Before embarking on a new and potentially risky venture, you must be adequately prepared. You wouldn’t go on a long trip without packing a suitcase! And the most experienced travelers know that a checklist ensures all the essentials get packed.

In the same way, real estate investors must prepare before they start their investment journey. It’s all too easy for inexperienced investors to get in over their heads. It takes solid preparation to set the stage for success – do you know what you need to do?

Never fear – we’re here to give you the definitive checklist for preparing for your first real estate investment.

We’ve all heard, “Cash is king.” The phrase was coined in 1980 by author George N. McLean as a business maxim: “Avoid credit, remembering that cash is king, credit is a slave.” The phrase reemerged and grew in popularity with the 1987 stock market crash. We’ve seen plenty of professionals and investors hold to this philosophy since.

New construction is divisive in the world of real estate, whether you’re an investor or a traditional homebuyer. Some are attracted to the totally turnkey nature of new builds. Others are skeptical of the quality of modern construction and developing markets.

With the market favoring selling so thoroughly, you might consider selling one or more of your investment properties. After all, it seems like a prime opportunity! But before you prepare that listing, wait. There are compelling reasons to hold your properties for the long haul – even when conditions make selling an attractive prospect.

Why does buy-and-hold investing work? 

Out of all the ways to invest in real estate, buy and hold is the one that we champion as the best way to invest at any skill level. But why? After all, there are so many different strategies available when it comes to real estate investment. Even within a buy and hold model, there are different types of properties to invest in and sub-strategies to consider: like turnkey real estate.

Recent studies from CNBC and Housingwire lament the returns on real estate flips. For three quarters, returns have been dropping, largely due to increased competition with buy-and-hold investors in the search for properties priced under market value.

As markets nationwide experience rising prices, such deals are harder to come by and the need for traditional financing has caused many flippers to purchase properties at full market value, which has hurt their returns.

Chandler Reports, the local real estate information aggregating company, released their monthly tally last week which included 1st quarter totals for all things related to real estate in Memphis and the surrounding areas.  Memphis Invest is interested in many of the numbers including total sales, days on market, average sales price and number of transactions as each of these data points is very important to the over-all health of a market.  But we are also extremely interested in the over-all sales numbers for the area and for the 8th quarter in a row, MemphisInvest.com was the leader in local company home sales.