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It's true, You can make a lot of money by investing in real estate. Yet, many investors are not. And when you look at their real estate investment strategy, it's no surprise.

The problem is that they have been brainwashed by the so called real estate investment gurus. You know the ones that I am talking about. The ones that tell you that for a few of your hard earned dollars they will teach you all their ultimate short-cut secrets to successfully making millions.

They will tell you that you don*t need a job, money or credit. All you need to do is pay them and they will show you the exact way to invest in real estate. Do what they say, follow their real estate investment strategy and your life will changed forever.

Well I have some bad news for you. In most cases, it's the worst real estate investment strategy you could ever follow.

Don*t get me wrong, Its* OK to go to seminars, buy books and audio products if you are using this information to learn certain techniques, financing options, tax laws and other ways to invest. In fact, you should do this, because it will make you more creative and you will become a smarter real estate investor, however it's not the most important thing that you should do.

>>> The Most Important Step When Investing In Real Estate

Before you start to invest in real estate, you should sit down and create a very specific plan of what you want the outcome of your real estate investment plan to be!

I know that this is not very exciting, however, if you don*t know why your investing and the overall outcome that you want, then how do you know if you making a good or bad decision?

>>> Two Important Questions

The only reason to invest in real estate is to make money. There are two important questions you need to ask yourself.

1.) When do you want the money and how much?

2.) What are you willing to pay to get that result?

The answer to these questions will help you determine your real estate investment strategy.

Let me give you several examples.

>>> Buy and Sell Strategy

If you want the maximum amount of money in the short run, you should be buying real estate with the intent of a quick sale and profit. This may be buying fixer-uppers or looking for below market properties that you can sell for a profit quickly (know as flipping).

To do this, the price you will have to pay is your time to find, analyze, fix, finance and sell the properties. Once you sell any of your properties and realize your profit, you must go out and repeat the process again and again to continue to make a profit.

One problem with this strategy is that when you stop buying and selling your profits stop. So it's important to make sure you take some of your profits and invest in something that will produce the income you will need and want later on in your life.

>>> Buy and Hold Strategy

This strategy is to buy properties, rent them out and have the tenants pay for the properties. Once the properties are paid for, you will continue to have rental income for the rest of your life.

The price you pay in this strategy is not only the time to find, finance and analyze, it's the problems that may occur when ever you have tenants. So you will need some type of a system to manage or you can hire a management company to do this.

Personally, I like the Buy and Hold strategy because you are building up assets and income that will come to you for the rest of your life. To deal with the management part you need to create a system of policies and procedures.

Whether your strategy is to Buy and Sell, Buy and Hold or maybe a mix of the two, the key is to plan for what you want your ultimate outcome to be.

If your outcome is to have an income of $100,000 per year without any work, you may choose to buy and hold enough rental real estate that will provide that.

In summary, the worst real estate investment strategy ever is when you don*t take the time up front to to decide exactly why your are investing in real estate and what do you want when you are all done

Copyright 2006 David Schneider