Are You Reviewing These 6 Key Areas of Your Business?

[Julio Gonzalez]

There are 6 key areas of having your own real estate business that I recommend reviewing periodically to ensure you are on the path to growth and sustainability. You should be doing this annually at an absolute minimum to ensure you are on track with your goals and can course correct if needed.

1. Accounting is current.
   1. Are your books up to date? Do you do the books yourself or have you hired someone? If you are trying to do them yourself and continuously fall behind, it might be a good idea to look into hiring a bookkeeper. If you have a bookkeeper, ensure you provide any receipts, documentation, etc. to them on a timely basis. It’s also important to sit down (or have a virtual meeting) with your accountant on a quarterly basis to review your financials.
2. Tax deductions are maximized.
   1. Ensure you’re getting proper tax planning done throughout the year, so you are minimizing taxes. Do you have a CPA that specializes in real estate taxation?
   2. Have you looked into cost segregation studies, bonus depreciation, 179D, historical tax credits, etc.? When reviewing the cash flow of properties, you discovered the cash flow was not feasible for a property, you could consider a 1031 Exchange to sell the property and replace it with a new property in the most tax efficient manner.
3. Review profit margins and cash flow for each of your properties.
   1. Is the cash flow of each property still as projected when you purchased the property? Are there unnecessary expenses that can be cut out? Are there services that you could shop around for to save money? Are you struggling with how to run the numbers on a property? Here’s a great book to help with this: Real Estate by the Numbers
4. Analyze and assess your objectives and goals.
   1. Are you on track to meet your goals? If not, what do you need to adjust to get back on track? Are you spending time in the right areas? If you wanted to add a certain number of doors this year to your portfolio, what is holding you back? Do you need to look for new ways to find financing? Brandon Turner has a great book on creative Real Estate financing strategies: Investing in Real Estate with No (and Low) Money Down
5. Surround yourself with those achieving what your goals are.
   1. It’s so important to surround yourself with mentors in the real estate business. Go to local meetups in your city, be active in the BiggerPockets forums, network on BiggerPockets and LinkedIn. Attend BPCon (this year is in Cancun!).
6. Constantly look for ways to learn and grow..
   1. Business is constantly changing, so ensure you are ahead of the curve! Attend seminars and webinars, read books, keep up with the market, etc. BiggerPockets has a whole library of books that are extremely helpful.
   2. Here are some of my favorite books in the BP Library:
      1. The Book on Tax Strategies for the Savvy Real Estate Investor
      2. The Book on Advanced Tax Strategies
      3. The House Hacking Strategy
      4. Rental Property Investing

What do you feel like are key aspects of your business that you currently or need to review?

[Todd Lennig]

@Julio Gonzalez I would add profit first for real estate investors to your list of books to read.  I find that a lot of my bookkeeping clients do not save money for taxes, repair or event those security deposits.  Profit first for real estate investors lays it our well on what should be put away.