A question we often get asked is "How can I get started in real estate?" Often times, people are aware of real estate and actively educate themselves but are still lost on where to begin. This can be due to a variety of factors but usually the heart of the matter is that there is so much you need to know to get started. With this five part weekly series, we will try to break down the learnings from our own journey in the hopes that it makes your climb less daunting.

1. Identify your investment goals
2. Determine a market
3. Build a team you can trust
4. Complete your first deal
5. What next?

Our experience is primarily based on on-out-of state long term rentals but most of our learnings will still apply if you are doing something different. Many of our processes were based on David Greene's Long-Distance Real Estate Investing: How to Buy, Rehab, and Manage Out-of-State Rental Properties and then further refined to fit our personal needs. We plan to share our high level core learnings but the book will provide additional nitty gritty details. We highly recommend using the book as a template for developing your own processes.

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Identify your goals

Why start here?

There are countless ways to get started in real estate and no one has mastered everything. The general partner (GP) you see doing huge 100+ multifamily syndications may have no idea how to underwrite and put together a storage facility deal. It can take a lifetime to try every real estate investing strategy, let along master them, and that makes it very difficult to know where to start.

In my personal experience, when you're starting at the bottom, it is easy to get overwhelmed and lose motivation. By narrowing down your goals and therefore your initial investment strategy, there is a significantly smaller subset of things to learn and master.

Your goals will also shape your initial strategy and growth. Someone who's interested in cashflow with low to no money down may become an expert at identifying and executing short term rental arbitrage opportunities. Or they might learn about cold calling and buying seller-financed rental properties. If someone else is interested in fast growing appreciation, they may go down an entirely different path.

Identify your goals and use them to direct your energies. Focus your efforts and energy on one goal and you will find yourself growing faster than you thought possible. Build a solid foundation and then build outwards.

What to consider

Goals

As obvious as it is, I dont think many people take enough time to think about their goals. So many people want to buy in the "hottest" market or they want to buy a rental... but why? I don't mean that in the way where those strategies don't work. Instead, how does buying a home in a hot market or buying a rental bring them closer to their goal. Have they actually chosen the ideal strategy for themselves?

Imagine where you want to be in 10 years. What do you need for this to happen? As an example, if you want live very comfortably, you might say you need $20k a month in disposable income. Someone else may imagine that their children's college funds are 100% funded. Whatever your 10 year goal is, identify it and what you'd need if it were right now. Hold the thought, we'll revisit it in a bit.

Time and Energy

Now let's consider how much time you're able to put aside every week to pursue your goal. It isn't realistic to think you can be a general contractor (GC) overseeing your own rehabs while holding another full time W2 job. Some people may be able to do it but consider your situation and come up with a realistic number.

I consider energy to be separate from time. Some people may be looking for a very passive strategy while others need to be calling and coordinating every little part of their operation. How much effort are you willing and able to put into the time set aside? Are you able to floor the gas and then bring the same level of effort to your full time job?

Putting it together

At this point, you should have an idea for you want to be in 10 years and how much time and effort you are willing to devote to getting there. Just like how companies plan their roadmaps, you should create one for yourself. As an example, I'll fill it in with my personal goals.

Let's say I want to be financially independent outside of my W2 income. To do this, I decide I need an alternative income stream of $6k a month.

Note that what I consider medium energy or risk, you may consider low or high. What really matters is having a consistent and reasonable view of what is achievable based on the time and energy spent.

We start with what I very creatively call a "10 Year Roadmap".

Timeline	Goal	Needed to achieve goal
Year 10	Financial Independence	$6k per month
Year 5
Year 1

Logically, we could fill in the remainder of the columns as follows assuming linear growth.

Timeline	Goal	Needed to achieve goal
Year 10	Financial Independence	$6k
Year 5	No longer fully reliant on W2 income	$3k
Year 1	??	??

From this point, you should be able to determine what strategy may work best for your goal. You need to ask yourself questions such as whether your goal is more cash flow focused or appreciation based? Take the time to understand your goal and underlying motivations.

What options exist?

Once you understand your real estate investing goals, it becomes easier to filter out strategies that don't fit your requirements. For example, I may not look at flipping homes if I think there is significant risk and effort involved. Instead, I might look towards rentals.

Read forums, listen to podcasts, go to meetups. Expand your understanding of what's possible and keep in mind the effort and time you are willing to spend. Is it enough?

At the end of the day, the most important thing is to pick something that aligns with your goals and run with it. There is no right answer, if it were that simple, every investor would be doing the exact same thing.

Final steps

Once you've determined a potential road, breakdown your 1 year goal into more achievable chunks. What can you accomplish in 1 week or 1 month to reach your 1 year goal.

In "The 12 Week Year" by Brian P. Moran, he advocates for working with 12 week goals in mind to avoid low productivity and increase urgency. This is very similar to how programmers work in sprints. Goals and deadlines expand to the alotted time. By setting shorter and more achievable goals, you are able to push yourself further with less complacency.

Continuing the example earlier, I decided that I wanted to build a rental portfolio. With this in mind, I can finalize my "10 Year Roadmap" and break down the first year into managable sprints.

Timeline	Goal	Needed to achieve goal
Year 10	Financial Independence	$6k
Year 5	Build a sizable rental portfolio (10+ properties)	$3k
Year 1	Buy my first property	??

Now let's set short term achievable goals.

Timeline	Goal
Month 12	Close on my first property
Month 7+	Start writing offers regularly
Month 5+	Start networking with investors and building a team in my chosen market
Month 3+	Finalize a market
Month 2	Start researching a market
Month 1	Continue reading and accumulating knowledge, start identifying criteria for markets
Now	Find resources and books

Motivation

Look over what you've come up with. Are you motivated to get to work? If not, you need to ask yourself why. If you're not excited about the investing strategy, understand why and reevaluate if it is the best for you.

If you're the type of person who needs motivation from external sources, go to meetups, find an accountability partner, listen to a podcast, ask a friend to check in on you, there are plenty of options.

Real estate investing returns are tightly coupled to the effort put in. If you aren't putting your 110% forward, why should you expect to get 110% back?

Homework

You've made it to the end... now what? I challenge you to do the following things and take your first step.

1. Identify your 10 year goal
2. Create and fill in a "10 Year Roadmap" tailored to your goals.
3. Go to a meetup or talk to investors.
4. Come up with 3 investing strategies that can help you reach your 10 year goal.
5. (Stretch) Create your "1 Year Roadmap"

As always, if you have comments, questions or want to chat, reach out using the links in the footer. If you enjoyed this content and want to get notified when we publish a new post, use the mail list form below to subscribe.