If you are serious about making money through the inevitable thick and thin of real estate investing then you need to start to think about multiple income streams and a wider distribution of the potential risk factors which go with every investment.



The secrets of successful real estate investing were not taught to me by a guru and did not come to me in a moment of enlightenment. Instead I gleamed each one through trial and error and hard-earned experience gained through actually making mistakes and learning from them.





Thats right! In the path I took I had some luck along the way but most of the time I made mistakes and learnt from them and applied what I learnt to the way I was investing. In order to do that I left nothing to chance. I did an incredible amount of research and learning about how properties are rehabilitated, how repairs are costed, how property financing works and how deals are closed. Anything and everything that had to do with buying houses, selling houses, buying and renting apartments and developing an apartment portfolio.



The reason I put in so much hard work is because, all the while, I knew I was working towards very specific targets and very specific ideas and I was learning where the shortcuts were and what I should be looking out for each time I closed a deal.



What I realised, quite early on, is that if you handle them properly, are careful in what you invest in and know how to set up a remote management network so that you do not have to deal with a single tenant, ever, multi-family properties can fast-track you on your road to financial success.



The reason for this lies in what I like to call the income development curve. With any single-family dwelling that curve depends upon a number of variables that rely on the single family living there. The moment you consider multiple-family dwellings you begin to spread the risk of stagnating. I will give you an example: suppose you are letting out a single-family dwelling and the family moves or are suddenly unable to pay the rent? A couple of months inaction plus the cost of finding a new tenant are enough to wipe out your profit margin. Suppose, in a slightly different scenario, that you need to carry out repairs to the property and the tenant cannot afford to contribute their maintenance fee for that property? You are forced to either evict the tenant and risk losing more money or pay for the repairs yourself and try to work out an agreement to get your money back. All of this is a nightmare initiated by what I call a linear chain of action where you and the tenant are engaged in what might at times look like a tag of war between you and the tenant.



What experience has taught me is that when you are dealing with multi-family dwellings you no longer have to engage in this linear action. You have multiple interests, which represent the group of tenants, pooling their resources together to meet repairs, and maintenance. Add to this fact that when a tenant leaves the others are still paying their rent while you find a new one and you realise that in terms of making money multi-family dwellings maximise the opportunities and minimise the risks.



Of course the formula as such is more complicated than that and I cover a lot of this in the real estate success workshops I offer. The million dollar question, always, is are you really ready to learn how to invest properly and are you determined enough not to give up at the first obstacle?