and property cash value. They have access to inside information concerning what properties are immediately available, what properties fit the type that you are searching for and what properties are in what specific neighborhoods. If you take your time to finding and choosing the right real estate realtor, he or she will soon become your best friend in this dynamic and challenging business! Keep in mind that realtors work for commission and so therefore you will need to compensate them generously.
An Insurance Agent
Purchasing and selling homes requires that you have insurance. It is vital that you thoroughly protect your rental units and properties. This equates to obtaining coverage that covers you in the cases of vandalism, fire, natural disasters and other liability claims that may come up. It is recommended that you look for an independent insurance agent so that you are not limited to company coverage packages. You want your insurance agent to be able to freely search for the best coverage rates available within your local area. Furthermore, the insurance agent you choose should be well knowledged in rental property insurance issues. Many people have had deals fall through simply because they were unable to obtain the insurance coverage required to officially close the deal. That is why it is essential you have an insurance agent that can take care of performing all the homework and research prior to a deal being formulated.
A Lender
Succeeding as a real estate investor calls for maintaining a long-term liaison with a first-rate lender. The discrepancy between failing or succeeding in your real estate investing career can be as simple as whether you have the right or wrong lender. At first, select several leaders to work with and carefully interview each of them. Discuss your options with other investors, friends, realtors, and even your family. You will want to ask your lender candidates a myriad of questions that will provide you information on topics such as: prerequisite income and credit scores, normal loan fees, property holding periods, prepayment penalties, mortgage insurance and how much they can finance. After interviewing each lender and discussing the results with trusted colleagues, choose a lender according to how well they match your investment needs. Additionally, also take into consideration how easy they will be to work with. You may have found the perfect lender in all of the world, but if they are a major grouch then you would probably be better off finding somebody else. The ideal lender will welcome your repeated dealings and strive diligently to acquire the most reasonable loan for each of your transactions.
An Attorney
The attorney you choose needs to be well versed in real estate transactions. I recommend talking to a couple local investors to get a list of referrals. Once you have a nice little list together, call up the lawyers and schedule interviews with them. During the interview, clarify your goals and determine whether the lawyer is capable of handling such business. Some of the qualities and skills you want to look for in your attorney include: they spend at least sixty percent of business time practicing real estate law, they have been performing at least five years of real estate law, is highly recommended by other investors, is an active member of your local REIA, they themselves invest in real estate, they have other professional real estate investors as clients, works either in a small law office or by himself or herself and has enough time to dedicate to you. You also want your lawyer to have an optimistic attitude. Each time you present a deal to them, you don’t want them saying, “Nope. No can do.” I don’t know about you, but I prefer to avoid the pessimistic personality-type lawyer.
Once you have acquired these five key players, you will be able to spend much more time focusing on your business by delegating mandatory tasks to the appropriately trained professional at hand. By supplying them with lots of business and compensating them generously, you will discover that they will be willing to practically “bend over backwards” to guarantee your continual success. The secret is to cultivate and sustain a keen rapport with each member of your team. I suggest you take a gander at it because you have nothing to lose and much to gain!
