CURRENT WEALTH
Once you have your dream firmly in mind regarding your real estate, the next step is to identify where you are today. Wh
en considering where you are today, list only your real assets, that is, those that are available to invest. Don’t list your car or your jewelry. But do list the amount of equity in your home if it can be made available for investing through a home equity loan. Here is an example:
These first few steps that are the essence of a process referred to as “dreamlining”. The following picture is simple illustration to show you:
VISION, MISSION, AND VALUES
After you have your dreamline in place, you can make a plan to reach those dreams. This plan should include your vision, mission and values, the type of real estate you will specialize in buying, and the criteria you use for choosing your real estate investments.
At this point, you may be wondering if I have truly lost my mind. After all, aren’t vision, mission, and value statements only for true businesses? Exactly! And your real estate investments are a true business. At least they should be if you are going to reach your dreams in the shortest amount of time possible and with the least amount of work.
When creating your vision, remember that this represents your focus for the future, that is, what you want your life to look like when everything is in place. Your mission is simply a statement of how you are going to go about your investing business. And your values are the values that you insist everyone you work with in real estate share with you.
INVESTMENT NICHE
Once you have your vision, mission, and values in place, you can begin looking at what type of real estate makes sense for you. Every successful business owner knows that you are always most successful when you focus your attention on something you enjoy doing and for which you have a natural ability. At my company, ProVision, we have a variety of tools we use to help people figure out which type of real estate they will enjoy the most—multifamily, commercial, industrial, raw land or single-family homes. My personal investment niche remains highly appreciating single-family homes.