Develop your power team

In the next couple of blogs, I will be focusing on your "power team."  Your power team, is the group of different professionals that you will be working with regularly in your investing career.  These are the men and women that will be helping you at ever level of investing. When investing in real estate you will need the help of dozens of different professionals (real estate agents, loan officers, property inspectors, insurance agents, a real estate investing mentor, etc...).  The list of people you will need is very extensive, and it will take you years to develop a great power team.

The first thing you will need to do is develop a list. Think of all the professions and their services that you might use as a real estate investor.  In order to get the most out of your power team, you'll next need to realize why you need each of them. Most importantly, you need to realize what level of services you should expect from each of them.

Next you will need to search for these individuals and determine which ones you would like to hire.  You will need to interview several of them in each category.  This is very important, you never want to contact just one Lawyer, Accountant, Plumber, etc...  In order to conserve time, you would interview them all over the phone.  Unfortunately, you won't learn the true value of any of their services until you actually hire them and put them to work.  This is a portion that will take years...it's the part in which you hire them and find out if they are really worth their cost. And don't feel obligated to stay loyal to any one of them.  Just because you've used the same electrician for the last 5 projects, doesn't mean you need to keep working with him.  If he's not giving you great service, than you should be shopping around for a new one. Never get locked in with one member of your power team.

This may seem like a lot of work, but years down the road when you've developed a very strong, reliable, affordable and thorough power team you will be very happy that you took the time to do this.  It's with out a doubt that a good power team will positively affect your return on investment, your passive income, your equity positions...which ever way you measure your success.

This may seem like a daunting task, but start now... do some research on www.google.com.  Look up three different accountants in your area and give them a call.  Ask them why you should have them do your taxes.  Than next week call three loan officers and ask them why you should get a loan through their bank.  Spend the time, do your homework.

When you buy your next investment property you'll be glad that you've already done your research!

Your real estate investing mentor,
 Rob Hayes