Why Birddogging is the Best Way to Get Started in Multifamily Investing?
Here’s the problem.
In my law practice, I deal with essentially two types of multifamily clients on a daily basis. Some of these are new investors looking to get into their first multifamily property and need help getting from the start to the finish line of the transaction. These clients are a lot of fun. They have no idea of all the things that need to be done to make the transaction a success and rely heavily upon the expertise of my staff to keep them on solid footing.
The other type of client are those that took a few courses, read a few books, figured that if the guy down the street can own apartments, so can I and then jumped head first into multifamily investing because someone told them that they better act fast because there has never been a better time than today.
In no time at all, they got tied up in a deal that they never should have done and then found themselves in a situation that they need to get extricated from as painlessly as possible. That’s when they call me.
My heart breaks for these people. If only they had spoken to me before they did the deal, I would have been able to show them where the mines were and either get them through to the other side safely or tried to keep them out of the fields altogether.
Unfortunately, these distressed clients pay a lot more money to have their problems solved than those clients that come to me before they sign their first contract. It’s funny that many of them get into this business thinking they are going to acquire distressed multifamily property only to find out later that they are the ones that are in distress.
Tell me if this describes you and your investing experience to date. You just paid thousands of dollars to attend some three-day weekend seminar taught by a silver-tongued “expert”. There has been absolutely no talk of things that can go wrong in this business; only talk about how someone once found a deal that made them a king’s ransom. Also, you heard over and over that “You can do this!”
If that sounds familiar, it is because that is the formula that all of these “gurus” use. Don’t worry. It is designed to elicit the response that you gave.
You may have heard them say at the seminar as it relates to your investing career, "Go big or go home." Well, I'm here to tell you that is not accurate. How can you go big if you have never even looked at deal before; never spoken to a broker or seller before; not even sure what to say to a bank.
Let’s be real . . . .
You've got to do it right the first time and that will make all the future times go very smoothly. There is no greater recipe to end your multifamily career early than doing a bad first deal. Just don't do it!
That’s the problem. Now here’s the solution.
TAKE YOUR TIME, LEARN THIS BUSINESS AND DO IT RIGHT!!!
No business worth anything of value was built in three days. Build your real estate investment business on a solid foundation and not on shifting sands. (Hmmm, where have we all heard that before? It was good advice then. It’s good advice now.)
This program was written to help new investors take the first steps toward building a real estate multifamily investment business. It is designed to teach you the basics of this business and walk you through it step-by-step on a daily basis with little money invested but tons of education learned.
We are going to show you each step for understanding who your customers are, building your buyer database, finding the properties, and, most importantly, getting paid. The next manual in this series, The Complete Manual for Wholesaling Multifamily Property, teaches you all the steps for wholesaling a multifamily deal: analyzing, contracting and getting to the closing table or just sitting back and watching your investor go through the acquisition process. Whether you are sitting on the sidelines or you are an active participant in the process, the purpose of these programs is to give you the confidence that you need in order to get started in this business and build it correctly.
To be a success, you need to understand every step in the process starting with the very first one. If you're going to take the time and learn, why not get paid for it as well? That's where deal-finding gets to be a lot of fun.
Can you do this? Absolutely! It requires very little money. It does require time, though. And when I say time, I mean time on a consistent basis, not in fits and starts. If you can give it the time it needs and deserves than you can definitely do this business. We will show you everything you need to know.
The way I like to look at internet deal finding is that it is kind of like the ‘gateway drug’ to the multifamily investing business. It’s going to prepare you like nothing else for how to find your first deal (stress on the word ‘your’). It's going to allow you to become a player in other peoples’ deals. You'll start off at the bottom and work your way up; just like every successful person that's ever achieved any modicum of success. (With the exception of Donald Trump. He was born on third base.)
You will spend the next several months, maybe years, building an incredibly powerful rolodex of people that you will need to work with as you grow in this business; everything from inspectors to brokers to banks to potential sponsors to other joint venture partners for future deals. That's how this business works. It's all about relationships. There's no better way to start building these relationships than to start taking it step by step through the process.
So let's get started today. And there is no better place tio start than learning about birddoging multifamily deals!
Charles T. Dobens
Boston, MA