5 Ways To Leverage Realtors To Jump Start Investing

Beginning real estate investment and looking to fast track? Common suggestions for “getting started” are contacting established investors for coffee or attending local real estate investors association. Although networking is important, investors in a broad sense are your competitor nor is your success directly correlated with their success.

Step in real estate agents. Realtors only get paid when you get a deal (and a “good one” will be an advocate for you to get a strong deal). There are very good reasons newer, and experienced, real estate investors can utilize a local realtor as a cog in their growth engine.

Learn the Ropes. Major BiggerPockets reader? Mastered a flip and cap rate calculator? Read Rich Dad Poor Dad cover to cover? Haven’t done a deal? You’re a keyboard warrior and have little understanding how a transaction is structured. A successful realtor works vastly more deals than a successful investor. Investor deals are time consuming and risky with bigger pay-outs – realtors are involved in short duration for less pay-out – so they have time and incentive to work more transactions.A realtor will be more than happy to hand hold you through the entire process, even driving you to properties. They also can provide inspection guidance as you are viewing homes for the first few times with an eye for investment, the realtor has seen thousands. Although you will pay commission, good luck with getting hand-holding like that your local REIA.

Don't under estimate that real estate is local. "National" gurus and coaches will have very little knowledge how transactions are working on the ground in your market.

Source Deals. No online presence? Zero cash for direct-mail? Full time job? Deals won’t just fall in your lap. An “investor friendly” real estate agent can take investment criteria, monitor the MLS, and make offers on your behalf. I can’t stress enough that you need to be capable of closing on the deals you ask for assistance on. If that means $50,000 to $100,000 cash purchases, or $200,000 with mortgage finance – make sure you are wasting the realtor’s time.

Update To Date Comps. I’ve used a variety of software for comping property. Redfin, Zillow, RealtyTrac, local platforms. Without a doubt the best Florida platform is Imapp – which is only available to licensed realtors and their assistants. Imapp pulls data directly from the county records and thus is more up to date than other sources. I won’t do a deal until getting thorough info via Imapp.

Manage Your Sales! You fixed-and-flipped a property in a super desirable neighborhood. It’s stunning. This masterpiece draw hundreds of offers in a week. Having someone that can manage the offers, the showings, assess the buyers is valuable. I can tell you I certainly don’t run around doing showings and sorting through 100s of offers on my fix-and-flips. Realtor does it for me, and I can focus on the next acquisitions. Time is money, after all. I often learn quite a bit about mortgage financing from the realtors and how various contingencies work for “regular” buyers.

Referral Business. Although rules in every state vary, in many cases you can partner with a local broker for some of your off-market leads that don’t suit your business model. This has the advantage of you not making what appears to be a “low ball” offer on a beautiful property and sounding like a hero giving solid advice to find a regular owner occupant on the open market. Depending on your state, it’s possible for the partnership to have commissions shares.