Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

Note: laws and regulations regarding the advertising, registering, and formalization of private loans vary enormously state-to-state. Generally, these rules apply to the borrower rather than the lender, but even lenders should be aware of what the laws in your state say about these transactions. Of course, this article is not intended as legal, accounting, or other professional advice. Always consult with your legal, accounting, or other professional before making any investment.  Further, nothing in this article should be construed as an offering or solicitation of a security.

Private lending is a strategy in which even moderate-income investors can easily get involved.

There are plenty of real estate entrepreneurs and rehabbers who want to borrow your money; if you let it be known you have as little as $20,000 to lend in most markets, someone will be right there ready to put that cash to work.

If all goes as it’s supposed to, it’s a truly hand-off investment; you just sit back and collect checks.

But the big fallacy of private lending is that YOU, as the private lender, don’t need to know very much to assure that the deal goes well. After all, it’s up to
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Just this morning, I was having yet another conversation with a fellow educator about the frustration we have with students who have the brains, education, and resources to make deals—but who, month after month, do everything BUT make deals.

We discussed people who spend big bucks on courses, set up their LLCs, draft land trusts, buy marketing/accounting/management software, attend REIA meetings religiously, have a color-coded filing system, get their real estate license, start a buyer’s list, concoct every conceivable question about every conceivable scenario in a deal…

…in fact, do everything that it takes to be a successful real estate entrepreneur except make offers.

Many of these people are successful in their other endeavors; many have good jobs, nice houses, great kids, you name it. But they can never seem to get to the point of actually buying a property, no matter what we tell them or how much time passes.

What many of you seem to be waiting for is that NEXT bootcamp or the NEXT investor meeting or the NEXT meeting with their coach.

And what you’re hoping for is that you’ll read something, hear something, or learn some
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Try not to roll your eyes too much when I say this: I was scared shirtless of seller negotiation for YEARS. It’s absolutely true: I have a constellation of nature and nurture traits that make my choice of professions kind of hilarious.

I’m waaaay on the end of the introvert/extrovert bell curve. My Meyers-Briggs profile is INTP. My DISC test says that my “I” is a 25 out of 100. If you don’t know what any of that means, it means that I am naturally extremely introverted.

Add to that the fact that I have a tendency to get very anxious over uncertainty—I try to run every scenario and every outcome mentally before I do anything—and you don’t exactly get a recipe for someone who’s a “natural negotiator”.

In the beginning, before I really understood seller psychology, or how to deal with the objections they throw out to offers, or, for that matter, how to deal with rejection without feeling like I must have messed up somehow, I literally lost, I don’t know, hundreds of deals to the fact that I couldn’t get out of my own head long enough to actually tell sellers what I’d like to pay them for their houses.

Drew LOOOOVES to tell the (sadly, true) story of m
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Maybe you’re someone who's completely comfortable asking complete strangers questions like, “How much do you owe on your house” or saying things like, “That’s crazy, you’ll never get that price”.

But if so, you’re unusual—most real estate entrepreneurs have a tough time telling other people that their properties are not worth what they think they’re worth. Whether it’s that you don’t want to argue with a seller who seems certain that his price is right, or whether it’s your fear that YOU’RE the one who’s wrong, or whether you don’t want to disappoint or offend complete strangers who’ve come to you for help, the fact is that you might just have a hard time choking out the fact that you need to pay less for a property than what the seller wants.

I’m the same way. The difference, though, is that I have over 2 decades of trial-and-error-based experience in talking to property owners of all descriptions. And because I’ve spoken to, oh, 20,000 or more sellers, I’ve had the opportunity to try a lot of phrases that get my point across without sounding confrontational, insulting the seller or his ugly house or iffy neighborhood, or asking questions that the seller might find invasive if stated too directly.

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Warning: This is the longest blog post I've ever written. At the same time, I think if you can read it all, you'll be glad you did.

Because there’s a dark secret that a lot of investors know, but that no one seems to talk about much. It’s a secret that every full-time investor eventually discovers for himself or pays the consequences.

So, I guess this “secret” isn’t, really a secret—in fact, it’s right in front of all of us, all the time. Look at any successful investor, and there it will be, staring you right in the face. Yet, you may have never noticed it on any conscious level.

Part of the reason you’ve never noticed it is that the real estate education industry tends to misdirect you, denying the truth of this phenomenon without coming right out and addressing it. Have you guessed it yet? No? then let me drag out “the reveal” a little longer with an example.

Let’s take 2 imaginary real estate entrepreneurs, Investor A and Investor B (well, OK, they’re not all that imaginary—they’re both based on people I know, and if you look around a little, you’ll see examples of both, too).

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Our business fascinates me.

Whether it’s creative deals or watching how REIA groups develop and maintain individual cultures or observing how different types of people react to the pressures and rewards of being real estate entrepreneurs, I find myself filing, categorizing, reorganizing, and contemplating where real estate investing fits in the bigger world, and how the people in it behave.

One of the things that I started to notice a few years back is that certain people seem to be drawn like a magnet to steel to certain strategies in the real estate business. And from what I can tell from working one on one with students, these tendencies appear to precede any actual exposure to real estate education and strategies.

Before I explain more (and potentially affect your answer to this question), let’s do a little thought experiment.

First, try to gain some neutrality about whatever money “things” are going on for you right now. If you have bills due that you can’t pay, or just saw your social security retirement statement and realized that you can’t possibly live on that, or just got a bonus at work and are feeling flush, try to chill about it for a moment. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, get centered, and read on. Read More...

If you don’t think that real estate investing is a relationship business, you haven’t been paying attention. 

It’s your connections with other investors that bring you the local knowledge, the referrals to the right professionals, the money, the partnerships, and the deals that let you prosper now, and for years to come.   

But these relationships don’t ‘just happen’ for most people. You have to be intentional about building and maintaining them, just like you’re intentional (I hope) about building a rental portfolio, or a buyer’s list, or a marketing plan.   

REIAGC exists, in large part, to provide a platform for you to find and interact with like-minded folks who can encourage and help you be successful, but you have to do your part, too. Here are some tips for the 95% of us who aren’t just natural ‘connectors’:  

1. Be intentional about your professional development. There’s no job you can have or business you can be in where your value isn’t enhanced by knowing more. 

And in real estate, tha
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I don’t know if ya’ll really understand what it’s like out there in the cold, hard real estate investing world.

Apparently, it’s lonely, nasty, and a cutthroat, and more than a little sad and desperate.

From everything I read on the various social media sites and groups, there are an awful lot of so-called real estate entrepreneurs who truly believe that the “pie” is only this big, and that everyone else is protecting their piece with barbed wire and brass knuckles, and that to carve out your piece, you have to beg for crumbs, or pay a fortune, or take away someone else’s piece by snaking their sellers or stealing their private lenders or bribing their tenants to call the building department on them so that they’ll be motivated to sell.

Seriously, I’ve heard all of that complained about, or bragged about, or recommended as a strategy.

Years ago, when I was just a wee little newbie, there was a guy who belonged to my local REIA group who always wore a button to the meetings that said YAFTAX.

This fellow was one of the big dogs—owned lots of rentals, had been in the group forever, was on the board, all that intimidating stuff—but after a few months, I finally got up the nerve to ask him what YAFTAX was.

He smiled at me and said, “Say it out loud”. I said, “Yaf-tax. Ya-af-tax. Ohhhhhh. Ya have to ask”.

He went on to explain that he attributed his success largely to his willingness to ask for ANYTHING from a seller. A lower price, better financing, leave the furniture, whatever it took to make the deal work for him, whether or not he thought the seller would say yes.

That’s turned out to be one of the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned.

It’s so easy to “think for your seller” and assume that he won’t be interested in what you can do for him—especially when that seller has already told you that what works for him is something completely different. If you ask for what you need, he may very well say “
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One of the profound things in the real estate business—so profound that it takes DECADES to learn—is that you’re always a beginner. And the way that you handle your successive begginerhoods has a huge effect on how successful you become, and how quickly. I’ve been a beginner—like a full-on, I-have-no-idea-what-I’m-doing—at least 6 different times since I started in real estate. I was a beginner when I started buying properties.

I was a beginner again when I started wholesaling properties, and when I decided to buy apartment buildings, and when I decided to hire a staff and create systems for my business, and when I got serious about IRA investing. I’m, right this second, a beginner at AirBnB ownership.

My biggest mistake in 4 of the 6 beginnerhoods I just mentioned was the same: I let ego and overconfidence and introversion get in the way of my learning process. 

There’s a concept in Zen Buddhism called Shoshin, or “Beginner’s Mind”. It describes a state of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconception about the right way to approach a new idea or experience.  

I didn’t have that.

Instead, I was VERY interested—embarrassingly interested, in retrospect—in letting the people around me know that I knew a LOT. That I was SMART. That I was SUCCESSFUL. 

Yes, even before I’d done any deals on my own. An
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