Real Estate Investing – start with getting your own finances under control

Real estate has been a driving force in world economies since the days of Babylon, one of the most fantastic developments the world has ever known, and the desire to create, not destroy, is alive and well.

To enter the realm of real estate development requires vision, direction, and risk acceptance, but a knowledgeable investor will take calculated risks that are in line with his or her overall investment goals. There are only four empirically supported ways to delve into the real estate market: actually build, buy an existing development, invest in some one else’s development, or buy into a Real Estate Investment Trust. All of these venues carry risk and reward, but they also have distinctive differences that set them apart from one another. The most lucrative would be to develop a property from square one, but these types of investments carry more risk and work. To develop a project from scratch enables investors to have more autonomy, which permits them to more openly express their creativity.

Buying an existing property requires investors to pay a premium for the property because the initial risk of failure has already been taken by another developer. To buy into another developer’s idea is also laden with risk as well as reward. Developers provide the insight, while investors, provide needed equity. This is for those who have multiple commas in their bank account but have little desire, other than making more money, to enter the real estate market. These people are usually professionals who are too involved with their own profession to spend the time that is necessary to nurture a project from its conception all the way through its evolution.

Whatever gateway is used, real estate offers an escape from the groupthink that often imprisons many conventional investors. There are many ways to enter the real estate market, but there is one prerequisite to all of these: personal fiscal responsibility. Before people can make their mark in this discipline, they must commit to personal finance reform. By this, it is said that potential developers must start somewhere, and that place is their own finances, in order to create adequate equity that can be invested without jeopardizing their future. A potential investor must search out the pivotal facets of his or her personal financial life and make an honest assessment of his or her susceptibility to a certain level of risk. Real estate must coincide with your long-term aspirations.

Developers therefore must incorporate the needs of the external environment in which they operate and preserve what little there is left by not misappropriating one of our most precious resources by releasing it to those who wish to impede sustainable development by promoting their delusions of grandeur. If not, the next major development will have to happen on Mars, and to be quite honest, the ambience there is not so bright.