I recently finished recording a podcast as the featured guest on “Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever” hosted by Joe Fairless. This is consistently one of the top rated investing podcasts on iTunes and I encourage you to check it out. The podcast featuring my interview (#111) was released on iTunes on December 21, 2014. (You can listen to the episode below.)
In my interview as a guest on the “Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever,” the host ended the show with what he called the “lightning round” where he asked me some rapid fire questions:
- What your best investing advice ever?
- What book has been the most helpful to your investing?
- What event or audio program has had the most impact on your life?
- What’s the best real estate investment you’ve ever made?
If I had a week to prepare, I could talk for hours responding to each of these questions. Maybe for the sake of brevity, radio guests don’t get time to prepare their answers. Or maybe it’s exciting to hear each guest drool into the microphone while trying to form a coherent thought!
What your best investing advice ever?
If you’ve been following my investment blog and videos for any length of time, you can guess my best investing advice ever: “Live where you want, and invest where it makes sense with turnkey, positive cash-flow properties whose Cap Rate is higher than your long-term fixed interest rate financing.” A turnkey property is a new or like-new property you understand and is hassle-free.
What book has been the most helpful to your investing?
There are a lot of good books available that can help you as a real estate investor. (Of course there are also some bad ones.) It was very difficult for me to narrow it down to only one book. I'm a big fan of the Rich Dad series of books which help build a foundation and clarify the entire subject of investing. But if I had to pick only one book I'd have to say Gary Keller's book, The Millionaire Real Estate Investor.
Be sure to take a look at my other Top 10 Real Estate Investing Books.
What event or audio program has had the most impact on your life?
Probably the largest single event that had a profound impact on my real estate investing was jumping into a depressed market only because the numbers on the properties looked so good (on paper). The reality was far from the pro-forma numbers projected for my investments. The mistake I made, and the lesson learned, was to strongly consider the market (city) you're looking to invest in, then pay careful attention the the neighborhood. I call this the “Top-Down Approach” and is now my sixth rule of my 10 Rules for Successful Real Estate Investing.
What’s the best real estate investment you’ve ever made?
One of the best real estate investments I've ever made was the purchase of a 40-unit apartment building with no down-payment after the close. This can be done under the right circumstances in the right market cycle and with the right terms. You do this by over-financing the property. The concept of “over-financing” is to buy a property at a steep discount but then take out a loan against the property based on its market value so your loan is greater than the purchase price.
Parting Wisdom
Here are some parting bits of wisdom I wish I had included in my guest appearance on the “Best Real Estate Investing Advice Ever” podcast:
- If you’re afraid of the stock market, you should be!
- If you're afraid of debt, you’re doing it wrong!
- Whether you think you can or you think you can't you're correct either way.
If you're looking for investing opportunities then you aren’t alone! There are more investors than good deals at this time in the market cycle. You’ve got to look harder for good deals today than back in 2011! One of the values of being connected to a company like ours is that our relationships and media presence give us access to quality investment properties throughout the country in all market cycles. So if you're looking for investment property, don’t keep it a secret; be sure to give us a call and see what we can do to earn your business!
Listen to the Episode:
