Real Estate Investor Articles

If you are a real estate investor who wants to be successful, you need to start using written, well-documented systems. Systems are another form of leverage (like debt and staff) that you can use in your business to get more done, make more money and operate your business more effectively and efficiently than ever before.

So, let's take a few minutes to discuss the big picture components of your real estate investing system. While there are many ways to organize, categorize and break down your real estate investing into manageable components, in this article I'd like to organize your investing activities by frequency.

The two major groups are Daily Tasks and Irregular or Period Tasks. First, there are tasks that you should complete, or at least check, daily. I put these on a Daily Checklist that I will discuss in a moment.

Second, there are tasks that occur less frequently, but on a regular scheduled basis, that you need to complete. You can put these on an Irregular or Periodic Checklist or include them as sub checklists from your Daily Checklist that are only done at certain, non-daily intervals.

Let's look at the big components of what makes up my Daily Checklist. My Daily Checklist consists of

Follow up:

seven major sections: Goals, Marketing, Sellers, Buyers, Dream Team Members, Property Management and Business Management.

In the Goals section, I take time every day to remind myself of what it is I am trying to accomplish. By keeping the goals in front of me every day and using them to schedule my daily tasks, I have a much better chance of achieving my goals than if I write them down on January 1st and don't look at them again until next January.

In the Marketing section, I make sure that I have all of my marketing to buy, to sell and to find key dream team members up and working for me. Without marketing, your business will not grow or produce results. You can think of marketing as planting seeds that will sprout into business and allow you the opportunity to provide value to the marketplace and therefore produce a profit.

In the Sellers, Buyers and Dream Team Members sections, I deal with the issues relating to each one of these groups. If I have sellers that have called in to sell their house to me, I work through my systems on how to manage them. If I have buyers that have called in about a property I have for sale, I work through my systems related to that. If I have key Dream Team members that I am trying to find or work with, I have systems for that in the Dream Team section. Each of these sections deals with the people in my business that are so critical to my success.

In the Property Management section, I deal with the properties that I own, whether they are rented or being sold. This is where I use my systems for property maintenance, filling vacancies, collecting rents and paying related bills.

In the Business Management section I keep the systems I use to manage my real estate business like taxes, entity maintenance, asset protection and more.

Within each of these major areas of systems and checklists, I have sub systems and checklists that I use to run my real estate investing business. If you are interested in seeing the systems I use in my business, you can visit the Real Estate Investor Cookbook where I have begun to organize my systems online. Please check back frequently as the cookbook is a work in progress.

Until my next post,

James