We Make It Look Easy
I recently had a conversation with another Real Estate Investor from B.C. and he was telling me how he been chatting with a potential partner recently. This partner, who had originally been interested in just providing capital to finance the Professional Real Estate Investor to purchase a suitable rental property, decided he could do the entire investment on his own.
Now I applaud the initiative of this individual, many people would never take such a huge step on their own. On the other hand, did we simply make it look to easy? Has the fact the B.C. Real Estate Investor has bought multiple properties already, created his own team of experts to help him deal with all the steps, and utilized many time proven processes make Real Estate Investment appear to be a very simple process?
Looking back, all our investors ever normally see is a finished product with typically a newly renovated property looking all bright and shiny and ready for tenants. By this stage, we may have already lined up the tenants so it is ready to go making it look like a simple cookie cutter solution. Find a property, spruce it up, and tenants show up — voila!
We have learned so much, refined so many systems and procedures that we have truly made a long complicated process look simple. In a way, this is comparable to watching professional golf on Television. Anyone seeing Tiger Woods teeing off for the first time and sending his ball 300 yards down the middle of the fairway might imagine the game of golf is very simple. After all, Tiger Woods makes it look very easy. Now I am not saying we are the Tiger Woods of Real Estate Investing, I could have just as easily used any other professional for that matter. My point is we are professionals at what we do, we have experience, and have done a considerable amount of work to get to our current level.
As with anything, the more experience you have with it the easier is gets which in turn makes the whole process look simple. We are constantly evolving how we buy properties, how our business runs, as well as improving ourselves personally. So I find it a great compliment when people see our business and think we make it look all too easy.
Plate Cleaning Time
Have you ever reached a point where you wonder if you will ever catch up? Welcome to our summer. Between moving, buying multiple properties since May and with everything else we have had going on we wondered if there really was a light at the end of the tunnel, or if it was just attached to an even longer tunnel.
Overloaded to the point of breaking during one part of the summer when things were most hectic, we had some huge deadlines looming; one of our business partners had his vacation booked. When it was originally booked, no one had any idea how busy we were going to be and there was no getting out of it at that point, so we buckled down and came up with a plan to get things off our plates.
Anyone who has visited our office has probably noticed our four foot by eight foot massive white board up on the wall which we use to plan projects. Well since the beginning of June, we have had it filled with the priority projects we needed to get done. Each project had a myriad of tasks listed underneath and as we completed them, we stroked them off or erased them so we could put new upcoming tasks in place.
It’s a never-ending loop of new projects being added and old projects getting smaller and smaller on the wall, but what an incredible tool it has been to move us forward. The important lesson we learned from all of this is to keep on top of our tasks and to keep focused on our priorities and by having the white board front and centre it has helped us make great strides.
While each project looked incredibly daunting on its own, when we were able to break up the different parts of the project, we started making some great strides. It also allowed us to coordinate with some of our trades’ workers more efficiently. Rather than having them come in for one job and then go off to work for someone else, we had a list of several properties they could work on in a row. This in turn made some of the projects move more effectively as we were able to better to manage timelines when other people’s jobs didn’t get in our way.
We still have plenty of projects on the go, but as each priority gets cleared off our plates we have more time to manage our business and move forward. So I’m not suggesting you need to go out and get your own monster white board, I am only recommending this one particular technique to help you wade through things when you are overwhelmed. You could do something as simple as a spreadsheet to list your priorities on with a breakdown of tasks under each one. Or even something as simple as a chalk board. Anything you can use to take a step at a time on those looming projects, then you can consistently and steadily start crossing off items one by one (small celebrations) until you have a clean plate and a finished project. As the saying goes, “How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time!”
In Closing
What a crazy market, August values dropped about $20,000 from July, so the big topic among the people on the fringe of the market is whether it is over. Well with the $80 a barrel for oil we just saw, the flurry of new tropical storms in the Caribbean and the unstable geopolitical worlds of Russia, the Middle East and Venezuela we will continue to see major energy projects coming Alberta’s way.
We are still the safest bet for all these massive energy companies when they are dealing with multibillion dollar investments. So as they pull out, get nationalized or just don’t want to take a chance elsewhere, we will continue to be a great place to build for them. As you are aware, with the money come the jobs, the people, and even more money and prosperity, so we are far from being on the downside. Rather we are just catching our breath for another run in prices over the next six months.
With summer drawing to a close, have a great September and we would love to get some more feedback on the new format of the Newsletter, the new web site, or even your views on the market. So keep the emails and calls coming!
Bill and Karen Biko
KatSid Housez Inc.
