10 Things We Wish We Knew Before Buying a Rental Property

The biggest risk in real estate isn't buying the wrong property. It's never buying at all. The perfect rental property, it does not exist, and waiting to find it is costing you thousands of dollars per month. Most beginners spend months or even years stuck in analysis paralysis. They're waiting for the perfect deal, the perfect time, or the perfect market. Meanwhile, they're missing out on years of appreciation and cash flow. But right now, we're gonna tell you the 10 things we wish people had told us before we bought our first rental properties, so you can stop overthinking and start building wealth. If you're watching this video, you're probably anxious about pulling the trigger. You're worried about making a mistake, buying the wrong house, or losing money. I've bought dozens of rental properties I've been investing for sixteen years, and it took me a long time to learn the principles to grow a successful business. But you don't have to wait. Here are 10 things about rental property investing we wish we knew before we got started. Welcome to BiggerPockets. I'm Dave Meyer. He's Henry Washington. So, Henry, start us off. What is the number one thing you wish you knew before you bought your first rental? The number one thing I wish I knew was that goals should dictate your strategy, not your strategy dictating your goals. Yes. Yes. Thank you. I hear all the time from investors. I wanna be a house flipper or I wanna be a landlord or I wanna operate short term rentals. Why? But yeah. But why? All of those things are exit strategies. There are ways to monetize your real estate deal. But the way that that money comes in may not actually fit your goals. And so getting started, I know it sounds cliche, but having your goals clearly lined out in your head should help you pick the strategy or the exit strategy that you use because your goals should be a function of how much money you wanna make and in what time frame you want to make that money in. And not every strategy is going to fit a particular set of goals. So if you're somebody who's saying, I don't need cash flow now. I need to supplement retirement. I need cash flow later. We are probably looking at some strategy that involves you buying established good assets Mhmm. In parts of a community where there's going to be appreciation. You may not get the best dealer cash flow now, but in ten to fifteen years, twenty years, those things could be close to paid off, and you'll have great assets. But if you're somebody who's like, I need large sums of money in short periods of time, you may need to look at flipping a house. Right? And then you look at where in the country can you do that strategy. Mhmm. I think people do this backwards all the time. They say, I wanna …