Know Your Market (Very Important)

[Grant Cardone]

Know your market completely. 

You need to know every sale, every comp, every rental, what properties are under-rented, what properties are over-leveraged, what that property sold for in the last cycle, the vacancy in your market, and the cost of every expense. 

Insurance, utilities, management fees, the cost to turn, how long it takes to turn, the cost to advertise, which ads work, foot traffic, closing ratios, trailing 12 months of operation, and then you need to know and have relationships with the top 3 controlling brokers in the market to find the best apartment stock within.

Look, I am not trying to scare you here, but there are so many courses out there suggesting real estate is easy when, in truth, there is a lot to know. There are a number of tools you might want to invest in, like Real Capital Analytics, which gives you the selling and financing history of a property. Axiometrics provides you with rent comps and Co-Star breaks down property detail information, rent comparable and sales history.

These programs can cost up to $20,000 a year for your local market and can give you a lot of intel. LoopNet is free and is basically for amateurs (I call them Loopsters), but can be a great source to find brokers. The top brokers don't typically list their properties on LoopNet but only on their sites. When you call a broker, don't even mention you saw it on LoopNet, you will lose credibility. 

-GC