Your Big Picture Business Plan or Technical Skill?
When it Comes to Making More Money as a Real Estate Investor, What's More Important?by Rob Swanson
A battle wages in the minds of most real estate investors when it comes time to pick the area of real estate investing that they want to focus on. Obviously, the burning question always looms, “Where can I make the most money?”
Many real estate investors spend significant time thinking about, planning and documenting the big picture of an overall real estate investing business plan, while others focus all of their time energy and effort on one specific technical skill.
Which is better you ask?
Well, as you might expect, it’s a combination of both. Let me give you a few brief examples.
Let’s take the example of the real estate investor focused on the big picture real estate investing business of wholesaling. Wholesaling is a big picture real estate investing strategy that requires a big picture plan yet demands specific technical skills to be wildly successful.
To wholesale real estate, you must be proficient at finding great deals, you must package great deals using wholesale contracts, you must know the exact wants of local rehabbers and buy & hold investors and you must have a great real estate investor savvy team to help you make profits. It's a big picture business plan that requires technical skills to be successful.
Now, let’s look at the real estate investor focused on learning all the specific, technical aspects of successfully closing short sales for huge equity and big cash profits. Learning the specific techniques you need to profit from short sales is very lucrative, but, the technical skill of the short sale by itself is not enough to be successful. Why?
Because while the problem requiring the short sale fix is wide spread and more than ample opportunity exists to profit with short sales, the successful short sale real estate investor must learn many big picture parts of the real estate investing business in order to close deals and make money; you must learn your exit strategy and be able to make sure the deal closes. Exit strategies for the short sale investor include things such as wholesale techniques, retailing and rehab strategies, buy & hold and landlording skills and funding options to close deals.
As you can see that you can’t just focus on the BIG PICTURE and you can’t just focus on a SPECIFIC TECHNIQUE to be successful as a real estate investor. You must round out your education and your ability to put profitable deals together and get paid.
Learn the skills you need and then follow the simple business plan I present at my blog and real estate investing can be everything you have always wanted it to be - EXTREMELY PROFITABLE.
Check out my blog here: http://rswanson.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/real-estate-business-plan-101/.
