Real Estate Goals
“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.” ~ Robert Kiyosaki.
Whether you are a real estate investor, a trader in the financial markets, or an entrepreneur, you have dreams. These dreams may be to retire at a certain age, to make a certain amount of money, or to achieve financial freedom so you can quit your job and work for yourself. If someone asked you what your dream was, little reflection would likely be needed as you know what motivates you to head down your chosen path.
When these dreams are put into goal form, they are usually described in the form of macro goals. For a more complete discussion on macro goals, please read the first few paragraphs in the accompanying article, Goal Setting. There is nothing wrong with macro goals as they are the foundation of your dreams. However, it is a long journey from where you are now to the achievement of your macro goal. In order to accomplish any macro goal in real estate that you desire, numerous micro goals will need to be achieved in order to maximize your chance of success.
In the quote from Robert Kiyosaki at the beginning of this article, he references the disappointment you will encounter in your pursuit of your dreams. The plain and simple fact is the journey to achieve your dreams will likely include many pitfalls and setbacks along the way. Achieving real estate micro goals along your journey can go a long way to maintaining your motivation and, ultimately, to achieving your dreams.
For this coming year, below are some areas to concentrate on when setting your goals for the coming year. There is nothing wrong with setting larger macro goals, but the achievement of these micro goals will help you tremendously.
Power Team – The power team you develop is one of the most important things you will do as a real estate investor, as it is critical to the long-term success and growth of your real estate investment business. Each competent and professional member you add simplifies the real estate equation. Some examples of power team members are: appraisers, contractors, escrow companies, insurance agents, mortgage brokers, private-money lenders, Realtors, and title companies.
Creating a fully operational power team is not something that happens overnight. A good micro goal for this area would be to add one power team member every month. For the more ambitious, you could decrease the amount of time for the adding of a member, but if you accomplished this goal for the coming year, then 12 months from now, you would have an impressive-looking power team.
Analyzing Properties – There is no way around it—to become a successful real estate investor, one must master the art of determining property values. Whether you specialize in rehabbing, wholesaling, foreclosures, or any of the other numerous real estate strategies at your disposal, determining property values is a fundamental skill that must be learned.
The rate in which you can practically apply this skill increases dramatically when you start off with a manageable area to start your evaluations. If you set a goal that states, “I am going to learn how to analyze properties,” then you might not have the focus needed to achieve it. For this goal, set several different milestones to hit in the terms of areas that you will learn.
Your first goal should be a manageable area, often called a farm area, and is likely to be a section of the city you live in. You should then set different milestones that expand this area once you feel you have achieved your first goal. As the year progresses, your knowledge of properties in your area will increase as will your ability to find good deals.
Making Offers – Oftentimes, real estate is a simple numbers game. It is the rare experience for someone to have their first offer accepted. You can scout properties, make fifty offers, and have none of them accepted. The only offer that is accepted in any given time period can come of the first, fiftieth, or fifty first.
Making offers works well with micro goals. You can set a goal that you are going to make 10 offers this week, 100 offers this month, five offers a day, etc. The goal you set in this area is often determined by when you spend your time in pursuit of real estate dreams. For those that spend time every day working on goals, daily goals might work best; for those that work weekends, then weekly or monthly goals may work for them. The key is to be relentless in making your offers.
Education – There are numerous strategies that are used in real estate. Naturally, not every strategy fits every situation or every deal. The more versed you are in real estate strategies, the more likely you are to find a deal that works with your circumstances.
Micro goals that work in this area deal with expanding the amount of strategies you feel comfortable with and the amount of time you dedicate to learning these strategies. If you are not comfortable with the wholesaling strategy, you could set a goal to learn wholesaling in the first three months of the year (perhaps four different strategies is your yearly goal). Then, you could set a goal for thirty minutes to an hour each day that you will focus on studying and learning the strategy.
Learning can be a time-consuming process, but it is amazing the knowledge you can acquire if you do your daily diligence. Take the time to invest in yourself and it will pay dividends down the road.
These are just a few areas where micro goals could be set for the coming year. Take this time before the new year to focus on where you are, where you want to be, and the steps you need to take to get there. Set your dreams high, but also set many of the goals you make this year around the smaller goals needed to achieve those big dreams.