First Rental Property

The biggest obstacle that I have seen hold so many people back from achieving what they want in life is Fear.

Fear has been hindering people’s desires for countless years. The nasty role it plays in destroying people’s dreams has been written about in countless books.

One of the most popular of these books is Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

It has been my observation that an individual can defeat fear. It takes concentrated effort, and a high degree of awareness, however, it can be done.

Often times, fear holds people back from investing in real estate. I see people who are interested in investing in property, clearly understand the benefits of such an action, however, they get consumed with fear and they end up never taking any action.

This is important to note, as fear at some point will rear it’s ugly head and try to destroy your plans, no matter what they may be.

For those of you that are looking to purchase your first rental property, I have some advice as to how you can overcome the fear that you may be experiencing.

1) Identify what specifically you are afraid of

By doing this, it helps us to further understand how we can overcome our fear. You can identify your fear by simply sitting down and writing out a list of all of the things that you are not afraid of with respect to buying a rental property, and you can also write down all of the things that you are afraid of. Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle of the page. On the left side list all of the things that you are not afraid of, and on the right side, list all of the things that you are afraid of. This essentially will be your pros and cons list of investing in real estate. Once you have identified your fears, you can take action to start overcoming them. Fear is often overcome by taking baby steps.

2) Take baby steps to overcome your fear

For example, your biggest fear about purchasing your first rental property may be that you are afraid that you will not be able to find tenants for your property, and that your property will sit vacant. Since you fear that your property will be vacant, you are afraid that you will have to pay the mortgage out of your own personal funds on this rental property, and the thought of this scares you.

This is a legitimate fear that a lot of new investors have. Here is how you combat this fear. You have to take small baby steps in order to overcome this. First, reach out and start making contact with other people that own rental properties. Ask them how they have found their tenants in the past. Ask them what challenges and problems they may have experienced in finding these tenants. Pick up tips and advice from these people as to what has worked for them in the past, and also what has not worked for them very well. Ask them what they did when their rental property was vacant, and the steps that they took in order to find another tenant.

Start to network and establish contact with Property Managers in your investment area. Ask these property managers the process that they take when they are trying to find tenants for a rental property. Also, when the tenants decide that they are going to move out of a rental property, also ask them what proactive steps they take in order to ensure that the rental property is rented out again quickly, and so that it is not vacant for a long period of time.

3) Stay in motion

It is one thing to take baby steps. However, it is equally important to make sure that you keep on ‘stepping’. By this, I mean, make sure that you are continually taking action to defeat your fear. Fear has a tendency of creeping up on us when we least expect it. Even if we have already taken some steps to help subdue our fears, if we stop taking these steps, such as the ‘baby steps’ talked about in the previous point, the fear can come back and fully consume us. I compare this to walking up a downwards moving escalator. Have you ever seen someone trying to walk or run up a downwards-moving escalator? I have seen this sometime in malls, and airports. In this example, the downwards-moving escalator represents our fear. We as individuals have to do our best to run up the escalator, and not stop running. When we reach the top of the escalator, we have defeated our fears. If we stop moving, and stand still, the escalator will take us all the way to the bottom. If we stop moving, we are letting our fears get the better of us. As such, our fear will consume us at this point. The long story short is that we have to always stay in motion. Never stop running up the fear escalator!

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3) Keep positive

While you are trying to combat your fear, only associate yourself with people that are encouraging you. Eliminate those people from your life that bring negativity. You do not need to be surrounded by people that will make you doubt yourself. Surround yourself with people that are going to support you, encourage you, and help you defeat your fear.

4) Repeat

Once you have overcome your fear, you have to take note of all the things that you did to achieve this. This is a noteworthy accomplishment so do not discount your achievement here. This however is not the end of your journey; rather it is only just the beginning. Fear never fully goes away, and it always seems to creep back into people’s lives. So if you know what you have done in the past to overcome certain fears, take note of that. Once the fear sneaks back into your life, repeat the steps that you initially took in order to overcome this fear again.

When you enter into the world of real estate investing, you must constantly be focused on bettering yourself. The advantages of bettering yourself are numerous. One of these benefits is increased knowledge. You should always have a focus on increasing your knowledge, no matter what your focus is in life. Increased knowledge will definitely lead you to becoming a better real estate investor.

One of the best ways that I have seen as to how a real estate investor can better himself or herself is through what is called a Mastermind group. The idea of the Mastermind group has been around for many years. One of the best, if not the very best definition of a Mastermind group is contained in the book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend that you read this book. The principals talked about in this book, if practiced as to how they were intended will literally help you to grow rich. Most if not all of the modern day books written on wealth and how to acquire wealth echo the principals outlined in Think and Grow Rich. Once you read Napoleon Hill’s book, you will be able to notice all of the modern day references to the book Think and Grow Rich. There are numerous references and they show up everywhere in modern day literature!

The first step to becoming a better real estate investor is to establish this Mastermind group. When putting together this group, you do not want the group to be too big or too small. A size of about 6 people is the amount that I would recommend. You want all of these people to be real estate investors. If you do not have any rental properties as of yet, you will want people with experience who have purchased at least one property. This is crucially important. It is important because these people have experience. You will want to be able to ask advice from these other people. For instance, if you are looking to buy your first rental property and cannot decide on a particular geographical area, you can ask your fellow Mastermind members for their opinion. When these people are asked for their advice, they often times will have no problem sharing with you the pros and/or cons of the geographical area that they are invested. In fact, for the most part, people with experience with real estate investing generally have no problem with sharing their experiences or information with you. On the flip side, if your Mastermind group is full of people who do not have any experience in investing, this can be very problematic. It is problematic, as all of the advice that you would receive from these people will be based on theory and observation alone, not on practical experience. Theory and observation means nothing. Practical experience means everything!

One of the best places that you can find people to be on your Mastermind group is from local real estate investment clubs. This is a great place to find your group members as often times like minded people as well as action takers are associated with these groups. I caution you here however. Your Mastermind group will fail terribly if you simply just select people to become members who have no real estate investing experience. This needs to be a powerful group that you assemble. Each member has to have his or her own individual strengths. Each member must be able to bring value to the group. It is the value that each person brings that will make this group effective.

You also have to determine what your individual value is that you bring to the group. Do some introspection and figure out the things that you are naturally good at. Once you have identified these natural abilities, you will be able to confidently share these strengths with your fellow Mastermind members, as perhaps there is a member in your group that is not as strong in one particular area, that you are strong in. By sharing your knowledge with this individual, you are able to help them to grow and improve. As an example, I have been a member of a number of Mastermind groups. Some have been great, while others, not so much. The current Mastermind group that I am a member of is excellent. It is excellent because we are all action takers, and very motivated individuals. We each have our own individual strengths. One of the strengths that I bring to the group is my familiarity, comfort level, and experience with blogging. This is a topic that some of the Mastermind members do not have a lot of experience with. As such, I share with them my knowledge, in order to help them learn. Conversely, I learn a lot myself from one of the Mastermind Members who has a lot of experiencing doing Joint Venture Partnerships. He has a lot of experience and is very comfortable with this investment strategy. As such, he is able to field any questions that I throw at him. It is through my association with him, that I am better able to improve my knowledge on Joint Venture Partnerships.

You will also become a better real estate investor if you meet with your Mastermind group on a regular basis. Frequency of meetings is very important. This is important because effective Mastermind groups serve as an excellent way to keep people accountable towards their own goals. If you can meet with your Mastermind group once per month, this is a good thing. The frequency of monthly meetings allows you to go out in the real world and implement some of your goals and action items that were established by yourself or your fellow Mastermind members.

If you are not able to find people from local real estate investment groups in your town or city, another option is to check out online forums. There are lots of online real estate forums where people talk about real estate and real estate investing. If you search carefully, you will come across certain forums of people that are taking action, and that actually are real estate investors. By choosing this method, you could be able to form your Mastermind group virtually. The geographical locations where people live would not matter here, as you can connect via the Internet. Again, here you have to be careful, as you only want to associate yourself with action takers and real estate investors. Again, this is an important point because these are going to be the people that you learn from. You are not going to learn from someone with less experience than you in real estate investing. It simply just doesn’t work that way.