Now that you’ve finally decided that you want to dip in with multifamily real estate investing, what should you do in 90 days to get your first apartment deal? Perhaps this is the most common question investors have in mind while waiting. The thing is there are a lot of things that you can do instead of just sitting there and waiting.
I am here to share my experience and to provide some tactic tools and strategies as you anticipate for your most awaited first multifamily deal. This is the exact same process I followed, I just fine-tune it, refined it throughout the journey on the multifamily side but now it’s to a point where just doing small tweaks at this moment, so I'm just going to share what I’ve done up until this point.
1. Educate Yourself in the Multifamily
Firstly, what you want to do is to take a step back and educate yourself on multifamily. This is one important thing that you want to do even before you reach 90 days. I personally love to tell people that the timeline has always been great for me when jumping into anything new, whether that was single-family home investing. From my personal experience, I gave myself a month in half to do all the necessary education with these materials:
Videos - watching tons of YouTube videos, particularly the one from Grant Cardone his earlier content was very tactical and practical information from getting into multifamily analyzing deals, what to look for, and what to avoid.
Books – I also soaked myself reading books and other reading materials that can enhance my knowledge, and one is the Multifamily Millions by Dave Lindahl, a great book that helped me gain more information I need.
BiggerPockets.com Forum – With this forum, leveraging others' experiences of them posting their deals and then sharing their experiences like their failures and successes really helped.
After a month in half, when I jumped into doing the marketing and actually doing the tactical work to do to get that first deal, which I can help you within my challenge. It has given me the right set of information that I need to succeed while waiting for my first multifamily deal.
2. Pick and Determine Your Neighborhood and Market
Determining your buying criteria is very important in multifamily real estate property investing. On the multifamily side, I’ll just share mine, apartments that are between 75-100 or 75 to 200 units that are in working-class settings in Indianapolis, Indiana built between 1970-1990. So from there is a very laser-like focus on the types of properties that we are going for
You want to pick your specific neighborhood and market so those of you who may be on the West Coast or East Coast where cash flow is just not where you want it to be when you want to be looking at markets that do fit that a specific parameter.
I’m starting to see more and more individuals from West Coast even international that their market is just not allowing for them to get those deals and cash flow that they’re moving to markets such as the Midwest that will allow them to get those prices and those yields that they’re going for. Knowing the market and its sub-markets that you are investing in is very significant. Always do your due diligence to understand the market.
The following some of the most viable information one should understand the neighborhood better and of course, to determine your buying criteria more:
Economics
Population growth
Employment rate
Types of businesses
Schools
Crime rate
If you want to maximize your opportunity, then you can go further by visiting the neighborhood personally. Doing this in my own opinion is a very effective way to get to know more about your market.
Based on my own experience, I even stayed in the neighborhood for a couple of days via Airbnb to really get a feel for the neighborhood that I was planning to purchase apartment property. I went all the way by going through the stores and asking people what they think about the neighborhood or market.
Also, staying close to home allows you if something doesn’t go right with third party management, then you can go out there personally and be more hands-on. Once you have the buying criteria, I think it would be easier to proceed.
3. Using the Driving for Dollars Approach
This is one method that helped me obtain my first apartment deal. Though, it is quite time consuming and needs a lot of effort. It is an ideal way to find good leads by finding properties that are in distress that you can flip or repair and sell or lease it.
You just have to take your time to find these properties that I personally recommend, especially if you don’t have enough capital.
You can also use the power of the internet to get these properties as well as their contacts. Beenverified.com or truepeoplesearch.com allows you to acquire contact numbers and important information you need regarding that property.
Additionally, you have to dig deeper if you can’t get the right information you need such as BBB.org and opencorporate.com. Both these sites are very useful to get the details you need. Skip tracing is an essential thing to do for you to locate people and contact numbers.
Creating and building a bigger pipeline of deals is very important as you can have other options in having those great deals that you need in case some deals won’t succeed. You can also delegate this job to a researcher that you can outsource so that you don’t have to do it all on your own. This is the best way for you to focus more on high-value activities while they help you with other low-value jobs.
4. Call, Follow Up and Close!
Don’t be afraid to pick up that phone and start cold calling. Yes. You might be hesitant to do this because you don’t know if that person is going to answer you or not. As for my experience, I make sure that I am fully prepared with the right script.
Having a script for cold calling is very effective because you know what to say, how to deliver it, and how to overcome objections or having the proper rebuttals. Practice makes perfect, so role-playing is also essential when preparing for cold calling. Your script should be short but concise as they might not be interested if it’s too long.
If cold calling is not your thing, then you can get agents from fiverr.com or upwork.com.
Don’t forget to do some follow-up because this is the right time to convert an uninterested to interested. Of course, aside from having the right words, you have to be on the right timing. My experience personally is that I had a deal after 2-3 follow-ups. Once you had a deal, you can now start preparing the necessary documents and contracts.
Summary
There you have it. These are the things that you can do while waiting for that first deal to happen. Once you get that property under contract, of course, you got to do all your due diligence and that’s a whole another segment in itself. Finding deals is not an easy thing to do but as long as you are equipped with the right tools and materials, then the rest will come later.
P.S.
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