Should you own real estate?  Yes. Everyone should own real estate, even a little. The best way to start is to buy a home to live in, and then build on that learning experience. To advance beyond that, you will have to learn the art of investing in real estate¡ªthe art of buying and selling in your own style and developing your own niche. Some of you will never leave the world of residential real estate, and that's a perfectly good strategy for many people. We know and admire many people who make "big money on little deals," as one of them phrased it. These real estate entrepreneurs use single-family homes like pieces on a chessboard. Some of them build portfolios of hundreds of houses, and then sit back and collect rents. Others buy houses, fix them up a little, and flip them for a quick profit. Again, very different strategies are appropriate for people with different resources, skills, goals, and time frames.

You should first figure out what type of real estate is right for you, and where you can make the most money. We take you through the relevant processes step by step: everything from finding your real estate niche to protecting your assets once you have made your fortune. We've tried to make the book easy to read, but make no mistake: this is not "real estate for dummies." We take real estate very seriously, and we don't think it's a good field for dummies. The stakes are too high, even if you're buying only a single property. We take a no-nonsense approach to buying and selling real estate.

Getting Started Strategy

First, though, let's look at the issue of habits and patterns in our lives. We can't take a new path unless we understand the one we're already on. Making money really isn't very hard. Most of us do it every day. Sometimes we even make a little extra, and we set that surplus aside for a rainy day ¡ª an important part of anybody's persona! financial strategy, and one that we advocated in our best-selling book, Operation Financial Freedom. The truth is, almost anyone who has even a little bit of drive can succeed at this level.

The problem with the "I'm in a rut" mode is that it is very likely to continue indefinitely ¡ª you'll stay in that rut unless some sort of life-changing event forces you out of it, or you make a conscious, deliberate effort to change your circumstances.
Let's be clear about this point. If you're in a rut, you're not all that unusual. For the most part, we humans are creatures of habit. We land in a certain place, and, unless we make an extraordinary effort, we tend to stay in that place. We do what we do pretty much because that is the way we have always done it. We tend to reinforce the status quo, and we tend to do it automatically. We duplicate ourselves and our circumstances, as if we were running them off on a photocopier: one day looks a whole lot like the other days. It's efficient, yes, but it doesn't allow for easy changes.

Examine your own life in this light. Isn't it true that your life is a series of duplicated events, many of which are simply repeated automatically? Here's another measure: Is your financial life very similar to that of your parents?  And unless you break this paradigm, your children's financial life will be similar to yours.

Should you break that paradigm? If one generation copies the previous one, or if you copy yourself, is that good news or bad news?
The answer, as you might suspect, is that it can be either good news or bad news, or sometimes even both. If you continue doing what you are doing, you will remain in your present circumstances with only minor changes. Another way we like to phrase this idea is, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you have always gotten." Well, if you are happy with what you have, fine. (Ruts aren't necessarily negative.) But if you aren't happy with what you have, then you have no choice but to change it.

Some people take this as bad news. We see it as exciting news. Why? Because we all possess the ability to change. If you want to change, all you need to do is change your behaviors to routines that are more successful, and then repeat them over and over until they become habits. Once they are habits¡ªonce they are automatic¡ªyour life will continue in its new state, including its new financial state.

 

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