Real Estate Investors Association of Greater Cincinnati

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

Your connections with other investors bring you local market knowledge, referrals to trustworthy professionals, funding, partnerships, and deals. Those relationships are what help you succeed, not just this year, but 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, a buyer’s list, or a marketing plan.

REIA groups exist, 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 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, that value comes in two forms: knowing more simply means you can do more deals and make more money, but it also means you have more to offer your colleagues.

Knowledge is one currency that you can share to get what you need from others, and it’s a way of offering value to other people. Plus, it’s not fair to expect other people in the community to teach you every single thing you need to know about real estate. I ... Read More…

Indulge me in a fable, and see if it jibes with your current, or perhaps past, experience as a developing real estate entrepreneur: 

You’re standing on a sidewalk with your nose an inch away from a brick. It’s a good brick. You’ve studied it for a while, and you’ve come to the conclusion that it’s reddish, rough, and surrounded on all four sides by parts of other bricks. You’ve looked at it long enough to decide that it’s a pretty great brick. 

Someone walks by and asks, what are you doing? Looking at this brick, you reply. 

Are you sure it’s a brick you’re looking at? the stranger queries. You might want to take a step back, because there’s more to see here than you think. 

So, you take a step back, and you realize that he’s right: the brick you’ve been so obsessed with is just one of many. In fact, from your new perspective, you notice out of the corner of your eye that there’s also something else — a hole, with glass and wood in it. Is that important? What does it do? Should you spend any time finding out more about it? 

While you’re wondering, another passerby happens along and asks what you’re doing.

I’m looking at all these bricks, and this weird opening, you explain. 

No, step back: you’re looking at a wall, says your new friend. That’s a window, and it opens and closes to let air and light in, and that particular one ... Read More…

         Way back in the mid-90s, I went to a workshop taught by the great Pete Fortunato.

          Several times during this event, he mentioned deals he’d negotiated or financed with the help of what he called “financial friends”.

          At the time, I had two thoughts about this: first, “Why does a guy who’s been in real estate for 30 years and is probably richer than Croesus need other people’s money to do deals?”.

          And second, “That’s great for him—he has decades of experience, so I bet he both knows a lot of people and is able to impress them with all the deals he’s done. I wonder how long it’ll be before some of these ‘financial friends’ find me?”

          As time has passed, and experience and observation has filled in the blanks, I’ve discovered the answers to both questions.

          First, no full-time investor EVER has enough cash to do all the deals they’ll ever find.

          At the height of my father’s real estate empire, he had $40,000 a month in positive cash flow but was still buying 2-3 houses a month—one for cash an ... Read More…

You got into this business for freedom, right?

Money freedom , yes. But also time freedom, and life-on-your-terms freedom.

But here’s a truth a lot of us don’t realize early enough—and it handicaps us:

Independence isn’t…Independent

At every stage of this country’s history, it’s been groups of people, acting together, that have secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and others.

From overthrowing British rule to ending the practice of slavery to suffrage to the civil rights movement and on through today, new freedoms have only come when enough people got together for a common cause, organized to achieve what they wanted.

Guess what? Personal financial freedom is ALSO a team sport.

No one builds wealth in a vacuum. No one protects their property rights to it by themselves. And no one makes it to the top without a whole bunch of people who have  their back.

Wanna do new things without messing up? You need vetted education and advisors.

Wanna scale? You need team members and financial friends.

Wanna get past the inevitable mistakes? You need partners and allies.

Wanna keep what you’ve built? You need a team that fights for your rights when the government comes knocking.

That’s us.

COREE isn’t just some “club”.

We’re a community of real people building real freedom—and making sure nobody takes it away.

We teach each other, challenge each other, help each other.

We h ... Read More…

Think back for a minute—what was your first thought the first time you saw one of those handwritten signs at the highway entrance? You know, the one that says, “Handyman Special Must Sale [sic] $87,000 555-5555”? Or the first time you saw a bandit sign that said, “I Buy Houses Close in 7 Days”?

Unless you happened to have encountered one of these messages for the first time after you’d already started studying real estate, your reaction was probably a mixture of:

• Suspicion (“Is this for real? Who tries to buy houses by putting a sign on a telephone pole?”)
• Confusion (“Handyman’s special WHAT? What are they trying to sale [sic] me, exactly?”)
• Mistrust (“How can they possibly buy a house in 7 days when it took my bank 45 to close?”)
• Curiosity (“Who puts these things up, agents?”)

Today, of course, you completely understand the goal of such marketing, because today you live in a bubble populated by other real estate entrepreneurs who eat, breath, and sleep deals. Now that you understand what a handyman’s special is, and that a 7-day closing is in fact possible with other people’s money, your emotional reaction is more likely to be one of jealousy (“Dang, I wish I’d put my sign there”) than of confusion.

But—and this is important—You. Are. Not. Your. Customer.

Your customer, especially your SELLER customer, is NOT familiar with the worl ... Read More…

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 something that makes all the fear go away, makes you completely sure of yourself, and makes you 100% confident that the next step you take is the right one. 

I’m here to tell you, from the perspective of almost 2 decades’ experience, that the day you’re waitin ... Read More…

There’s a dark secret that many 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.  

To illustrate, let’s take 2 imaginary real estate entrepreneurs, Investor A and Investor B. For the sake of simplicity, let’s imagine that both investors start from the same place. Same income, same credit, same skill level. Then, both attend a real estate conference one weekend in hopes of finding a way to quit their jobs in short order and become full-time real estate entrepreneurs. 

The story of Investor A 

Investor A latches on to a landlording course. He’s attracted to the idea of building wealth and loves the tax-advantaged nature of rental properties. On Monday, he sets out to build a rental empire that will allow him to become financially independent in short order.  

“A” is very successful in finding under-priced rentals in his hometown. His typical deal looks like this:  

ARV:                     $150,000 

Repairs:                $20,000 

Purchase Price:    $85,000 

Rent/mo                $1,200   ... Read More…

Ya'll do realize the irony of asking the question, “I know you’re in a hurry, but is there any quick advice you can give me about how to get started?”, right?

Because I get asked some version of that question at least 100 times a year, always by a newer investor hoping that there's some wisdom I can drop on them in the time it takes to get from the elevator to my car when I'm running from one event to another. Wisdom, preferably, that will make their entry into the business rapid, painless, and above all profitable.

The irony is that there IS no single answer to the question, "How do I get started?".

In order to properly get into that topic, I'd need to know about you: your goals, resources, preferences, exit strategies, needs, wants, and and and...and in no circumstance would that be "quick" advice.

If there were such a thing as "quick" advice, there would be no need for mentoring programs like Fasttrack to Financial Independence. Or, for that matter, for 4-day bootcamps, or REIA groups, or any of the other support systems to which we are all so devoted.

Without knowing anything else about you other than that you don't seem like a crazy stalker who's following me out to my car to kill me, I can only tell you, GENERALLY, some of the things successful people when they get started. I can't tell you what deal to look for (until I know what you plan to do with it) or how to get money (until I know your credit score) or what to pay (until you give me the A ... Read More…

Does this sound like you? 

• You love going to association meetings and webinars, and hanging out in online fora reading about, asking questions about, and discussing real estate.
• You own several home study courses.
• You’ve been to multiple long-form workshops, seminars, and boot camps.
• You haven’t done a deal. 

If it does, I’ve got some good news and some bad news. 

The good news is, you’re not alone: 80% of all real estate newbies are in exactly this position. The bad news is, 80% of real estate newbies will never get out of this position. 

Now, I’ve never seen an actual study that says that only 20% of people who learn about real estate will ever do anything with that knowledge, but I CAN tell you that it’s a number that’s agreed upon by people who are in a position to observe (and fret about) the phenomenon. 

Group leaders and gurus who’ve been around for a while will tell you the same thing—about 1 out of 5 people who start their real estate education will never take it out into the real world and use it to make money. 

So what do we do with this sobering statistic? 

The first thing we should do is ask, “Why”? What is it that the 20% has or is or does that the other 80% doesn’t? 

Again, there aren’t studies that I know of that explain this, but I have a theory, and it goes like this: 

There are several psychological stages that a new i ... Read More…

An interesting thing happens when people become successful real estate investors:  like any true convert, they start to want to proselytize. And one of the primary characteristics of any good missionary is the desire to emphasize the good and de-emphasize the downsides of one’s religion.

Have you ever noticed that most successful investors remember their early years in real estate as “not that hard”, or “scary, but doable”? Yet if you ask a new investor who’s in the midst of trying to find his first few deals, he’ll more than likely describe this time as “terrifying”, “overwhelming” or “nearly impossible”. 

Remember, dear readers, that your mentors and colleagues are (for the most part) not deceiving you intentionally, unless they’re trying to sell you something. It’s just that they want you to succeed as they’ve succeeded, and that, now that doing deals is second nature, they’ve honestly forgotten a lot of what it was like to struggle in the early years. You may have been guilty of this yourself: I know I’ve been. But unlike most of you, I have a forum from which to atone for my sins of omission. 

So, this one’s for every newbie who thought that he must be stupid for not being able to find a great deal his first week out, and for every old-timer who’s ever forgotten to mention to said newbie that, though a millionaire on paper, he’ ... Read More…