Where is a good starting point for real estate investing education?

[Jerome Adams]

Hi,
A new member who wanted to say hello and introduce myself from new jersey. Being a college student with very few resources, I'm glad I found this website right before I laid the last of my money out for a very expensive bootcamp! With that being said and going through the articles and forums, would you say that it would be more valuable to understand how markets work and their respective cycles rather than focusing all your energy on a specific tactic or strategy? Just wanted to make my education process smarter not harder. Thanks again BP

[James Vermillion]

Jerome, welcome to BP. There are a lot of ways to get educated on real estate and it does not necessarily require courses or boot-camps or gurus. In fact, I got started in real estate by utilizing all free resources (minus a few books I purchased).

I was fortunate enough to find BP right when I was getting started in real estate, and am I glad about that. Right away I identified those investors who I could tell had experience and success and would be willing to share. I paid special attention to their posts, got involved in forum conversations, and even sent some private messages. I learned a ton and obviously I have continued to come back ever since.

I also hit up my local library. I did not want to spend hundreds of dollars on books I would read once and then put on a bookshelf so I went and checked some out and read them. Most libraries have pretty good real estate and finance sections. You can do a search in the top right of BP for "books" to find threads about the best rei books out there.

Another option is to find and attend rei clubs or associations. By attending and conversing with investors you can learn a lot about your local market and make some connections that can really come in handy as you get ready to start investing on your own.

I also decided to get my real estate sales agent license in my state. While I did not learn a lot about investing per se, I learned some of the basic terminology and the basics about standard sale procedures. This is one was not free either but it was cheap and I made up the difference with the commissions savings of my very first real estate transaction.

Finally, there are other numerous online resources, blogs, e-books, etc that can add to your foundation of knowledge for the low price of FREE.

Good luck!