Needle in a Hay Stack

The first thing you need to know about buying foreclosures is that it's not as easy as it looks on TV! People that are professionals at buying depressed properties are looking at property or have people looking at property all of the time. They may look at 100 properties before actually buying one. You have to be willing to look at and analyze many properties and make several offers before you end up with the "Great" deal.

Different investors have different strategies on buying properties and there's probably someone offering some sort of $1000 training course on each one. The idea is to get really good at one strategy and look for properties that fit your niche. As you get more comfortable, you'll learn new strategies and evolve your strategies to fit the properties that you are working with.

A lot of people use the 100-10-1 mentality for looking at properties. The idea is to analyze/look at 100 properties. Of those, choose 10 that you would like to do further analysis of and/or make offers on. Finally, of those 10, you'll probably end up buying one. Don't get frustrated or overwhelmed with this process. In real estate, you make your money when you BUY!!! You realize your return when you sell or rent it, but buying the right property is key!

In my next post, I'll discuss where to start looking for properties!