April Crossley is the founder of Lazy Girl REI. She went from young mother to real estate rock star, now running her entire investing business remotely while she travels the U.S. in an RV with her hubby.
She did fix and flips, she did buy and holds, now she’s getting into bigger multifamily projects.
Her advice to newbies? Assess your situation.
Do you have cash? Credit? Would it be better to start off flipping, score a payday or two, pay off some debt, go from there?
If so, the way to do that is to “joint venture with another investor who’s more experienced,” April explains. “And if they have some cash and they have some liquidity and they have good credit and could get pre-qualified for a cash-out refinance, then I’d suggest you go the route of buying rentals. ‘Cause you could do a cash-out refinance on rentals.”
“In both situations, I always tell people you have to have a coach or a mentor. Sometimes it’s best to have it be locally, other times it’s not best to do it locally.”
Whoever it is, main thing is you gotta vibe with ’em. But it’s so important. April’s biggest regret is not having a mentor from day one.
Other ‘n’ that, get good at finding deals. That’s how you provide value to potential JV partners in the beginning.
Otherwise, yeah, you don’t bring much to the table. But when you can deliver a motivated seller on a pretty pink platter? Well, now we’re talking. Even if it’s not a perfect 50/50 split, even if you have to take a little less, it’s enough to get your first few deals done, right?
Then, once you have the money and the credit, you can go solo, keep all the profit.
Either way, master one thing before moving on.
Don’t start a flip, try to get your first long-term rental, and buy a mobile home park investing course all at once. Chasing after more than one rabbit’s a recipe for a missed meal.
If you’d like to have April in your corner, she’s got a few different ways she can help.
“So I have a company called Lazy Girl REI,” she says. “And we just teach newbies how to buy and hold and flip with other people’s money.”
“‘Cause I never used any of my own money from the beginning,” she continues.
“We always used private money. I purchased all my properties with private money. So we teach people just how to work with private money lenders, how to raise capital, how to find these private money lenders, and then I also have a lot of people come to me wanting to know how to be a private money lender. A lot of people think if you have money, you have to flip houses or buy rentals but maybe they don’t have the time for it.”
“I also have a deal analyzer. It’s just a way to put all your numbers into one spreadsheet so that your lender can quickly and easily look it over and see if they wanna fund it or not.”
“We also do management. So all of our tenants can make their rent payments online. I have a contractor that keeps an eye on all my buildings. A plumber, an HVAC guy. It took us a few years to get here, but it’s worth it.”
“So we do everything pretty much from a distance, and so far, knock on wood, it’s going pretty good.”
April wants to remind you that your main job in real estate, regardless of what kind of investing you’re doing, is to create good, strong relationships with people in your market.
And that, of course, is in addition to finding deals and finding money.
If you can do those things, you too can be a Lazy Girl (or Guy) REI.
Sign up for April’s free five-day Challenge or check out Lazy Girl REI University (cost is $2,995 per year) or her Mastermind & Coaching (cost is $10k to join plus $1k per month) if you’d like her assistance.