“Find me a deal!” seems to be the mantra of too many real estate investors; the wrong ones. As if you have sellers everywhere who are completely ignorant of the true value of their property. You can’t blame these investors. They have been sold this fairytale by one real estate guru after another for decades. They believe that there are “too-good-to-be-true” opportunities out there because they have been told so. These are the same kinds of people who buy the Sham Wow and believe they can dry their entire Winnebago with one rag, or think the Ab-Roller is going to give them a six-pack without breaking a sweat.
Too-good-to-be-true is a marketing gimmick as old as the snake oil salesman. Unfortunately, these unrealistic expectations have been set for millions of consumers who are intrigued by real estate, and as a result, they are chasing a very unlikely dream.
If an investor walked up their financial advisor and said “Google is trading at $578/share? Get me some for $400!”, the advisor would laugh his client out of the room. And yet that is precisely what investors do to us. “Find me a $100,000 house for $70,000!”
Those same investors have a 401k or IRA sitting in low yield accounts for decades. Their expectation for that investment is to put money aside and hope it grows gradually. They don’t ask their financial advisor to find them deals. They ask for sound investments that should perform over the long run.
Based on that set of reasonable, mature expectations, you represent the best investment on the planet – single family homes as rental property. So how do we combat the wrong advice being given by the gurus? It’s very simple. Start right now to set the record straight. Communicate the right advice: buy a market priced property that can generate a positive cash flow, and hold it…forever.
People used to buy the Ab-Roller for the impossible dream of a six pack with no work. Now they buy P90X, the most successful exercise program of all time, which tells you right up front that if you want to get in great shape, you are going to work really, really hard. Maybe people are finally tired of being lied to. They want to know how things really work and they implicitly trust the professionals who tell it like it really is.
Our industry is only now beginning to add true value to real estate investors. This is our opportunity to be the P90X of the investing world. You can’t get rich quick, but you can absolutely get rich!
Here is a tool that can help. The Case Study Calculator is the coolest real estate evaluation tool on the web, and we make it available for free. Click here to see a brief video that demonstrates how it works. Try it, play with it and share it with your friends. Make assumptions and watch the outcomes change. The more you do, the more you will see that great investments are hiding all around you, right in plain sight.
To learn a ton about real estate investing, and how to build a great investor clientele, please join us at www.OwnAmerica.com and register for a free webinar demonstration.
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