Building Your Real Estate Investing Network

Real Estate Investors need to build their real estate network. Your network will consist of people who can make referrals to you for the kind of real estate you are looking for.

This will be true of your master mind network. You should approach it with the explicit goal of creating a group that works for all its members, not just you. If people see that the group works for them, they will become more involved with the process, and the resulting success will reward everyone.

Make a list of people you know who are very active in real estate but who don't do exactly what you do. Here are some people you will probably have on your list:

Real estate attorneys
Real estate brokers 
Builders
Accountants
Other Real estate investors 
Mortgage brokers 
Bankers 
Insurance agents
Real estate investor group leaders
Repair people

Looking at this list, you can see that some of the people on it have a direct interest in real estate, and others do not. The key to your group's success is not so much what its members know (although you will need some experts), but who they know. So contacts are key. Equally important is personal attitude and drive. You want to find people who are motivated and who want to get business themselves. Master mind and referral groups work best when all the people in them work together to create business for everyone.

Once you have started developing your list of the types of people you want in your group, start filling in real names for your contacts. For instance, let's say you start with an attorney. Most likely, you'll decide that you want a lawyer who specializes in real estate transactions. But if your niche turns out to be buying homes in probate, then you'll probably want to find the probate attorney who has the biggest practice in the area.

Once you have a person penciled in on your list, you should make an appointment with him to talk about your real estate investments (or dreams). The first thing you're likely to find is that some of the people (probably starting with the attorney) will want to charge you for their time. Don't let this discourage you, even though it's obviously not where you want the relationship to wind up. Consider it a business expense. Say, "Fine, I'll take an hour."

During that hour, of course, you are going to pick the person's brain for every relevant piece of information he can provide. Meanwhile, you are going to convince him that he wants to help you get the kind of business you are looking for, because you are going to send him business yourself. That one hour of legal time will more than pay for itself with the first referral that comes your way from that attorney. True, some of your contacts won't materi?alize into referrals for a while, and others will never pan out. That's OK. You have to work at it. People who don't add to the success of the group will be dropped from your referral network, and a new person in that category of referrals will go in their place.

As you can see, a referral group is only as good as its mem?bers. It's powerful only if the members of the group are willing to make referrals and otherwise help one another. Sometimes this has to be made very explicit. Some referral groups, for example, meet on a monthly basis, with each person in the room standing up and giving a brief talk (no more than five minutes!) about what type of referrals he or she is looking for from the group. By so doing, you remind one another of your respective specialties — and of your commitment to helping one another out.

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