Real Estate Investor Articles

Don't believe real estate investors when they tell you the types of deals that they are looking for.

OK, now I know that sounds a bit harsh and I am not suggesting in any way that real estate investors, as a group, are liars. In fact, just like in every other business and industry, there are some great, honest, ethical and amazing people and there are some that I wish would go do something – anything - else and improve the reputation of the industry.

That said, even very honest and ethical people don't always know their own minds when it comes to what they want. What I am referring to is that most real estate investors I talk to will tell me what they are looking for, but then I'll come to find out that they bought something very different from what they told me. In other words, they are not buying what they say they want. So, I have stopped believing them when they tell me what they are looking for and now I just send them the deals that I have. If they are interested, they can tell me. If not, they can tell me. However, I am not going to pre-judge whether they will be interested in the deal or not ahead of time based on what they told me they were looking for.

Why does this happen? I am not sure... maybe, their criteria really did change between when they told me what they wanted and when they actually bought the property that they did. Maybe, they did not really know what they wanted. Maybe they had to buy (for tax or other financial reasons). Maybe they liked the color of the carpet. I really don't know nor does it really matter.

Just take away the following from reading this article: never prejudge whether an investor would be interested in a deal. Maybe you need to go to them and say, "I know you told me you wouldn't be interested in this type of deal, but I wanted to run it by you in case anything has changed," and then run the deal by them. In any event, don't believe real estate investors when they tell you they only buy certain types of deals.

Until my next post,

James