I’ve been investing in real estate for a good part of my life. I try to be introspective as well as always try to learn from other real estate investors. My experience has been working with investors who own rental properties, some with property managers in place and some without, and dealing with contractors when it comes to rehabbing a house. In watching all of these situations, I’ve come to realize that there is one character trait that every investor must possess.
There is one word,
Assertiveness
Real estate investing is never easy. There are always challenges from tenants and challenges from builders when refurbishing. No matter what kind of real estate investing you do, no matter how active or passive it may be, and no matter what kinds of builders or even professionals such as architects or solicitors, the reality is that you must be assertive in your pursuit of real estate. There is no being laid back. I can honestly say myself and my JV partners are triple A personality and we seem to bull doze through one issue to the next. There are always challenges. In retrospect some are rather funny. We had a call from one of our builders that a car crashed into one of our terraced houses. Was thinking out of 100 terraced houses on this busy street, this lovely driver crashed into ours. As usual we are assertive and contacted the police and we actually got the license plate of the car from a camera across the street. We gave this to the police and will follow up.
Rehabbing and Flipping HMO Properties
Rehabbing & flipping HMO properties are probably one of the most active methods of investing, and you are likely to have to be assertive in quite a few areas of it, one being purchasing the house, especially if everyone is trying to buy it. We have to be assertive to buy only GREAT deals! It is not easy, but we are assertive.
However, where assertiveness really comes in with this one is in having to deal with builders. Sometimes it is almost comical. One tradesman blames the other for works not completed or that they damage their work.
Have you dealt with contractors lately? Phew! It’s not always pretty. Hopefully you have found that odd gem of an amazing contractor who not only does the work exactly as you want it, but also does it timely and cost-effectively. If you haven’t though, be ready to put on your boxing gloves. We have several groups of builders. I can tell you first hand you will be shocked at times.
Having Rental Properties
Less active than flipping & rehabbing HMO properties is owning a rental property. If you are land lording the property yourself, though, you better be ready to put the smack down on tenants as soon as they start causing problems. We personally only go for better areas of Manchester that we hope for some appreciation. We stay out of war zone areas like Nelson or Burly….but at some point when you own a rental property, you will have a less than desirable tenant.
I’ve seen tenants try to pull all sorts of stuff. They will give reasons why they can’t pay and you should give them more time, or they’ll suddenly have way more people and animals living there than you approve of — and the list goes on forever. I had a lawsuit in which the tenant opened the door and was robbed. They blamed us even though they opened the door when the door bell rang. The craziest thing is the insurance company settled with them…
One word
Assertiveness
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