Questionnaire for New Investors

[Chris Dawson]

As a real estate broker who works exclusively with investors, I find myself asking the same questions over and over again to not only new investors but to seasoned investors as well.  I was thinking it would be a good idea to put all of these questions into a form that could be used to help investors, better define their investing goals, and to also help those of us who provide services to these investors, better understand our client's goals.

I checked the forms area on BP and I didn't find any such form so I figured I would start this conversation and get as much input from the BP community and then I will create the form and post it to the forms section.

I'll get the ball rolling with a few questions (in no particular order) that I always ask:

• What experience, if any, do you have with real estate investing?
• Rank these terms from most important to least important:
  • Monthly Cash Flow
  • Long term equity
  • tax haven (tax right offs) 
  • Quick equity
• What type of properties are you interested in?
  • SFRs
  • Multi Family
  • Land
  • Retail
  • Industrial
  • Office Space
  • Redevelopment
• What class of property are you interest in?
  • Class A
  • Class B
  • Class C
  • Class D (if used in your area)
• How do you plan to finance your deals?
  • Cash
  • private money
  • bank loans
  • hard money
  • seller financing
  • SD IRA
  • Other
• What price range are you looking at?
• What risk level are you comfortable with? 
  • High Risk
  • Medium Risk
  • Low Risk
• What type of returns are you wanting to achieve?
• How are you measuring your returns?
• What is your exit strategy? - Everyone needs one, and few people think about it.

That is all that I can think of right now.  I know there are more so please add to this list!

Once we feel good about the list, I will create the form and share it with everyone.