One House
People ask me all the time how I got started in real estate. In the beginning, I was very fortunate to be taught a really simple system. It was the idea of buying one house a year for the next 30 years.
It was a funny concept because I was in my early 20′s and I was told that if I bought one house a year for the next 30 years and they were all on 30 year mortgages, 30 years from now my first house would be free and clear and I’d get a bonus. Then each year after that I’d have a new house that would be free and clear and a new bonus.
So if you’re 30 years old and getting started, when you’re 60 years old you’ll own 30 houses. This seems really simple, but the reality is that it can even get a lot better than that.
Simplicity
The beauty of the system was that it was so simple that it enabled me to start. So many people don’t start because the system seems overwhelming, but I thought this system was something I could get my head around.
It was pretty miraculous after that- I got one house and then a second house, and then a third house. After three years I had three houses and I said to myself “Why didn’t you do two a year? You would’ve had six by now!” So I said “This year I’m going to do two. I’m going to change the system and do two a year.”
New Plan
So I started on my new plan, but before I knew it I was doing a house a month. Then I got turned on to buying multifamily deals. So as the saying goes “There’s no right way to get there. The key is to get started and go from there. Right now there are more deals than you can ever imagine being able to buy, so get rid of that scarcity mentality. There’s plenty for everybody and prices are at an all time low.
The message here is to just get the first one. Who you are today is not who you’re going to be after that first closing. Then your mind will expand to think about what else you can do, and what you can do better or different.