5 Real Estate Investing Mistakes To Avoid For New Investors

When you’re a newbie investor, it’s easy to fall into the traps of some of the most common real estate investing mistakes. Those beginner mistakes can typically be forgiven and set aside. After all, it’s often through experiencing those failures that you can move forward and learn. It’s not overnight that you become an expert in anything, including real estate. It takes a lot of time and experience to become seasoned at anything you wish to get your hands on.

You can learn from your mistakes. We know this much is true, but if you can avoid committing those mistakes altogether, that would be better for your investment’s stability. It’s still better to learn from the mistakes of others than to have to go through them yourself. This begins with identifying what went wrong in the process, so the same won’t happen to you.

To that end, here’s a list of the top five real estate investing mistakes you should avoid, straight from experts like Kris Krohn:

1. Not Having Clear Investment Goals

Your goal is to earn an income; hence, you’ve decided to invest in residential real estate. Yet what are the other goals apart from income stability? Have a clear notion of what you’d like to achieve by investing in real estate. Otherwise, you won’t have a clear sense of direction on what you want to do next. You may not even reach the goals you’ve set to achieve when you don’t know where you’re going in the first place.

For your real estate investments to prosper, it’s wise to center everything around your goals. Think about the strategies you can use, the portfolio design, and the individual types of real estate investment you’ll penetrate for the best returns. You may click here for a good head start on learning more about real estate.

2. Not Having A Plan

Don’t jump right onto real estate investment without having a clear plan in mind. Just because it’s generally an attractive market, this doesn’t mean you can penetrate it immediately without having any plan. Treat your real estate investments like a business that needs a good foundation.

There’s a lot of wisdom in striking while the iron is hot, but this doesn’t mean not having a plan ready. The adage to ‘look before you take a leap’ applies here. Do a lot of research on matters like the type of investment, the market, and even have a financial study. Don’t just hope to wing it.

This should be like starting a business and managing a business team. The better your plan, the higher the chances of success for your real estate investments.

3. Not Having An Exit Strategy

Having an exit strategy doesn’t mean that you see your investment on the road to failure. It’s more about being prepared for whatever may come your way. Many new real estate investors still commit the mistake of not having an exit strategy, as they focus more on the positive facets of their investment.

It’s always better to prepare for the worst. In doing so, you have enough to cover your finances should a specific real estate investment fail. Think of the possible worse scenarios you could potentially be a part of. Then, have a plan of action or exit strategy for each. For example, if you are considering timeshare ownership, you must have a proper understanding of what is a timeshare property and how to get rid of it when the investment fails.

Here’s a tip: a good exit strategy should offer flexibility and allows you to make modifications in your investment, should you be strapped for cash. The whole goal should be to minimize potential losses in the unlikely event something goes wrong.

4. Not Thinking About Diversification

Suppose the residential market in your local area is currently getting very attractive. So, you’ve focused so much on centering all your real estate investments on the residential market. All your capital is set only on the residential market, because of the financial advantages it brings.

This isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, except that you aren’t diversifying. The whole point of asset diversification is to have a perfect balance of different types for higher financial security. This way, you’ll have other profitable ones to rely on to make up for the losses of one real estate investment that goes down.

5. Not Haggling The Price

For newbie investors, it’s easy to have their emotions get the best of them. It’s an all-too-familiar scenario to see investors fall in love with a particular property without considering its market price. They don’t haggle, nor do they think about comparing with other similar properties in the same or nearby location.

As an investor, you should always think about the return on investment. The key to a higher likelihood of achieving this is to have a lower purchase price for a wider allowance for income.

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Conclusion

Now that you’re aware of some of the most common mistakes committed when investing in real estate, you should be feeling more confident about penetrating this investment opportunity. Like any other investment type, do note that this won’t be an easy ride. You have to study what you’ll be getting yourself into as well, so you can ensure your investment turns out profitable. The list discussed here should be a lesson learned for you, so you don’t make the same ones as you go along.