Rockaster

Despite the improving economy, 63 percent of Americans are somewhat or very dissatisfied with their current jobs, according to Paige Wagner, operations manager for the American Real Estate Investor’s Association.

“Most people simply end up in a career without really thinking about it,” Wagner says. “Once someone settles into a job, they usually stay in the same industry even when changing jobs.”

As an example, Wagner reports that only two-tenths of 1 percent of the population are willing to change careers midstream to become real estate investors.

“Most people aren’t willing to put in the effort to learn a new career, even when they can make up to six figures,” she says. “It seems that for most people, just the idea of tackling something new like investing causes them to bring up all kinds of reasons why they shouldn’t get started.”

Wagner says people cite the following reasons for not investing in real estate: It’s the wrong time to get into the real estate market, they don’t have enough money to invest, or they’ve heard too many nightmare stories about being a landlord.

However, at the same time that some people are coming up with reasons to avoid real estate investing, others learn to overcome the obstacles they face.

“With members in all 50 states, we’re able to see investors making money in both ‘up’ markets and ‘down’ markets,” Wagner says. “Some investors even use creative methods of buying to avoid having to come up with down payments. The investors that hate being landlords usually sell on a rent-to-own basis so that their tenant buyer will agree to take care of all the day-to-day maintenance for them.”

Bill Bronchick, president of the Colorado Association of Real Estate Investors, notes that real estate investing strategies have changed from years past.

“It’s a whole new ball game today compared with the way my mom used to invest,” Bronchick says. “Investors these days can get started without cash or credit if they are willing to take the time to get educated.”

Many cities have at least one real estate investor group.

“The monthly meetings and trainings are a good place to meet others who are already investing or interested in doing so,” Bronchick says. “You can also get a feel for whether you are in a hot or a cold market by talking with other investors.”

The Greek real estate market is currently one of the most exciting in the Mediterranean region because it offers real estate investors the chance to build an entire and well diversified property portfolio within one country.

The wealth of opportunities available in Greece for the international property investor really became known after the Athens Olympics in 2004. The promotion of Athens and mainland Greece to the wider world not only promoted the appeal of the country for investors, it resulted in a massive influx of tourists particularly to the mainland throughout 2004 and 2005.

Now add these growing tourism numbers to the large volume of visitors who annually holiday on the Greek islands and the total level of interest in this Mediterranean country has surged which has created more demand for rental and resale accommodation.

In terms of the immediate opportunities available to real estate investors they include commercial and retail investment property in the main cities of Greece – the majority of demand and the highest yielding assets are available in Athens – tourism accommodation to let out along the Greek coastline and in every resort on every Greek island, retirement and second home demand in the main Greek resorts and of course residential accommodation to rent across Greece particularly in the main employment hotspots. And for those who seek emerging market opportunities theres the Peloponnese region of Greece where property investment is just beginning to return attractive dividends.

Another underlying factor supporting the appeal of Greece currently is the fact that large swathes of the real estate sector are highly competitively priced especially when you compare the country to another Mediterranean favourite, namely Spain this means that an investor can get far more for their money in Greece than elsewhere on the Med and are therefore potentially buying into a market with healthy room for growth.

As there are very few restrictions placed on the foreign freehold ownership of property in Greece and the property buying process is very straightforward, more and more investors looking for portfolio diversification opportunities are examining the wealth of opportunity in Greece currently and therefore Greece is emerging as the Mediterranean choice for real estate investors in 2006.

In his interview with me, John Paul Moses, who is the founder of our Local Memphis Investors Group, was willing to give us some tips about how to start as a real estate investor. After reading Rich Dad, Poor Dead by Robert Kiyosaki he decided to start as a real estate investor. The book says to do this you need some preparation, so he went to the Internet and stocked every bit of information from the articles, news groups and discussion forums. By that time he started a long term friendship with Matt Scott who runs a great website called dealmakerscafe.com. That’s how he learned the meaning of the word escrow and what the difference was between a mortgage and a trust and real estate basic terminology. The Internet might be one learning ground. If you buy a real estate course you have to be very careful. The first course John Paul bought was in his opinion the worst real estate course and never did a deal from knowledge gained in that course. But at least he learned real estate terminology and spending 400 on that course proved to him that he was willing to invest in his education.

John Paul started by making an announcement in a Sunday paper just saying real estate investors group starting, for information give me a call and he put a cell phone number there for people to contact him. At their first meeting they were about 16 people. He stood in front of those people telling them that he never done a real estate deal but he was there to learn and make sure that they had those meetings. They needed a leader and he took the initiative of being their 1st president. Since then the organization grew to over 500 members. Now they are a full fledged non profit real estate investors association with over 150 members in the Memphis area and since 2002 John Paul has been a real estate investing guy. He stepped down as the president and he is now serving as the executive director of the group. Most of the deals he has done in some way involve somebody from the real estate investors association, whether they were a buyer or a seller, money partner or whatever the case might be. Start working with people in your club because they are real people. You need to think who the buyers are if they have real cash or if they have access to the hard money. So, what you have to do is to pick only those motivated persons and build yourself a great network of successful people to work with and the investor groups are great places to find those people.

His advice for somebody who’s looking for the structure of an investment group in another city is that you need to join the national real estate investment association; you need to get small groups of people together and join the National REIA (www.nationalreia.com ). They serve as an umbrella organization that supports the local REIA group. Another benefit of these groups is the availability of hard money lenders or private lenders within the group itself. You need to know what your resources are and just capitalize the costs or hard or private money in that part of the deal. For example they visited the National Group and invited some of their board members to have dinner together. That’s the second thing John Paul recommends for everybody who wants to start a group: model yourself, don’t try to figure out on your own!

Another thing a person should do is get those magnetic We Buy Houses signs for their vehicle. For John Paul they were worth the 87 investment as they brought him 12,000 profit from transactions altogether on wholesale deals. Nobody should be embarrassed of using them on their cars because the one who’s embarrassed is letting money pass by.

John Paul’s piece of advice for the new real estate investor is to not to be afraid to act, do not let yourself become paralyzed by fear and over-analysis. You need to take some time so don’t panic. Give yourself six months and just consume information. A good way is to listen to tele-seminars or find information on the Internet or pick some books from the library.