BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast - 874: How to Invest in Real Estate in 2024 (Step-by-Step)

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

If you want to know how to invest in real estate, you’re in the right place. Today, we’re going to break down the nine beginner steps to getting your first or next rental property so you can start building wealth, make passive income, and get closer to financial freedom. And while it may SEEM like real estate investing is tough in 2024 with high mortgage rates and scarce housing inventory, lower competition could make getting your next deal easier than you think. Ready to start? Dave Meyer, BiggerPockets' VP of Data and Analytics and host of On the Market, has used these beginner steps to reach financial independence, grow a sizable real estate portfolio, and have enough passive income to do what he wants when he wants. If you want to be in Dave’s position in the next five or ten years, you can follow his strategy STEP-BY-STEP to reach your real estate goals, start building wealth, and finally achieve financial freedom.  Get access to exclusive real estate investing calculators, lease agreements, bootcamps, and more with BiggerPockets Pro, and use code “NEWYEAR2024” for a special discount!  In This Episode We Cover: How to start investing in real estate in 2024 and buy your FIRST rental property Why New Year's resolutions DON’T work (swap them for THIS instead) The BIG advantage to investing in 2024, even with high rates and low inventory  How to set your five-year, one-year, and quarterly goals for passive income and investing  The “LAPS” funnel that brings you unlimited real estate deals  How to analyze a rental property in MINUTES with the BiggerPockets Rental Property Calculator  The one tool EVERY investor needs to start building wealth with real estate  And So Much More! Links from the Show Find an Agent Find a Lender BiggerPockets Youtube Channel BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Pro Membership BiggerPockets Bookstore BiggerPockets Bootcamps BiggerPockets Podcast BiggerPockets Merch Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Learn About Real Estate, The Housing Market, and Money Management with The BiggerPockets Podcasts Get More Deals Done with The BiggerPockets Investing Tools Find a BiggerPockets Real Estate Meetup in Your Area Expand Your Investing Knowledge With the BiggerPockets Books Be a Guest on the BiggerPockets Podcast Rent Estimator Rental Property Calculator Investment Properties for Sale Hear More from Dave On the “On the Market” Podcast Book Mentioned in the Show Start with Strategy by Dave Meyer Connect with Dave Dave's BiggerPockets Profile Dave's Instagram Click here to listen to the full episode: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/real-estate-874 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to the Bigger Pockets podcast. My name's Dave Meyer, and today I'm going to be sharing with you a recent webinar that I gave about making 2024 the best year ever for your real estate portfolio. I actually gave this webinar a couple of days ago right around the new year, but it went really well and it seemed to really help a lot of investors, whether they were brand new or a season veteran, get ready and get kick started for what could be a great year for. real estate investing. In the webinar, I sure address the elephant in the room, the housing market, and whether or not it's a good time to buy for real estate investors. I also talk about building the right systems and processes that are repeatable and can help you land good deals, regardless of what market you're in or what macroeconomic conditions change over the course of the year. There's tons of great information. There's tons of great tools that you can use to build your portfolio. So you're definitely not going to want to miss this webinar. So that's it. It's a great webinar and I really think it's going to help you start taking action towards your real estate goals

in 2024. So with no further ado, let's jump into the webinar. We're going to be going through nine powerful tips that will help you do just that. So first things first, again, thank you for joining. You guys could be doing anything with this time, but you're spending it here with me and this whole community of bigger pockets, people trying to improve their financial situation, and that is really special. It means that you're ready, you're willing to take action on your goals for 24, and that makes this the exact right place that you should be. Congratulations on being here. So let's just start with a question here. And this might sound like some big hypothetical question, but I'm actually asking you this right now. Are you looking to make a change this year?

Are you thinking about 2024 and hoping that you're going to buy perhaps more real estate? or generate more passive income with working not as much. Or maybe you are really into the big equity injections that flipping houses can get you. Or maybe you're like me and you really invest in real estate for things like spending more time with your family and friends. Or sort of again like me, again, I made this deck to travel. Traveling is one of my personal passions. It's one of my personal goals. But, you know, I put that as an example.

This doesn't have to be travel. it's really about whatever you're hoping to get out of real estate investing, whether that's, you know, time for a hobby or just reducing your financial stress and anxiety or just generally more freedom. Are these things that are appealing to you? If that, if you've answered yes, and I'm guessing you have because you're here, then ask yourself one more question. I know I'm asking a lot of questions right now. But ask yourself, could this be the year of your pivot? Now, if you haven't heard this term pivot before, a lot of people use it in business. is to describe a shift.

It's like a change in direction. If you're familiar with basketball, you probably hear this all the time. It's not like totally upending and changing your entire life. You don't need that for real estate. It's just a bit of a refocusing, a shift of priorities.

And it's like a pivot, a move towards your long-term financial stability and goals. And we're going to talk a lot about this today because I think this idea of pivots is really important. People often think that they need to get into real estate, they need to make some drastic shifts. But that's honestly just not the case.

All it takes is these small shifts sustained over a long period of time. And that's what gets you to financial freedom. It's not a get rich quick screen. So if you're looking for that, I'm sorry, it's probably not going to be the right webinar for you. This is more about pivoting your mindset, implementing a proven system, sustaining that over a long period of time. I know that sounds boring, but that's the thing that actually works. If this sounds good to you, this pivot, this idea, then think about whether year, 2024 could be the year of your stack. So we learned what the word pivot is. Now we're going to

talk about stack. And the stack is the system that you use to sustain these pivots over time. It's not like you have to make all these decisions on your own. Today, I'm going to show you a system that you can use that hundreds, honestly, literally tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have used before, and you can use to. And the basic idea behind the stack is that to achieve financial freedom or to achieve a considerable amount of wealth, it takes multiple properties. Like, I hope every property you buy improves your financial position, but one is just not going to cut it. So the stack is this proven scalable and honestly, relatively low risk approach to growing your real estate portfolio to the next size to unlock

those goals we just talked about, whether that's financial freedom, time with friends of family, all that stuff. So the idea here is simple. It's like start in 2024. Just come up with a modest goal, buy one unit. Then in the next. year, maybe two years from now, maybe you need to save up some money, buy two units. Then in the following year, buy four. And that might sound like this huge, ambitious things, but it's not, because once you buy that first one, you'll see that it's not that hard, and you'll see that buying two is actually not that much more work than buying one. Same thing goes with going four. And you keep going, and you maybe buy eight or ten. This isn't some magic

system. Once you learn how to buy these properties, you can scale it to really any size. And you may think that you need some like a huge amount of time or money or skills. And we're going to get to that. But I just want to make clear up front that you don't need it all today. That's the whole point of pivots. That's the whole point of stacks. And I'm telling you this up front. So you remember that your pivot for 2024 could be to get just one single property,

one single unit. That in itself is enough to set you on the right course to reach financial freedom. All it takes is just a few pivots like the ones. you can be making today. I put a quote in here from Jim Rome, which I love. It says life doesn't get better by chance. It gets better by change. And this is important because you can't just wait around for these pivots to happen to you. Like, no one's going to go and tell you how to make that small adjustment that's going to help you get that first real estate deal. You actually have to proactively go out there and make those pivots that you want to see in your life. So today, yes, is about real

estate investing. It's about pivot, but it's really about change. Today, I am going to work hard to provide you with the tools and confidence you need so you can make that change. And I realize, like, this isn't, again, it's not a short-term thing, but the life you're dreaming of may still be three, four, five years down the road, but the decisions you make today will determine if you're going to get there. So this is what we're going to be talking about today. Today is about change and making it your best year ever. So commit yourself to that. That's going to be our goal today. It doesn't mean you have to buy the most real estate this year. You know, it could just be one. It just means that you're going to start making those good decisions. But change like we're

talking about today is not easy, right? Sometimes it's really hard to change. Change is hard. That's because their resolutions like don't necessarily work that well. I think there's nothing wrong with them per se, right? Like, we've all, we've all got them. But I think the real challenges are one, usually they're not specific enough, right? Like someone's to say, like, I want to get wealthy. That's not super specific. That's really big. The second is that they lack a plan. Like you have this big ambition, but you don't actually have the steps together to, to like figure out how you actually want to get there. And there's no way to force action, right? So those are some problems I think we all see with resolutions. So what's the question? The question is, what's the,

alternative to a vague resolution. Well, I call it the shift change formula. We're not going to be talking about resolutions today here. If you want to use them elsewhere in your life, you can. But we're going to talk about a proven system to achieve whatever goals you want in life. And that means you need to have the right goals. So you need to spend specific goals. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. They need to be specific. We're going to carry them out with the right plan, which is a system that you can copy from other people. And we can also talk about right actions. So those three things together, if you combine your goals, your plans, and your action, you can make the changes. You can make the pivots that we're talking

about. And by the end of this webinar, you will, I assure you, you will have a day-by-day plan for actually achieving your goal. So this is not some vague resolution. You're going to actually know what you should be doing tomorrow, or you should be doing the rest of this week, and you should be doing the rest of this month. That's what we have on the agenda today. So on the agenda, like I said, I'm going to just explain some things about bigger pockets. Then we're going to go, I'm going to talk a little bit about today's market, which if you know me at all, that's kind of my thing. Then I'll get to the nine steps to make you 2024 incredible. And then we'll do some real live deal search and analysis to show you that real deals do exist today.

Now, if you don't know anything about bigger pockets, I'll tell you quickly, but you probably, you're on this webinar. You probably know about the stuff we make, right? We have podcasts. We have a website. We have all these amazing things. But I also want to tell you about what we believe in. I've been working at this company for eight years. And the reason I stay is because bigger pockets has beliefs in a mission that I truly believe in.

And the first one is that real estate investing is the single greatest tool on the planet for the average person to build wealth and passive income. Truly believe that. And you're going to see this for sure through, you know, just in this community that we're showing here today that average people, normal people can do it. If you've ever been to BP con, you've seen this in action. Second, I've said this a few times, but real estate is not a get-rich quick scheme. I'm not here to tell you that this is going to happen overnight. I'm going to teach you a system that you can follow over time to achieve sustainable wealth. The third is that the goal of wealth building is not necessarily money for money's sake.

It's to live life on your own terms with the freedom to do whatever you want. For me, that's spending time with friends and family or traveling. But for you, that could be something totally different. But what I love about real estate is that the financial freedom it gives you, allows you to unlock all these other amazing parts of your life that aren't necessarily financial. And then the last one is that anyone can invest no matter how much money, experience, or time, and we're going to get into that. I mean, I know this might sound sort of like pie in the sky and not as realistic, but this is

what happened to me. Like mine, if you don't know me, like I started investing. like I said, just a year out of college, I was waiting tables. And I'll get into the details, but I basically saw real estate as an opportunity, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I literally all the cash I had in my life was in my bedside table. I didn't have a bank. But I started going out and I looked for deals. I was very young. I was about 23 years old. But I made so many mistakes. You know, I was bought my first deal. I was a terrible property manager. I started, you know, I almost gave up.

I started to spend money on the wrong things. I didn't know what deals to look for. But I kept buying. I sort of kept going with it, right? And I didn't realize for a long time that my problem was that I was just going by the seat of my pants, right? I was just making these instant decisions about what to buy. And I didn't follow this system.

But I hustled. And those two things combined, I think, is what really. got me to where I am today. Because my slow start, some things went wrong, but ultimately things went right. I started being a bit more proactive and being a little bit more deliberate about the things I was doing. Rather than just buying random deals that came across my computer or my desk, I started setting very specific goals. I defined the processes that were going to get me those goals. And I just started hustling my butt off. So those are the things that I think really differentiate people. It's not necessarily your background or your experience level. It's following those goals and then

putting in the effort. What I've also learned that I want to share is that I doesn't take that many properties to achieve financial freedom. I know this is probably not that common, something people say on Instagram or whatever, but it honestly doesn't. I don't own thousands of units. I've just been very deliberate about finding the deals that work for me and my personal plan. And it's really not that hard. It just takes again the right goals, the right plan, and the right action. For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's

the power of the Funrise Flagship Fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10. The portfolio features 4,700 single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought after industrial facilities thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund. The fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise

Flagship fund before investing. This and other information can be found in the funds prospectus at funrise.com slash flagship. This is a paid advertisement. We all joke that rentals are passive, but if you're spending nights matching receipts or guessing what a property earned last month, that's not passive at all. Baselane fixes that part of landlording, the financial chaos. Their banking and AI bookkeeping system automatically tags every transaction, updates cash flow insights in real time

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With that, let's jump into the keys to success. We are going to talk about the nine steps. It's going to take you to succeed in real estate in 2024. But actually, guys, I kind of lied. I said it was nine steps, but I kind of added at the end, the 10th one, and that is the elephant in the room. So this isn't actually a step, but it is something I wanted to talk about before we got into the nine steps, and it's probably on everyone's mind, can you invest successfully in 2024? You can invest in any market. That is something almost every

investor I know knows. Should you change your tactics based on the market? Yeah, right? You need to be maybe a little bit more conservative in this kind of market. Maybe certain strategies, or certain decisions might not work as well on this market, but there is always a type of investment that works. Just for example, interest rates are higher right now, but there's way less competition. There is no such thing as a perfect market. You just have to adapt, and we're going to talk about that today. The second thing is timing the market is possible. Guys, take it from me. I literally analyze the housing market for hours every single day, and I don't try and time the market. It is not possible. And so you need to really focus on the long.

long term about the housing market in the long term, the appreciation, the cash flow, the loan pay down, because those are the things that are going to matter to you in five, ten years, not what happens in the next six months. Okay. So that's number two. And then the third one is that every investor I know is still active and investing right now. And this is cool, right? Because, you know, I think a lot of people think, oh, real estate, it's really hard right now.

But what experienced investors know is that this isn't a get rich quick scheme. I've said that before. It's about setting yourself up for the long term. Short-term conditions are just not as important. They are important. And I'm not saying buy anything. You need to be able to spot a good deal, especially in this market. And we're going to talk about that.

But trust me, like by the end of this webinar, you're going to know how to find good deals. And you'll see that how great investors can grow in any market and you can too. So we're going to talk about that. So with that other way, I just wanted to address the elephant in the room. Now we can get to the nine steps to succeed in 2024. And as a little bit of a preview, the steps are going to sort of follow this kind of like funnel pattern. So they're going to start really broad, like with the biggest goal, and then they're going to

narrow down to very specific actions. So just remember that as we're going through the nine. They're going to start broad. And also remember, this webinar is about making your pivots. So these steps are what can make this your pivot year. These are the steps that I recommend you, for the pivot. So we're going to start the biggest one. And then we're going to get down to the things that you can do today or tomorrow to start growing. So number one is define your why.

We talk about this a lot in real estate investing. And what it says is, like, do you do you know why you're actually investing in real estate? And I know a lot of people say like, oh, I just want to be rich or financially free. But like there's got to be more to here, right? Like you have to have an idea of why you want money. Is it to be spend more time with your family? You know, do you want to be a mogul and own thousands of properties? Do you want to just move up your retirement date? Maybe you just want more spending money. All of these are worthy goals, but the point is not what the goal is, is that you have a specific goal because you can't pursue someone else's dream, right? Like, that's not motivating. You can't just take my why and use it for yourself. You need to know what you're in it for. Because real estate, it's not really that complicated. But there are tough days. There's going to be challenges. And knowing, exactly why you're doing it is going to help you keep you motivated over the long run and keep that goal in mind. So to sort of, you know, hammer this point home and all the other nine points, we're going to actually follow this fictitious but hopefully relatable investor we're going to call

Harold. Now, Harold has his goals. His why is he's tired of working his nine to five. He wants to spend more time with his kids. He wants to see his kids grow up and he wants to travel the world, right? I think these are relatable goals. I mean, maybe do you like these goals? I don't know. Hopefully you do. Hopefully you relate to it. Whatever yours is, I recommend you try and visualize it something like this, right? It's not necessarily complicated. It doesn't have to be some big like matrix, you know, beautiful mind thing. Just write out a couple of things that you want. For me, my why, I'll just tell you. Mine has always been a dream of balancing financial freedom and having fun. When I was like 21, I really had a lot of financial anxiety and I really wanted to build a name for myself and develop,

you know, build up some wealth. But at the same time, I really, I was young and I wanted to have fun. And I saw all of my friends making tradeoffs. Like some of them would work really hard and build up that financial strength, but they would sacrifice time with friends and family. On the other hand, some of my friends would prioritize experiences, but that came at the expense of building wealth. And I just had a dream to marry those two things. And that has always been my why, to be financially stable, but to enjoy my life as much as possible. And that's what I think about every time I make a decision when I'm talking in real estate invest.

So that is step number one. Number two is commit. So this is something that's really important. And it's a little harder. It's a little less tangible. But commitment is super important because there is a difference between wanting something and being committed to it. Right. Like, who here has wanted to learn another language?

I've lived in the Netherlands for four years. I've been saying I'm going to learn Dutch for four years. I speak probably four words of Dutch. So there's clearly a difference between wanting something and being committed to it. I'm sure we all have these things. And you just need to translate those desires into action, right? Being into real estate, it's a common desire. Like most people want more money.

But how do you know that you're actually committed to something, it's when you dedicate time to it, right? So you dedicate your time and your actions start to match your desires. That's how you know that you're committed. And it's something that I think you should be really focused on. Because if you find yourself not committed, maybe you need to revisit your why because it's not motivating enough to you. Because if your why is like true and you like really feel motivated by it, you're going to be committed to it. So that's step number two. And for Harold, you know, he embodies this in a way where he's not just, you know, desiring it. It's not something he just talks about randomly. He is really committed to it

and he sees no other option to doing it, to achieving that financial freedom. And I encourage you to do that, but also want to commend you all for showing up today because this is a good first step. Like, you are taking action and that is true commitment. And lucky for you, I'm going to give you seven more steps that you can keep those commitments. So number three here is define your five-year vision. Right. So figuring out your why that again, that's the broadest. We're doing this like funnel thing where you start with the why and that's where you want to be specifically. That is what motivates you. But the vision are the specific outcomes that you're looking to achieve. So let's just like take a minute and imagine where you want to be. It's 2029. That's five years from now, right? It's 2029. Imagine where you want yourself to be. Do you want to be retired? Do you want to be spending 10? more hours a week with your family. Do you want to be doing two vacations a year? These are the type of things that you should be thinking about. And I recommend that you balance them between things that are financial and supporting your why. So, like, if you want to say, I want to take more vacations every

year, how much does that cost? And how much cash flow or wealth do you have to build to get that? So I'll show you an example of this in a second. But I just want to explain why we're doing this, because I think this is where a lot of people get lost. You ask, people like where they want to go, they know their why, and they're just like, I want to be rich or I want to be retired. But that's really hard. Like if you don't know exactly what you're doing it for, if you don't know what those numbers are for, you can't like chart the path forward. I actually put this in my new book, Start with Strategy. There's a great quote from Alice in Wonderland. I won't get into the whole thing, but Alice basically goes and asks the Cheshire Cat, like,

how does she, what path to take? She gets to a fork in the road. And the Cheshire Cat says, well, where do you want to end up? And Alice says, well, I don't know. And the Cheshire Cat says, then it doesn't matter which way you go. And I love this quote because if you don't have a destination in mind, the path you take is completely irrelevant. So I really encourage you to think about your why and then come up with a specific five-year path. Does it have to be money? Is it passive income? Do you want free time? And don't just write a million list of things. Like I know it could be tempting to put down 20 things. But be realistic. I think come up with a couple of things that are really important and start with the end in why.

So let's get back to Harold and talk about him. He says in five years, Harold wants to be one, generating $5,000 per month in passive income from rental properties, and two, doing two flips for a year for a total income of $100,000 per year. That's an amazing goal, right? Personally, I would take that, right?

Five years into my investing career, if someone told me I was generating five grand a month and making $100,000 a year, I would take that all day long. And this is an awesome five-year vision one because it improves his financial situation. But it's more about how specific this is. This directly supports Harold's why, why he's doing it. And it's specific enough where he can say, these are goals that I can see in my mind, I can envision them, and I can work towards them.

For decades, real estate has been a cornerstone of the world's largest portfolios. But it's also historically been sort of complex, time-consuming, and expensive. But imagine if real estate investing was suddenly easy, all the benefits of owning real, tangible assets without the complexity and expense. That's the power of the Funrise flagship fund. Now you can invest in a $1.1 billion portfolio of real estate, starting with as little as $10.10. The portfolio features 4,700 a single-family rental homes spread across the booming sunbelt. They also have 3.3 million square feet of highly sought-out.

after industrial facilities, thanks to the e-commerce wave. The flagship fund is one of the largest of its kind. It's well diversified, and it's managed by a team of professionals. And it's now available to you. Visit fundrise.com slash BP Market to explore the fund's full portfolio, check out historical returns, and start investing in just minutes. Carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of the Fundrise Flagship fund before investing.

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And listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash rookie. Just go to Indeed.com slash rookie right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. That's Indeed.com slash rookie. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Tax season reminder for all the real estate investors listening. If you own rental properties, short-term rentals, commercial buildings, Basically, anything that's not your primary residence, you need to know about cost segregation. It's an IRS compliance strategy that lets you accelerate depreciation on your properties, which means you're paying less in taxes this year and keeping more cash in your pocket for your next deal.

Cost segregation guys is the go-to firm, having done over 12,000 of these studies with 500 million in total depreciation identified. Head to costsegregationguise.com slash BP to get a free preparation. proposal and see your potential tax savings. To be on track, you know, when you think about this for your five-year goal, like, what do you, then the next step after you've done this five-year goal is to figure out what do you need to be on track. And so again, we're basically just going down this funnel. So you can probably guess we've gone from why to commitment to five-year goal to one-year

goal. Not super complicated, but this is really important because you have to go in this order to build out this plan. So next step is to narrow it down further to a one-year goal. If you haven't invested, you have not invested your first goal. Just get in the game. Do one deal. Maybe you get two. That would be great. But you can say one goal. That would be an awesome first year goal. You do not need to hit a home run. You do not heed to hit a grand slam. When I think about my first deal, it was nothing close to a home run. But remember, this is about making pivots. It was about starting to build momentum. And so when I first got started, my goal is to get in the game. And I did that. And that enabled everything that came after. So think about a goal that is achievable and is going to help you. Doesn't have to be complicated. Just get your first deal. You remember, his five-year goal is to own, get $5,000 in cash flow, flips and deals. But for Harold, his first deal is just buying a single family property. And honestly, I love this because it's, to own, get $5,000 in cash flow, flips and deals. But for Harold, his first deal is just buying a single family property. And honestly, I love this. Because it's, because it's,

It's not a home run. He's just making the pivot. I'm not saying he should just buy anything and neither should you. You shouldn't just go out and say, I said I was going to buy a deal, so I'm going to buy anything. But just focus on a deal that is attainable. And I think Harold is doing this perfectly. I want to just, I put a lot of quotes in here, but this one I love, a goal is a dream with a deadline. We're going to talk about that a lot today. We already are that a lot of these things, it's different to actually do something than it is to desire something. And make sure that that goal has a deadline. So it has to be by the end of the year. That is the time frame here. So you can't make it so big that it's like, I just want to be rich. I'm going to get 12 rental properties and you

haven't done one yet. It's got to be something specific and that you're going to hold yourself accountable to by the end of the year. So now that we've done five year, one year, we're going to narrow it down a little bit further and go to quarterly goals. Guys, this isn't rocket science. Remember, we're just doing the funnel. So now that we have a year, uh, uh, narrow it down. down to quarters. And I really like quarters because it just helps you stay on track for your one-year goal, right? A year from now, a lot of things can happen. So you have to break down your goal into further parts. And I think a quarter is a really good time horizon because it's short enough that you can see the finish line. Like we all, you know, you have an idea of what you're doing

in 12 weeks, right? You probably have plans in 12 weeks. So you can see the finish line. But it is still long enough to get stuff done, right? It's not like next week I need to buy a rental property. That's not going to happen. But 12 weeks from now, you can get a lot done and you can sort of chart out what you're going to do in those 12 weeks. So I really like that. I actually do this every quarter. I do this planning process where I go through my entire portfolio. I look at what deals are working, what plans are working, what I need to change. Do I need to redistribute my resources? So I do this on a whole portfolio level every single quarter. This is actually a tool for my new book. that you get for free if you buy the book.

But it's something that I've been using for years, and I think it's really helpful. Whatever stage you're in, I just recommend, you know, it's the beginning of the year. What are you going to do by the end of the first quarter? What are you going to do by the end of March that is going to move you towards that one-year goal that's going to move you towards that five-year goal? If your goal is to buy a property by the end of the year,

educating yourself right now is an excellent goal. And then maybe the next quarter you start offering on property. So for Harold, for example, his end of Q1 goal is to put one property under contract by the end of the year. We'll talk about how we're going to get to that. But I just wanted to show you that how this worked for Harold. His one year goal was to get a property. But he's broken that down into a little micro step that is achievable in 12 goals. In 12 weeks, excuse me, which is just getting this under contract.

So this is sort of what I mean when I say at the beginning. that it only takes small pivots. Like, yeah, you made a big goal. And yes, your Y should be ambitious and be super motivating to you. But right now, you only need to get one property under contract. Like, that sounds doable, right? Like, you've gone from this, like, wildly ambitious thing. And just in five or six steps, now you're like, okay, I can do that in the next

couple of months. I can actually go put a property under contract. So that's the next step. Now, when we get to number six, I really like this one. this is a really important one, which is about real estate process. So far, most of the goals have really been about defining what you want. But this one, number six, defining your real estate process is really about how to go about doing these things, right?

Like how do you get a property under contract? And a lot of this is about habits, right? A process is something where you can follow it and you don't actually have to worry about each individual outcome. And you have trust that if you've got to. follow this process that you are going to get your achieved result, your desired result over time. And Hal Al Roddy's great speaker talks about this a lot. And I think this is super important in real estate because not every property you look at is going to be good. Not every offer you submit

is going to be accepted. You need to follow this process to keep doing it. So what I recommend, you know, everyone has a different process. But the one that works for me is, again, it's another funnel. I really like funnels. So we have this funnel, and basically it goes in four steps. Starts at the top, again, the most broad thing that you need to do to acquire real estate is to get leads. And a lead is basically just a property that you're considering buying. So you need a lot of those, right? You need to be able to look at a ton of different properties.

Then the next step is to analyze those leads because not every deal is going to be good, and you need to be able to sort which ones are good and which ones aren't going to work. And that is, you do that during deal analysis. So you start with all the deals you can find and you analyze them. Then maybe one out of 10, maybe one out of 20 of the deals you analyze are ones that you're actually going to make an offer on. That's the pursue step. And then the last one is success.

So just as an example, right, you need to be, say you need a hundred leads. You start with 100 leads. Then you're going to analyze 30 of them, right? Because 70 of them, you look at them. You're like, this is garbage. I'm not going to do it. Then you look at 30 of them. And after you analyze them, maybe one in 10, three of them are look like good deals.

You offer on three of them and you just get one. That's it, right? That's all you need to do is to follow this process. And I know it sounds like that's a lot. I'm going to show you that doing this is actually not that hard. We're going to get to that in just a minute. But remember that this is a repeatable process. Remember if you're trying to get your first deal, your 10th deal, this works.

What you have to do is expose yourself to as many leads as possible. analyze, pursue success. Just as an example, guys, I'll just tell you, I spent like the day before New Year's Eve and New Year's Day looking at properties the last couple days. I know it's wonderful New Year's Eve, right? I spent and I looked at maybe like 19 properties and I hated all of them but one. But that's fine. That's all it takes, right?

Because you just need to find that one deal if that's your goal. And it's just a numbers game, finding a lot of leads and analyzing them. So this is the process that I recommend you, follow to actually go out and acquire the deals that are part of your quarterly goal, your one-year goal, your five-year goal, all of that. So for Harold, the way he does this and makes a process goal, it's not his one-year goal. It's not his quarterly goal. What he's doing is making a goal about the process he's going to follow.

So what he says is he's going to connect with five investor-friendly agents he's chosen. BiggerPockets can help you with that. Just go to BiggerPockets.com slash agent. then he is going to send each of those agent his buybox, the things that he's looking for in his next deal, and help work with them to scour the MLS for leads. That's how you mostly get leads. I know a lot of people talk about off-market deals. Those can be great. Invello is an excellent source for off-market deals, and you get that part of Bigger Pockets Pro.

So that's great. But you can also use MLS. Both are possible. You don't have to go off-market. You don't have to go on the MLS. It's up to each individual investor, how they're going to. going to source their leads. The important thing is that you get those leads. Remember, that's the first step. And so this is what Howard is committing himself to. In addition to that, he's also going to

commit himself to analyzing five real estate deals that he gets from the MLS and making offers on at least one of those. Now, if all five are bad, he shouldn't make an offer on that. But I'm just sort of giving you an example, right, that, you know, hopefully one out of five hit. And as we talked about, he's also going to educate himself by listening to two podcasts per week, and maybe he'll even read my new book. Start with strategy. Great job, Harold. Thank you. I just want to remind you the reason you need this process and the reason that you need lapse is because that 99% of properties out there are not good deals. And that is okay. Do not get discouraged, right? You have to look at a lot of stuff to find good deals and you just need to learn how to analyze them. The next step,

after analyzing and doing the lapse, you have that lapse process now, is to actually get out there and do it. And so I put a quote from one of the great books, one of the best business books out there right now, Atomic Habits by James Clear. And basically, he says that the ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity, right? It's like, I'm the type of person who goes to the gym. I'm the type of person who analyzes deals. And it starts to become this thing where it's not necessarily, even about the specific deal that you're doing, but it just becomes this part of your life that

becomes who you are. And I know not everyone is there yet, but I encourage you to just try and do this for two weeks, right? Do the lapse funnel for two weeks, and it will start to become habit. You're going to get good at it. And so I promise you, if you just follow that for a couple of weeks, it's going to become second nature for you, and you're going to get better and better at the lapse funnel. Now, for Harold, what this looks like is on every Sunday night, He's going to spend 30 minutes looking at his calendar and time blocking his weekly process. He ends up analyzing two deals per day. That's a great goal.

And that's more than his goal requires. And he submits offers every single week, sometimes just verbally, but he tracks his progress. And remember, this process, habit, these are what gets you through the challenges. These are the little pivots that you make that ensure your success. But ultimately, it really comes down to being persistent. All of these things that I've shown you are really good examples and tools that you can do, but you have to stick with it. You have to keep going.

And there are a couple of different things I recommend for that. You've probably heard of mastermind groups or accountability groups. I personally love them. I love a to do-list. I like can't go to sleep until my to-do lists are done. So that's why I'm up at two in the morning right now giving this webinar because my to-do list isn't done. But I also love accountability. Like I love to tell my wife or my friends what my goals are.

so like self-peer pressure, basically. So six, number seven guys, sorry, if you're writing this down, was plan your week and execute daily. That's basically trying to do some time blocking for laps. Like take that lap system, break it down into what you're going to do each week. And then again, number eight is just to be as persistent as possible. Now for Harold, he joins a small mastermind group of four peers working on their real estate investing business. And every single week they meet. Every week, they meet for 60 minutes to outline their goal.

They set their commitments and encourage one another to be persistent. I actually, so it's funny, I actually talking to someone about the real estate, the BP con today. And they told me a story about how this group of people met at Bigger Pockets Conference in 2022. And they met every single week, every week without fail between 2022 and 2023. And then they all met up again in Orlando for Bigger Pockets Conference, 2023. and all had really progressed in their investing and grown their portfolios over the last year. And I think that's a great example. And it's honestly what Bigger Pockets is for.

You can go on the forums, meet all those excellent people out there trying to accomplish some similar goals from you. Real estate, it's really not competitive. It should be collaborative. You should be working with each other. And for Harold, because he's persistent with his actions, he finally gets his first offer accepted. Congratulations, Harold. It's a single family home that he estimates will produce 300, $100 a month in positive cash flow.

And just remember, like, maybe it takes Harold analyzing 10 deals. Or it could be 20, it could be 50, but his persistence pays off. And guys, like, Harold is fake, but I've seen this so many different times. Like, this is a real representation of literally hundreds, got thousands of people. And this is how it works. You do it and you are persistent. And like the $300 a month, that is momentum. Like, that is something to ignore.

It might not be your long-term goal. But Harold is making the pivot. He's not going from zero to 100. You need a crawl before you can walk. And if you are persistent and follow these things, you can make those steps right now. And then the last step, number nine, is to use bigger pockets to help fill those gaps. As I said before, listen to the community that's here and talking right now. All of you are coming from all over the country, all of the world, all different experience levels.

And there are millions of other real estate investors waiting to help on bigger pockets. we honestly have everything you need there to become successful. The ability to be a successful real estate investor, like you guys have that already. Everyone can do it. It's not rocket science. We just have some extra knowledge. We have some extra tools that will help you on the way to help you avoid some

the mistakes I know I've made and other mistakes that other investors have made. So go and use those tools to help fill any gaps in knowledge or information that you need. Now, for Harold, let's just finish up the example. with Harold. And though he didn't know exactly what he was doing, he used bigger pockets. He met local investors. He networked. He met vendors. He analyzed deals. And ultimately, he was able to use a lot of the tools that are available to everyone on bigger pockets to find that first deal. So congratulations to fake Harold. But I hope you all understand that this is exactly what tons of people have done and could do. Now, just to recap, I know some people are asking for some of the

steps. Just remember the nine steps are one to define your why, then commit to that, translate your desires into action. Number three, define your five-year vision, set a one-year goal, then narrow it down even further to that Q1 goal, define your real estate process, then plan your week, be persistent, and use bigger pockets. So those are the nine steps to make 2024 great. Now, let's wrap up with two simple questions before we go. The first is similar to what I asked you all in the beginning. Do you want to make 2024 the year that changes everything for you? Is this going to be where you make your first pivot?

That's the first question. So here's the second question. Do you believe that if you have the right why, we talked about that, if you are fully committed, if you have the right goals, the right plan, and the right action, that you will find the success you want? I hope you think yes, because that was my goal today, was to show you that these steps that tons of people have done are the same steps that you can do.

And if you answered yes and you were ready to get started on that 2024 journey, I want to just show you a couple of the tools that we have here at bigger pockets that can help minimize risk, increase your confidence, and get you to that one-year goal, that five-year goal, and help you pursue your why. The main tool that I'm going to talk about right now is Bigger Pockets Pro. It's basically a one-stop shop to start scale and manage your entire portfolio. It's basically we've built this over years.

Bigger Pockets has been a long time and we've designed it to give you everything you need to succeed in real estate investing. And you might be wondering, like, how can one subscription, how can one tool provide all of that? Let me show you how you can help make 2024 that year. So Bigger Pockets Pro, it's got those investments. property calculators that we've been talking about. And that's super important for the LOP system. No matter what you do, you have to get good at invest in analyzing real estate deals.

That is sort of a requirement for real estate investors. And so that's one of the cornerstones of pro. You've already seen how powerful that is. You can actually go test it out for free yourself as well. You've also seen the rent estimator, which is one of the hardest parts of analyzing deals if you don't have sort of a data-driven tool, like the one that we provide a Bigger Pockets Pro. We also have landlord forms so that you can download, no matter what state you're in, you can actually just go download all the legal stuff that you need. I spent so long on this the first year of my investing career.

It's crazy. And now you can just download this. So hopefully you guys see what I mean, right? Like everything you need to successful investor. You need to know what rents are. You need to analyze deals. You need a lease. We got it all.

But we also got way more than that. If you want property management software, free with pro. You want to find off. Do you want to find portfolio tracking? Free with Pro from Stessa, our great partner. So all of these things together, when you look at them all together, it actually provides like a ton of value. We have all these negotiated exclusive discounts.

And we can offer you amazing networking tools like your ProBadge that actually lead to three times more connections than regular free members. So if you're looking to network, looking for tools, we literally have all of this together. So last thing here, in addition to all the things I also showed you, if you want pro-exclusive videos, workshops, webinar replays, 50% off all the boot camps taught by amazing teachers like Henry Washington, Matt Faircloth, Ashley Care, you can get all of those things. And those are amazing features. But the number one reason to consider going pro is honestly it works.

I have worked at this company for eight years. And in that time, one of the greatest joys I've had is to see literally tens of thousands of people use bigger pockets and bigger pockets pro to become successful investors it is a real thing take it from aaron who said the bigger pockets calculators are go-to for analyzing properties there's no way i could analyze the volume of properties i do without being a pro member and think about that because you have to do the volume like erin was talking about so how much is bigger pockets pro it's three hundred and $90 for pro. But for the New Year's crowd, we are going to knock 20% off of it down to $312 for a year full of pro, which is an amazing discount. But guys, I'm feeling especially generous. I'm in a New Year's

mood. Maybe I'm a little slap happy because it's the middle of the night right now. And I'm also going to give you my book for free. It's a gift for all of you. If you go pro right now, you can get my book real estate by the numbers. I wrote it with the incredible. Jay Scott. It teaches you all the numbers and math. It's really not that hard to analyze deal successfully. And it comes with all this other bonus content, property analysis tools, finance templates, all these great things. If you do want to upgrade to pro, make sure to use the coupon code new year 2024. And that will get you all the bonuses that we're talking about. All of these bonuses that we're giving out today are worth $750. And just remember, we want people who are pro to actually

use it. If you go on, try it, test it out, and it's not for you. Within 30 days, we'll give you 100% of your money back. Guarantee. Just email support at biggerpockets.com. Because we are that confident that you are going to like BiggerPockets Pro, and it's going to help you get to your first deal, your quarterly goal, your yearly goal, all of those different goals. So check it out, biggerpockets.com slash pro. And I'll leave you with some parting words. If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse. And I hope you guys take that to heart with your real estate investing, any other goals that you have for 2024. It really comes down to you taking action and hopefully I've helped you narrow down how you can

actually take action today, tomorrow, and into the rest of 2024. All right. Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate your time. This has been a lot of fun for me. I always enjoy doing this webinar and I really hope that this is a start for an amazing 2024 for you. Guys, if you have any questions, you can hit me up on Instagram where I'm at the Data Deli.

You can also, of course, find me on Bigger Pockets. Guys, I hope you have a wonderful year. Thank you so much and let me know how I can help. Have a good night. Thank you all for listening to the Bigger Pockets Real Estate podcast. Make sure you get all our new episodes by subscribing on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Our new episodes come out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I'm the host and executive producer of the show, Dave Meyer. The show is produced by Ian K. Copywriting is by Calico content. And editing is by Exodus Media. If you'd like to learn more about real estate investing or to sign up for our free newsletter, please visit www.w.com. The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only. All host and participant opinions are their own. Investment in any asset, real estate included, involves risk. So use your best judgment and consult with qualified advisors before investing. You should only risk capital you can afford to lose. And remember, past performance is not indicative of future results.

Bigger Pocket's LLC disclaims all liability for direct, indirect, consequential, or other damages arising from a reliance on information presented in this podcast.