5 Tips For New Investors - Which ones are you doing and which do you need to do?

[Jonathan Greene]

I respond to many posts here to help new investors, so I wanted to give out 5 tips that may help you on your journey if you are new. These are not things I came up with alone; they are things I learned from experience over 30+ years. If you do these five things consistently and immediately, you will get out of analysis paralysis and into the game much quicker than watching Instagram Reels and TikTok videos.

If you are experienced and want to weigh in on which ones here you like and dislike, let's go. Collaboration is the best part of real estate investing and I did not get this from using some AI-generated portal (currently running rampant in the forums). I know all of this stuff.

1. Go to meetups. As many as you can. Please find all of the local meetups and put them all on your calendar as repeating and go. You can read all the books and listen to all the podcasts, but until you know other real estate investors, you will not buy anything and not move forward. Find the meetups with no pitches where it's all networking or speakers with no pitch.

2. Get out from behind the computer and look at properties. The number of times I have heard a new investor tell me they evaluated 20 properties this week when they saw none is too many. You won't learn anything from crunching numbers until you know what those numbers mean in real life. You have to know what $200k smells like in your area and feels like. You don't need to have an agent (although that would be great, but it's not a good use of their time until you are pre-approved and ready) because there are Open Houses every weekend in every market. Go to the nice ones (ARV) and the crap ones (repair costs). Learn in the field, not on a screen.

3. Don't pay for coaching or a mentor (yet). The best time to pay for a coach, mentor, or program is when you are already doing business and you want to go from A to C. B you can get to on your own, you want to build your own framework first, but you will need someone to help you get to C most of the time. Most people who pay for coaching, mentorship, and programs before they have done a deal are looking for the payment to generate the results, but most investors suffer from user error because of this.

4. Don't spend a lot of time in Facebook investing groups. You will never find a place with more spam and unscrupulous posters and tricks than in Facebook investing groups. Even the good ones have trouble because they want to grow so they allow too many people in and then the spam starts. Very few groups are good at moderation. Also, Facebook is where your time goes to die. You will get an alert and then you are looking at your friend's baby. Work the forums here instead.

5. Get your finances in order. Now. Today. Start doing this right now. If you want to invest in the future, you want to make sure that your financial life is under control and transparent. If you think you are ready to invest and you have no control or knowledge of your own financial situation, you are going to get sold on not just hard money, but thick money and you don't want that. First, clean up your house so you can expand it.

[Matt McCurdy]

This is a great list Jonathan! 

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

Good tips.

#4: The lower the bar of entry, the more likely you end up with a lot of trash. It takes almost no effort to hop on Facebook, Twitter, threads, or other groups to spew nonsense. When the facebook groups first started, I was asked to moderate them but I only stuck with it for a week before giving up. It's almost as bad as Twitter and Threads.

[Jonathan Greene]

Quote from @Nathan Gesner:

Quote from @Jonathan Greene:

Good tips.

#4: The lower the bar of entry, the more likely you end up with a lot of trash. It takes almost no effort to hop on Facebook, Twitter, threads, or other groups to spew nonsense. When the facebook groups first started, I was asked to moderate them but I only stuck with it for a week before giving up. It's almost as bad as Twitter and Threads.

Exactly. For some reason, they think a bigger group is better and then in three days, every wholesaler and scammer is posting links to their BS. It's kind of like Workplace for brokerages, a hellbent disaster with no value.

[Dan Thomas]

I think #5 is the MOST important for a new investor. I got sold on the no money down approach back almost 10 years ago when I first started looking at REI. It took a while but I eventually learned that this is not a get rich quick game and that the online folks trying to sell their books or services were doing just that. Obviously people can get deals done with little or no money down but as a new investor I think your time is better spent getting your financial house in order so that when you go to a bank with a deal you are coming from a position of strength.

I kind of chuckle when I see folks who have poor credit scores, no money saved and are looking for advice on markets to invest in.  It is putting the cart WAY before the horse in my opinion.  Focus on making yourself a strong candidate for banks to lend to.  You can have all the deals stacked up in the world but if a bank won't finance it you are not pushing forward.

[Bernard Nader]

Thanks for this list. I was just about to post and ask about local meetups.

[Alecia Loveless]

@Jonathan Greene Definitely get your financial house in order before starting your investment journey.

[Jonathan Greene]

Quote from @Dan Thomas:

I think #5 is the MOST important for a new investor. I got sold on the no money down approach back almost 10 years ago when I first started looking at REI. It took a while but I eventually learned that this is not a get rich quick game and that the online folks trying to sell their books or services were doing just that. Obviously people can get deals done with little or no money down but as a new investor I think your time is better spent getting your financial house in order so that when you go to a bank with a deal you are coming from a position of strength.

I kind of chuckle when I see folks who have poor credit scores, no money saved and are looking for advice on markets to invest in.  It is putting the cart WAY before the horse in my opinion.  Focus on making yourself a strong candidate for banks to lend to.  You can have all the deals stacked up in the world but if a bank won't finance it you are not pushing forward.

That is great advice. Building the foundation of investing requires being financially sound.

[Andrea Vodegel]

Thank you for posting this! Very helpful to us folks just getting started.