Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
If you are young (or young at heart), now is a great time for you to begin investing in real estate. Don't let the road blocks of youth get in your way. You can certainly work around obstacles like no money, a lack of life experience, having college loan debt, or any of the other situations life throws at you. Investing in real estate is a mind set and nothing else.
You have motivation working for you. You're reading this article, which means you already have the advantage of wanting to invest. Now make that motivation work for you.
Besides motivation, you have technology on your side. Technology is your advantage in an industry heavily dominated by the older generation. You can use your mastery of technology to win at video games or to win at real estate investing.
While even the older generation has a decent knowledge of how to use the internet, many are slow to use social media, a smart phone, or create a spreadsheet to make instant real estate investment analysis possible. Even if spreadsheet analysis isn't your strong point, you certainly have a friend on Facebook that can help or you know how to find what you need at the right online forum.
You also have time on your hands. That's the most valuable resource you can have. It's much more important than money. You're whole goal for investing in real estate is making money. You can always make money but you can never make more time. Use your youth to start down the road that has created more self-made millionaires than any other business.
Invest in yourself first. The easiest loan to get is one for an owner-occupied home. Get out there and buy yourself a cheap ugly home. There will never be a better time than now. Move in and use your motivation to repair it and flip it as your first real estate investment. That's exactly how I did it. I bought my first house at age 21. It was no beauty. The outer bathroom wall was rotted away, the fireplace was a hazard, all of the flooring needed replacing, and many other problems needed to be taken care of. But I bought the place for not much more than a song and a dance.
During the first two years that I owned that house, I bought tools, materials, and read a bunch of do it yourself books. I taught myself how to do home repairs. I tiled the bathroom and the kitchen. I installed a dishwasher and replaced the wood burning fireplace. I built fences and manicured the lawn. During those first two years, I learned a lot about home repair. One of the best lessons I ever taught myself.
What makes a young real estate investor different from other people is knowing when it's time to move up. That doesn't always mean moving up in luxury. Buying up into a duplex or triplex is often the smarter real estate investment. That's your first step to getting other people to pay you for your real estate investments as well as paying for the roof over your head.
Often, young people hold on to that multiunit for many years. Yes, they buy themselves a decent single-family house but your first multiunit becomes your first cash cow. It also becomes the proof to lenders that you are both knowledgeable about real estate and are financially responsible. It leads to your next real estate investment and many more.
You should never let your youth be an insurmountable hurdle when it comes to investing in real estate. Done correctly, it's your advantage to retiring young and with a real estate fortune that will pay you for the rest of your life.
Please leave a comment if this article was helpful or if you have a question.
Author bio: Brian Kline has been investing in real estate for more than 35 years and writing about real estate investing for eleven years. He also draws upon 25 plus years of business experience including 12 years as a manager at Boeing Aircraft Company. Brian currently lives at Lake Cushman, Washington. A vacation destination, a few short miles from a national forest in the Olympic Mountains with the Pacific Ocean a couple of miles in the opposite direction.
