Real Estate Investment Expert Offers Advice to Agents

Abhi Golhar, a nationally syndicated radio show host, an entrepreneur and a real estate investor, spoke with PAR President Al Perry in PAR’s monthly webinar this week about how real estate agents can invest in real estate.

Golhar, the author of Make It Rain: Real Estate Investing for Real Estate Agents, started investing in real estate when he was a sophomore in college. He went into business with someone who took advantage of his lack of knowledge, which resulted in him being $700,000 in debt. He worked with the FBI and the Department of Justice to have this person prosecuted and he eventually dug himself out of debt.

“If you’re thinking about doing this (real estate investing) and wondering is this for me? If I can do this, if I could dig myself out of this hole, anybody can,” Golhar said. “All you need, you already have in front of you, which is data, the team and you know how to connect with clients and contractors and people to get things done.”

What Type of Investor Are You?

When getting started, Golhar says people need to consider what type of investor they are, comparing it to Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. “If you’re a Wheel of Fortune investor, you want income that is very predictable, just like we know exactly what Vanna White and Pat Sajak are going to do up to the final spin. That’s a person who wants predictable cash flow, predictable income month over month over month.”

“When I think of Jeopardy, it’s kind of a crap shoot. You don’t know if you’re going to get world leaders of $2,000, and what the question or the answer will be. That to me is an investor that thinks about taking some risks differently. You’re still controlled and you still can mitigate your risk, but at the same time, you like to have a little more autonomy and maybe go on a Star Trek adventure. That type of investor might be flipping homes, as an example. That investor might be looking at land, speculation deals nine, 10, 15 years down the road. Those are really two different types of investors.”

Golhar’s Investment Playbook:

• Have your foundational financial house in order. Car insurance, life insurance, a safety net of dollars that’s stored in a bank account, a CD, maybe a money market. It depends on your lifestyle. Most money managers suggest six to eight months of living expenses where you can tap the liquidity if you run into hard times.
• Consider investing in U.S. equities market, looking at index funds, exchange traded funds, and stocks, but know at the end of the day you don’t have control over that.
• Consider different types of real estate investments, tax liens, single-family rentals, Airbnbs or mid-term rentals.
• Become a hard money lender to real estate investors who want to flip homes.

“That’s my playbook,” he said. “And if all you do is one of these things a year, over a five-year, 10, 15 years. You need to know what your end goal is.”

Networking is also key to finding investment deals.

“Go to your real estate investment associations. Check out REA groups, join the Facebook pages and LinkedIn groups,” Golhar said. “People ask ‘How do you find your deals?’ This is exactly how you find your deals, you commit yourself to 30 minutes a day responding to a Facebook thread or Threads. You’re just messaging people in groups and having these conversations and ultimately it yields deal flow. Your network is your net worth.”

He added, “That is how I’ve learned my tax strategy. I’ve learned my asset protection strategy. I’ve learned my investing strategy.”

To hear more of Golhar’s investment information, watch the webinar.