Real Estate Investing: 101

I find it quite amusing that the Real Estate Market is one of the only areas of investment that you can find information on how to become rich quick. Or on how to buy a course that will teach you all of the tricks and “unrevealed secrets” that will make such a difference in people’s lives.

I have been in the industry for 15 years, and I have been tremendously successful, making millions of dollars, and I guess most of it was a combination of luck and knowledge. I wholeheartedly agree that the leverage you can get from specific knowledge will give you an edge over the others. But I think most of the Real Estate courses are focusing on the wrong subjects, and they try to make the job sound much easier than it really is.  That, unfortunately, will bring a lot of discouragement, money lost and time wasted.

I have been a multimillionaire since 2007, and when I made my real estate fortune, I was not aware of courses and real estate “schemes.” I need to admit that the main reason why I made my real estate fortune was due to my dedication, hard work, and common sense.

I would like to clarify the word “common sense,” which is quite ambiguous if left like this in a conversation.

I guess for common sense I mean that sense of awareness of the investor’s point of view. If you know what the investor likes and their alternatives, then you can most easily understand if your Real Estate deal makes sense or not.

Comparing the Real Estate deal with other deals available is essential, not only in the same industry but also in other sectors will make a huge difference, because, at the end of the day, the person who invests money is not obliged to invest in only real estate.

I always compare my options to the bond market, the equity market, the commodity market, etc. Some Real Estate investor’s fail to compare the deal, and they get a bad result from the investment. Firstly, comparing the market alternative will give you a feeling of how good the deal is at the moment, and whether you should put your resources, effort, and money in real estate.

I made quite a bit of money in the last 3 years acquiring distressed assets, fixing them, flipping them or making them perform as a positive cash flow asset, but I was not listening to the “news” on television or in the paper on how good that investment was at that moment.

I always do my own math.  And as an investor,  I was applying my “investors commons sense, ” and the rules learned.  I knew that my money, or at least a good portion of it, was better in the Real Estate market rather than in low-yield bonds, high-risk yield bonds or anywhere where the ratio risk/return was not remunerative.

What I would do is apply the same knowledge and same criteria, ignoring the “news” of the papers, where all these guru’s that don’t have a clue and would predict the market without a proper understanding of the subject.

I want to create a small space where people can learn from my experiences. And mostly that they can learn the criteria that I use and apply to each deal:  how I became successful and it will be interesting to brainstorm with other people and investors, so to create a new way to analyze Real Estate deals in such a precise methodology that every deal will be a success.

In the last 3 years, I bought 250 houses, and I made money from practically all them. I tripled my money, and I guess we can say that it was easy to make money in the last 3 years, but to be honest, I saw experienced realtor’s laughing at me because of a deal that I was buying. I sold that house 3 months later for double the money, even though I had friends and investors that bought houses 3 years ago that they still cannot sell.

So while I need to admit that finding deals were quite simple 3 years ago, I can tell you that not many people knew what they were doing.

I think anybody who masters Real Estate investments can make huge money when things go bad or when they go good, and the opposite, you can lose a lot even when things go well for everybody.

In the Real Estate business, there is a distinctiveness that does not apply to other fields, “everybody thinks they can become an investor, and it’s easy.” However, people will not apply the same simplicity when it comes to commodity trading, the stock market or any other field.

Most people have no clue, no knowledge and they feel that they are competent and intelligent when it comes to the Real Estate market. It’s utterly ridiculous, and I find that in real estate there is the highest number of charlatans and idiots that I have ever met in my whole life.

In other fields, you don’t really meet so many incompetent people as you do in real estate. I think 95% of all of the realtors have absolutely no clue about the rules that drive the prices up and down and will be mostly useless to help you to make money because they don’t understand the big pictures themselves.

I want to finish like this: Most of the courses and seminars from the “gurus” that I see online and that I participated in are extremely funny, because they teach you something obvious, that if you find a deal below the market value, you can resell making money, hahaha! Hello….we already know this!

So if you find a house worth $100,000 at $65,000, you can make cash. Even if you do not have a penny or even if you have just enough money for the deposit, you can still make the deal a success!

I guess it’s the truth and it’s quite apparent, but what they don’t tell you is that the chances for you to get those deals are quite rare because you have millionaires like me that have a team of people always looking for deals. I have employees paid to spend all of their days, every day, searching for deals and making low ball offers to every single house that they come across…

I have cash on hand to buy, and like me, millions of investors always have an extra bonus for a friendly listing agent, so the chances for a random guy with no money to snap up deals from under me are rare. It does happen, but not so often that it’s time to leave your job and become an overnight Real Estate multi-millionaire.

It’s not easy to buy below market value, or at least the current market value. I think it’s easier to predict the market movements with care so that you can get a deal wherein few months you will gain fantastic equity and good cash flow.

It’s much more realistic to find a good deal for a house at half price, as opposed to limping in and needing much more money to make the deal a success.

If you want to follow my advice, I will very honestly tell you what I do and what principle I apply…and more importantly, where I apply them. I will not sell courses…I make my money in the field (in the real estate market), so I don’t need to sell dreams. I do however want to be a part of the success of other people’s dreams.

I will not tell and sell you BS…if you have no money and want to put a deposit on a property using a credit card with an APR of 15%, I will simply tell you the truth, “you are crazy, and you very well may lose all of your money!”

So, welcome to my blog, where a random unknown millionaire is willing to share the knowledge of the Real Estate market and how to identify and separate a good deal from a bad deal.

I hope you enjoy!

Ciao

Antonio Velardo