Lessons From Real Estate Investing

If you want to be successful in real estate investing, you need to have a mentor or a coach, somebody that will give you some guidance or keep you motivated. Also the network of friends or other investors that have been there and done that possibly or where you're at least in the process. Tony Robbins says "Success leaves clues". Just go find somebody that's doing what you want to learn how to do or find a group of people that are doing it. 

Join the group, work for somebody that's doing it or pay somebody to show you how to do it. That's the quickest way to get from A to Z, just find somebody doing it and attach your horse to their wagon. If I want to learn, if I want to take my business to the next level or I want to do some different, I just find somebody who's done it and I find a way to partner up with them and it just gets you there a lot quicker. 

I'd met some guys in one of these networking events and they had just gotten an 80 unit deal in East Dallas, it was a $4 million deal. I had to raise like a million and a half for it, they asked me if I'd like to be a co-sponsor on it and I said yes, it was my first deal. And so they brought me in to help raise capital and I think they needed some help on the net worth part of it as a KP. I came in on it and we raised the capital, everything was really smooth. And then the boiler caught on fire took out the chiller. That was a great lesson on how not to be a seller because these sellers just became very difficult to work with. I think they saw that they could fix the issues, put it back up for sale and make a little bit more money. 

I don't know if they did when it was all said and done, but they really put the screws to us. They made it really difficult to close, we had to eventually abandon the deal, refund all of our investor's money back, pay them some percentage for the time we held their money and then we're out 30-40 grand on a due diligence costs which the sellers didn't care. So it taught me a little lesson on how to do the right thing.