The 7 Common Real Estate Investing Mistakes Stopping You From Being Successful

I have been investing in real estate, businesses and commodities for over 19 years now. And, I’ve been teaching people how to invest and run their business for just about 9 years.

Tens of thousands of people have received my systems, attended my events and benefited from our coaching programs. Over the years, I’ve watched, listened and surveyed my students to see how we can help them become more successful, faster.

As a matter of fact, when you walk through the front door of our 12,000 square foot office building, right behind Alice’s reception desk, you’ll see our core values. Our number one core value is “we are not successful until our students are successful.”

That being said, I have discovered 7 common mistakes that investors make that prevents them from being successful. They are:

1) Limited marketing
The first thing you need to realize is you are in the marketing business. Real estate is your product but marketing is your business. The number one reason I see a student doing a bad deal is lack of marketing.

Why? Because with a lack of marketing results in a lack of leads coming in. You get emotionally attached to doing this deal, because it’s the only one you’ve got cooking right now. So, you come up with reasons why this deal could work. This iscalled rationalizing. Once you start rationalizing, you have lost. If you can’t come back to your senses-- walk away!

2) Poor relationships
The sooner you realize this is a relationship business and that you need more relationships, the faster your business with take off. When a student comes to me and says “my business is struggling and I’m not sure why,” my first response is, “tell me about your relationships.”

How are your relationships with your bankers, brokers, management companies, private money partners, other investors, business partners, etc.?

If you want to evaluate the quality of your business, evaluate the quality of your relationships first.

3) Analysis lacks confidence
Many investors never get to the point of doing the most important thing they should be doing on a weekly basis to stay in business. That is, putting in offers.

We all know you cannot buy a piece of real estate without putting in an offer. So why don’t people put in as many offers as they can? Or, why don’t they at least put in one offer per week? The reason is they are not sure if they have analyzed the deal properly. They are afraid they have made a mistake.

Get on loop net or realtor.com and start looking at properties and start creating offers. Whether it be single- or multi-family properties, you need to practice creating offers. Then if you’re not sure you did it right, have someone check it for you.

4) Networking in the wrong places
You know you need to be networking to create relationships but are you networking in the right places to create the right relationships.

Here’s how we can tell very quickly. Is your business getting what it needs from the relationships you currently have? If not, change where you are networking and you will change your business world.

5) No Schedule
If you are not getting everything your business needs to get done to create that positive cash cycle that is so crucial in every business, then ask yourself if you are working from a schedule.

Do you spend time on Sunday night or Monday morning to set your schedule for the week? Do you spend time at the end of each workday and/or the beginning of each workday to write down the five most important things that need to get done that day? Then do you schedule them in?
If you don’t do this, try it. It's the one thing you can do right now to increase your productivity dramatically. That’s the reason it’s on this list.

6) Limited education
Have you heard the expression “he knows enough to be dangerous”? That means you can be dangerous to your pocketbook because there are many mistakes you can make when you invest in real estate. The more education you get, the less of the chance you will make mistakes. Education allows you to learn from other people’s mistakes.

If you are learning from someone who says they haven’t had a bad real estate deal, you are learning from the wrong person. Anyone who has been in the real estate business for any length of time, has had a challenging deal. This is how you learn. If you’re smart, you don’t make the same mistake twice.

If you’re really smart, you learn from other people’s mistakes and then don’t make them yourself. You WILL make mistakes, you just want them to be small mistakes, not big mistakes.

7) Lack of systems
The more systems you have in your business, the more likely it is you have a real business. Systems allow a business to run while you are doing the two things you should always be focusing on-- getting money and getting deals.

Some of the systems your business needs are: marketing systems, analyzing systems, offering systems, closing systems, take over systems, disposition systems, employee systems, contact management systems, follow up systems. I could go on and on. Actually your entire business should be systemized for success.

Either get systems that are already created and that you can incorporate into your business or get the book, “E-Myth Revisited,” which will show you how to create your own systems. Either way, get your business systemized.