I've read Millionaire Investor, which is not that great of a book, but there were a couple investors who intrigued me. One of them was a successful banker and decided to quit his job to become a full time real estate investor. He drew up a business plan and went to a bank to get some loans to buy rental properties. He also does a few flips, but regardless, he's a very rich man now.

Does this really happen or is this rare? If I draw up a business plan, what are the real chances that a bank would give me a loan to become a full time investor?

Yeppers Did you catch that town hall meeting about the Real Estate Boom on CNBC? Anyhow a retired software exec stood up an gave his situation about having 8-10 properties in aquisition-mostly from financial situations...ex. Foreclosure,Probate,Bankruptcys yadda yadda... (genrally not from the MLS)

The Pros look at between 50 to 1000 before buying well below Mkt Value.

Forgetting about what the salesman say on this forum about Reed. His Books hit the nail on the head with the Truth about RE investing..
www.johntreed.com

Well so far, it seems like it takes a lot of time and/or money to really go fulltime.

It is going to take time to make it as a real estate investor unless you land a one in a million deal. Drawing up a business plan is a great first step. If you have unrealistic expectations, you may be disappointed. On the other hand, if you realize that it will take time and a lot of energy, you will be better prepared mentally.

You CAN get VERY RICH with real estate, but at the same time, it is not easy. Don't be fooled by the late night infomercials. 5 Minutes a week will not make you rich in real estate.

Go out and Do it! Start Today! Read, learn, then go out and make it happen.

Montana,
Are you still pushing Reed? The "Investor" who has done less than a dozen deals. Reed is a guy that sells books and nothing more. Many of the agents on this board including myself are also active investors who have done far more deals than Reed and we give out advice away on this forum to help others. So my suggestion to you is perhaps you should keep your opinion to yourself regarding not listening to the salesmen on the board.
BTW just how many Deals have you done thus far?

No offense, to Salesman since I'm a Sailor too but learning something as technical as finance and Law should be taught by highly educated people.(just like college) Experience counts, but I don't think their are many people out thier that can lay out detailed facts on paper about actual (workable) bargain strategies and explain the mechanics of everything like Reed and qualified others.

A experinced broker may know of three or four strategies, But to compete with a Harvard MBA who has dedicated his life to Research.... Please?
You are right about his lack of "real time" investing knowledge but their are still Foreclosures and judgements taking place every day. The different loan programs have changed and so has Mcdonald's menu-- But the mechanics of a Adjustable Rate Mortgage are Still the Same.

Montanaland pushing Reed is like the blind leading the naked - Reed is a writer not an investor, and Montanaland is a brand new agent with no experience in investing.

Sometimes the fishing lure is better at catching the fisherman than the fish...

And your college educated Jflynn??

My formal education has nothing to do with the fact that reading about something is a poor substitute for actual experience. Even Brian Rodgers agrees with that.

BTW you and I have discussed my education in the past. In case you care I'm 35 with a bachelors degree in philosophy from UT Austin (I chose that major originally intending to go on to law school), and I have a number of business ventures under my belt. I have tried many things and failed, a couple and succeeded, real estate sales luckily being one of the things I am sucecssful at and I intend to stick with it until something else strikes my fancy.

Long ago I made it a personal rule to only take business advice from sucecssful businesspeople in the field. A lot of sucecssful people share this rule, and by this rule I cannot take investing advice from Reed. Publishing and authoring advice, sure, but not investing advice. The guy is a professional writer, not an investor and not even a scholarly professor.

What is a Full Time Investor????

I personally spend all my non-sleep and recreational time investing... investing in something that is generally ME. I do it by not only locating, fliping, rehab- retail, and rehab- Hold, but as a facilitator to other investors and operating a real estate brokerage and several real estate related corporations, LLC's and Trust's.... am I a Full Time Investor?

I have clients that spend at least 50% of their "work" time doing investment related activities including predominately real estate. They also have W-2 positions as Doctors, Lawyers, Firemen, Policemen, Stock Market Investors, Government Employees, Bankers, Ministers, Mechanics, Builders, Property Managers, housewifes.....Most now have the majority of their income from real estate activities.... are they not Full Time Investors?

If your goal is to not have any or very many responsibilities by being a Full Time Investor.... you may have a significant misunderstanding of what investing is....

While you may find it useful to stop doing some types of w-2 "jobs" and direct your activities to non salaried functions.... it is not alway necessary/ required to be successful in investments of any type... real estate included. This dose not, however necessarily make you a Full Time Investor.

For a real estate licensee to consider giving up their real estate license... to be come a full time real estate investor.... appears to my to be ridiculous. Giving up a job as a shoe salesperson.... maybe... but never a real estate license.

Why are you interested in only getting Bank Loans? You can be sure your ROI will always be far smaller than more creative methods. To me, someone who uses Bank Loans as the primary funding operation for real estate investments... is not an investor... they are simply a business manager/ bookkeeper who's goal is a small ROI on a hopefully consistent basis... dull and boring.

Thanks for Spamming us on this forum as well.

only if they are realllllllly bad investors...

By full-time investor, I mean it's your main business, not working for another company and also investing. I work with beginning investors who want to go "full-time", but it seems like it will take them time.

They hear stories of investors getting some sort of loan or going in and getting rich, but I keep telling them it's not that easy or everyone would invest. It takes a plan, time, and money.

Here is a great article (forgot who the author was...I believe it was a RE lawyer) that I pulled up off my hard drive that touches upon the full or part-time investing topic:

Is real estate investing a full or part-time business?

People usually phrase the question two different ways.

Either they ask because they are currently employed doing something they usually hate or are unemployed and ask whether real estate investing can be a new career for them.

Or they ask because they have a current job or business they enjoy and want to know if land investing will demand so much of their time they have to leave their existing endeavors.

The time demands of real estate investing should be approached this way.

Real estate investing should be thought of as exactly that-----investing. Not employment.

Ask any owner of improved real estate with tenants and they will tell you that managing their real estate is a "job", often a full-time job, but it really isn't in any traditional sense.

A job is "earned income." You work forty hours, you get paid for forty hours.

Real estate and land investing is, well, investing. You could work forty or four hundred hours and never make a dime. Or you could work one hour and make what others make in forty.

Do not confuse earned and residual income.

Earned income revolves around the concept of hours. How many hours did I work? How much do I get paid for each hour? To earn money with this method, you have to work. If you work zero hours, you get paid zero. This is the drawback to earned income. Once you stop working for whatever reason (a vacation, illness, disability, whatever), your income stops.

Residual income is much different and far superior. To earn it you work just once, often without much in the way of compensation at the time, but you continue to earn money from this effort long after the work is done, sometimes for a lifetime or even many generations.

A classic example of residual income is writing a book for royalties. You do not make money while writing the book but you can earn money selling the book for many years, even while you are on vacation or should you become disabled.

That is the goal with real estate or land investing. To create streams of residual income so you do not have to work full OR part-time. When you have rental income, payments on mortgage notes or deeds of trust, and other checks derived from your investments coming to you each month, you can work full or part-time on your investing or not at all. The decision is entirely yours.

How you fill your days as a investor are up to you.

Most real estate investors are not full-time investors. That is we have other jobs, endeavors, careers, or interests. Could we do nothing but real estate investing if we wanted? Perhaps. But part of the value of being a real estate investor is that those residual income streams real estate is so good at producing free you from the need of having to only do one thing all the time.

Most investors fill their time looking for future deals and managing the ones they currently have. That doesn't take forty hours a week for most. So if you are thinking if real estate investing is a "full-time" job in terms of time commitments, it is not for most people. I'm sure it can be, but personally I would be bored doing nothing but looking for deals all day long. Others might not be. I like the fact that I have a real estate world that I can enjoy but also leave it for other interests (like writing, practicing law, etc.) when I want.

Can investing be a full-time job for income purposes?

I get very nervous when I get emails or speak to people who want to leave their full-time jobs because they are unhappy or unsatisfied and want to become full-time real estate investors.

Forget it.

Real estate investing is a great way to build wealth and cash flow over long periods of time, probably the best way ever created to do just that.

If you are finally secure, have no debts, and have other income sources that will let you pay your bills while you look for real estate deals and will have the capital available to actually invest in deals, then you can certainly consider being a full-time real estate investor.

But most people aren't in that category, by far.

If you are struggling financially and think real estate investing can bail you out of excessive credit card debt, or a bad job situation, I'm afraid to tell you that it cannot, especially over a short period of time.

I blame the late night television real estate gurus who preach "nothing down" deals and instant wealth for leading people to this false conclusion.

Be financially secure, then invest in real estate.

You do not need to be rich to invest in real estate, just financially secure.

What do I mean?

Pay off your debts, especially your high interest credit cards
Build your credit rating
Develop lines-of-credit and sources of capital
Live on a budget to save capital for down payments
Avoid financing unnecessary purchases like boats or second homes

Live within your means and be financially strong no matter what your current income or economic status. There are successful blue-collar investors and white-collar ones. Plumbers and lawyers, truck drivers and doctors, policemen and insurance executives. What all successful investors have in common is that they prepared their finances to be strong before they became real estate investors.

Real estate and land investing requires you to be strong financially.

It will not make you strong from the start.

Again, you do not have to be rich to invest in real estate. But having a good credit rating, some money in the bank, and no excessive credit card debt is a prerequisite.

And yes, having an income from a job helps too.

Real estate is not a panacea or a magic formula that will make you rich when you currently are up to your eyeballs in debt. Getting your finances in order requires discipline, sacrifice, and some hard work sometimes. Do not let anyone sell you on some notion that you can make a million dollars in one year and cure all your financial problems buying houses or land. It isn't reality, it doesn't happen.

Here is my best advice to you.

If you are currently employed, even in a miserable job you hate, take the time to become a successful investor, not an unsuccessful one. Grin and bear it! Save money, pay down debt, cut up those credit cards, sell the things you don't need on eBay for cash. The stronger you are when you start as an investor, the faster you will make money and the easier it will be for you.

You won't be desperate to do a deal. As an investor I would rather do one great deal a year than an average one every month. You can wait for the home runs when investing rather than constantly be searching for singles or doubles because you have VISA to pay or a kid who needs braces or a car that is screaming for a new transmission.

When you are prepared, you can also devote less time to investing and more time to enjoying the fruits of your investing efforts.

So to the answer the question "Full or Part-Time"?

Investing is whatever you want it to be. Don't count on it to pay your bills. Eliminate as many of your bills first, then start investing. You won't have to spend forty hours a week investing when you prepare properly. You will find yourself only looking at the deals you want to do rather than those you have to do.

You do not have to be rich to invest in real estate. But you should be financially strong, whatever your level of income. If you are getting calls from collection agents wanting money, you aren't financially strong.

Let your residual income streams continue to grow until they can pay your necessary bills and expenses. At that point, you are financially independent and can become a full-time investor in the classic sense of the word.

Until then, a job or two on the side does help. In fact, most of you will be like me and welcome the diversion from real estate.