As you probably know, the overwhelming majority of “real estate investors” will NEVER do even one deal, will quit after only a few months, and wonder why real estate investing is so damn difficult for them.  Are you one of these people… odds are that you are… so listen up.

There are many reasons why most people have a difficult time becoming successful in real estate investing (or anything for that matter).  But… they all boil down to a handful of key factors that people get stuck on that doom them for failure.  Here I’ll present some of the biggest obstacles for real estate investors that are driving down success rates and discouraging a lot of people.

1. They’re after an “easy” buck.  Undoubtedly you caught the infomercial bug, saw a house flipping tv show, or read a book on “No Money Down” real estate techniques.  What all of these have in common is that they portray real estate investing as simple, easy, and you can be a millionaire in no time at all working only 2 hours a month!  This is a bunch of bull…  Starting in real estate isn’t as simple as reading a book and making offers.  The guru’s promoting the courses would like you to think it is because they know that the majority of people out there are after a quick and easy buck, and will pay dearly for a course that will “teach them step by step” how to become a successful real estate investor.  Too many people have been caught up in the get rich quick hype and found that it isn’t quite as simple as it seems.  So… if you’re one of the people looking to get rich quick… you will most likely end up in the 95% of those who will fail.
2. Don’t treat investing as a business and don’t commit to making it a success.  As I have written about many times… you cannot take a ho hum attitude toward real estate investing (OR ANYTHING FOR THAT MATTER!) and expect it to be a success.  Most of the wannabe real estate investors go to a bootcamp and immediately start trying to use the “techniques” they learned.  What’s wrong with this??  Nothing if you want to be spinning your wheels 6 months from now wondering why you aren’t making money.  The techniques should come after you decide to treat investing like a business.  If you don’t treat it like a business (i.e.- at the least have a registered business name, website, business cards, and checking account) you are telling yourself that “I don’t want to make the committment of starting a business because I’m not sure that I will succeed… also it will be embarrassing if I take all that time to start the business only to have it fail”.  I’d say about 95% of the failures don’t even have a business name and checking account for their investing activities.  Bottom line… the failures didn’t take themselves seriously… so neither did anyone else.
3. Stuck on the “No Money Down” idea.  Back to the “No Money Down” thing.  Don’t get me wrong… I love no money down deals… but if I only looked for deals I could do with no money down I would be passing up huge amounts of profitable deals on the way.  In addition, no money down deals are tough to come by (especially with all of the green investors straight out of the bootcamps looking for the same deals!).  New investors have to realize that no money down is only a very very small percentage of real estate deals.  So… you can’t bank your entire strategy (if you want to call it that) on no money down.  I guarantee that the odds are against you.  Bottom line… interview the big-time successful investors out there and you will see that very little of their deals are no money down.  You can’t bank on it so don’t think your entire investing career will be on no money down deals.
4. Have no true goals that they are working towards. This is what separates the small percentage of real estate investors who succeed from those who flounder.  Goals are like notches on a ruler.  In order to get to 3/4″ you need to get to 1/4″ first.  So, your goal isn’t to get to 3/4″ as fast as you can… it’s to get to 1/4″ by Friday of this week, 1/2″ by the next Friday, and 3/4″ by the Friday after that.  Goals must be specific and measureable.  If you don’t have a specific target to hit by a specific date, it is far to easy to forget about it and never achieve it.  The miserable failures out there probably don’t have specific goals written down.  Sure… they may have a “goal” to make a million dollars… but that’s not really a goal.  That’s a dream.  It becomes a goal when you set specific steps to get there and dates on when it will happen.  Successful people are very good at setting goals… while unsuccessful people are really good at setting dreams.  A goal without specificity and a specific game plan to get there is simply a dream.
5. Are trying to get everything ”perfect” and know 100% of everything before getting started. Bottom line… YOU WILL NEVER GET IT PERFECT AND NEVER KNOW 100% OF EVERYTHING!  Perfection truly never comes.  If someone gets to the point where they think they’ve reached perfection, the business becomes stagnant.  One of the biggest progress killers is waiting to “get it right” before you take action.  This is one of the biggest mistakes real estate investors make.  If you try to wait until you get everything set up perfect and you know 100% of everything about how to do a deal… you’ll never get started.  Have you heard the phrase, “ready, fire, aim”? This is what needs to be done to be successful in real estate.  Just get started and take action first… then everything will fall into place.  If you live by “ready, aim, fire”, you will spend your whole life getting ready and aiming… but never firing. Bottom line… start now and learn from your experiences… it’ll get you much farther much faster.
6. Just plain don’t try hard enough.  This is one of the simplest reasons so many people are failures when it comes to real estate investing.  There is always an excuse for not getting something done.  “I don’t have any money, my credit is shot, I’m not as smart as he is, he has better connections, I just wasn’t born to be successful”, and on and on… I get so pissed off when I hear excuses like these because these people are looking for someone to feel sorry for them and do it for them.  Bottom line… everyone in America is born with the same chance to make it big in real estate.  Smarts and money don’t have a whole lot to do with being successful… they help… but aren’t necessary.  All that’s necessary is that you try hard enough to get a deal done… then do it again… and again… until it becomes easy.  Excuses are the drug for the unsuccessful… all they do is make them feel better, they don’t cure the problem.
7. Last but not least… they focus on too damn many things!  Like Confucius said, “Man who chases two rabbits catches none”.  When you try to study on too many topics and do too many projects… you won’t get anything done.  I often find myself falling in this trap.  I’ll be surfing the net reading some blogs… then I’ll see something I like on another blog and add it to my blog… then get an idea to launch a marketing campaign on one of my websites….. then down the road I end up getting none of them done.  However, when I focus on one project at a time I can really pound them out and get them done.  It might sound like a good idea to try to learn as much as possible… but it’s not.  Well, at least not all at once.  Master one thing then go on to the next.  In real estate investing, master one technique then go on to another one… but not until the first is mastered.  Also, you need to cut the things that are jumbling up your life.  Stop doing things that aren’t making you money and start doing things that are making you money.  Cut the crap and focus on one thing at a time… I guarantee you will get much more done.

Well, that’s my take on why there are so many miserable failures in the real estate investing world.  Too many people focusing on the wrong things and being their own worst enemy.  I guess that’s what make the world go round though. 

What do you think… why do so many people fail in real estate?  Comments.

Remember: Confucius said “Man who chases two rabbits catches neither”

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