Page 159 - Trump University Commercial Real Estate 101

Take Onl y Intelligent Risks

Crucial Elements of Your Success

Whatever you do, don ’ t get caught in the chicken - and - egg quandary of
“ I can ’ t get good at real estate investing unless I do deals, but how can
I hope to do a decent deal until I ’ m somewhat good at this whole
business? ”
I have great news. You get good by doing three things:

1. Look at lots of deals.
2. Realize that your early negotiations with sellers are not binding.

Taking the first two steps will then allow you to:

3. Make offers regularly.

Let ’ s now look at each of these elements.

Look at Lots of Deals

When you begin to analyze deals, your goal should not be to get a deal
done as soon as possible, strange as that advice may seem. I fi gure that
you want to be in this business for the long term, so my most impor-
tant early objective is to get you the strongest, most stable foundation
for investing.
You do that by analyzing as many deals as you possibly can. The
old advice works great here: Practice makes perfect . It ’ s only through
seeing deal after deal that you get a feel for how the numbers work.
At fi rst, everything ’ s new to you. But the more deals you see, the faster
you ’ re moving up the learning curve. Soon you will begin to see things:

• Wow, I ’ ve never seen a deal with expenses this high.
• I ’ ve looked at eight deals in that part of town and this is the fi rst
one that has a cash - on - cash return over 10 percent.

139

10/14/08 10:56:17 AM
c07.indd 139
c07.indd 139 10/14/08 10:56:17 AM