I remember when I was first interested in real estate investing but could not exactly find the information I needed. After reading how there are so many ways you can make money from real estate with no money down, I was itching to hear more (especially since I had no money). I signed up for sites, paid the fees to read eBooks and it helped (a little), I gradually began to find my way through. But, the best assistance was hearing other real estate investor’s experiences and going through my own. I would like to share my experience with you all and hopefully you will learn from my mistakes and perhaps minimize your own. Mistakes are good because it means you will learn a great deal and do things the right way. It also means you are actually doing something which is the hardest part for people who want to invest in real estate (getting started). Mistakes are only bad if you never learn from them. Why?; Because you will go through a vicious cycle of failure. The most important aspect to remember is that you need to get out there, try to minimize your risk and enjoy what you do!

My interest grew in real estate after getting married in the summer of 2002. I was 26 years old and had a bachelor’s degree in Information Systems. I was an IT consultant at AT&T with no job stability and my husband was a guidance counselor. We wanted to buy a house but the prices were out of our price range. We began to research bank and government owned properties. After browsing numerous sites, we found a lot of real estate investor related sites; All promising to show us how we can make lots of money in real estate with no money out of pocket. But, the catch was that we had to pay for the information (and it wasn’t cheap). After reading those sites, we decided to buy a book (it seemed the cheapest route), “The Key’s to Foreclosure”. The book gave us a very broad overview of foreclosures. Between the book and all the sites we were reading, we decided that our best route was to contact people who were about to lose their house but the bank did not have possession yet. Hence the houses still belonged to the home owner and they could sell if they wanted to. As a real estate investor, you know this group of motivated sellers as pre-foreclosures.

Our idea was to go to the courthouse to find the list of houses going up for sheriff sales. We also found listings in the legal section of the local newspaper. We scouted towns in 3 different counties that we felt comfortable living in. Once we gathered enough information and knew where to obtain a fresh list of names and addresses, we decided to write a letter. We knew that we could not visit every potential pre-foreclosure so a letter was the way to go. This took some time because we couldn’t find sample letters that other real estate investors wrote and we didn’t know exactly what to say. After a few different drafts, we finally came up with something we thought was decent (I’ll find the letter and post for you all to see). So, we had our list together. Oh, by the way, “our list” consists of 10-20 names and addresses of houses we wanted to buy. We had our letter together; All that was left was to send them off; We got our stamps and began to send out the letters. Houses that we felt were too good to let slip through our hands, we decided to knock on their doors. We were very daring in our ignorance. We didn’t know how to be real estate investors but we knew we wanted a house. Sometimes that is the best approach in reaching your goals; Finding the true motivation behind your actions. We all want to make money to have financial freedom or to be well off, but why? What would you do with the freedom if you had it? What is your purpose in life?

Okay, so we knocked on a few doors; One homeowner didn’t answer; One told us they got the situation taken care of; and another came to the door but wouldn’t open it. We tried to talk through the door but it was to no avail and hilarious how the homeowner just stared at us. Needless to say, we were very frustrated. We couldn’t understand why we didn’t get any responses after sending about 20 mailings a week and when we knocked on doors we were rejected or there was no answer. We didn’t find a house through pre-foreclosures but continue to keep our eyes on the sheriff sales and bank owned/government owned properties.