These Are The Biggest Mistakes Real Estate Investors Make

Real estate investing has a lot of great things going for it: the retirement planning, the wealth building, the tax sheltering, the sense of accomplishment from being able to own something that the tenants pay for each and every month, and a whole lot more.

However, some common mistakes that many investors make can make life difficult and expensive.

But I'm going to show you how to avoid those mistakes so your real estate investments provide the highest returns –– and least stress –– possible.

1. Not Managing Effectively

You see, with the 15 kids, I was managing my property instead of hiring a property manager. I didn't do it effectively, though. If you are going to manage your own properties, you will need to drive by the property, interact with your tenants and do all the other jobs that come with being a "landlord."

How to Avoid This: Watch over your properties and make sure the rules are being followed. Check up with your tenants, schedule regular inspections and ensure you deal with problems quickly and efficiently.

2. Deferring Maintenance

Many landlords refuse to fix things quickly because either:

    1. It costs more than they want to pay, or

    2. They just procrastinate.

This mistake has caused more grief than you want to know. Problems only get worse with time, and tenants are more likely to leave -- causing even more costs when the unit sits vacant. Problems will not fix themselves, so you may as well get a jump on it and keep your tenant happy.

How to Avoid This: Fix maintenance problems immediately. Don't procrastinate, or the problems will just compound. Keep a notebook/calendar on you (or a digital one in your phone) and use it to keep maintenance requests straight. However, if you don't want to do the work yourself, see tip No. 3.

3. Doing It All Yourself

Let's talk about that "15 kids" situation for a moment. The mistake of not managing effectively could have easily been avoided by hiring a property manager to manage the properties. Instead, I tried to do everything myself at the beginning, which led to more problems, more costs and more stress. 

This is a mistake made by many new investors. When you are beginner, it’s easy to think that it would be cheaper to do everything yourself. However, hiring someone who is trained to do a job is sometimes more efficient than trying to do it all yourself.

How to Avoid This: Know what your areas of weakness are and hire those things out, whether it's management, plumbing, cleaning or whatever.

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