HOW TO BECOME AN INSTANT INVESTOR

Let's talk about real estate investing the way you've never heard it before. So I'm Steve Valentine. I am a real estate strategist. Most of you are used to hearing Realtor, I am not. I strategize ways to invest in real estate which solve problems and impact people. So I want to show you how I've impacted people, solve problems and built a lot of wealth for myself, my family and a lot of people around me, including yourself, you, if you take the time to listen to this. So let's start first, if you own a home, you are an investor. Let's just change the mindset right now. If you bought a home, whether it's your first home, your last home, you have invested in real estate. Now how you utilize and how you think about that is completely different. So let me explain this myself. Like you, I own a home, right? It is an investment for me. We have invested money in it. And here's the investment part. We use it to impact people and it's been used that way my entire life. Well, since we got married and we had kids is that that home was invested in in order to impact our kids, their futures and the people we bring into our home. That is one of those investments. The other part of the primary residence is understanding the equity in it and how it can be utilized to increase your wealth. So let me explain to you how we utilize the equity in our home. After many years, we actually we had an equity line for about $500,000 against the property. It's debt equity. It's not doing anything. Now can you move that equity into something else that is going to increase and cover the cash that's out? So here's what it looks like. We took the $500,000 equity, we bought a second home in New York in Buffalo as a, as a second home. It's also a rental property in our portfolio. Here's the trick that we did. We actually bought it. And Wendy's, my in laws, Wendy's parents, they live in it. It's a beautiful property. It was part of our retirement structure because they needed a home and we needed a place to keep our stuff. We went to Buffalo and we didn't want to buy a place that was going to sit. So we did a combined purchase. They live there, they maintain it. It's an amazing write off for us. And the rent from that property covers the equity payment that we borrowed from the property. So now the equity we had in the house is actually doubling in appreciation right now. Now this doesn't always happen. But let's just take a small side of this and say if the two houses increase 1% a year over the next 10 years, 10% appreciation, right? That's super low. Here's the difference. I own two properties. One is a $500,000 house. One is a million dollar home. The million dollar home, while this $500,000 is out, has also increased $100,000. The $500,000 I put over in New York has increased $50,000. So because I took the equity out of the property and I put it over here, I have increased $150,000 where it would have only increased $100,000 based on the equity sitting. This is how we leverage real estate in a way to increase wealth and impact people receive. My in laws were very impacted by it. We were impacted as family because we have rooms there. It's part of our family, it's part of our house, it's part of our legacy all the way through. That's just one example of how you can leverage being a first time or homeowner with equity. What we don't want to do is take the equity and use it to pay bills off for debt reduction for different things. It just not, it's just not smart to spend that. So try to avoid that at all cost. Refinancing your your home over and over again and pulling cash out because there's ramifications in that that you don't even see when you do multiple refinances, especially cash out refinances. What you didn't know is that when you do a cash out refinance, your interest rate is higher versus what's called a rate and term refinance, which is simply you're just refinancing the total loan amount and the rate. That's the only reason you're refinancing now. If you pull cash out, you're probably typically going to have a higher rate for pulling that cash out. You're going to increase your debt, all the pieces. So let's try to avoid that. Hey, if you're enjoying this content, I would love for you to subscribe and and check out the other things that we're doing. The advice that we're giving in different videos regarding real estate, regarding finances and how to create future wealth. So take a minute, subscribe, throw a comment below if you're digging this and let's keep going. The second thing, as far as a homeowner goes, if you're a first time homebuyer, you're not A first time homebuyer. You're an investor that's just starting and my advice to you is to seek wisdom from other people that have done it in a controlled environment. And understanding the purpose of you're buying this home, is it for home or is it for investment purposes? And I'm going to tell you, if you're in your 20s, you're buying your first home. You want to start thinking about investment purpose because it's going to be purchased from an aspect of will this be a good rental property when I'm done using it? Because the goal would be to keep it. And this is the greatest owner occupant hack in history if you want to build wealth through real estate where you don't have an exorbitant amount of cash to throw at real estate. So here's what that plan looks like. If I was a first time homebuyer, here's what I would do. I would find a real estate agent that actually understands investing, understands rentals. And I would tell them your goals. I would like to buy a home over the next couple of years. I would like to keep it and buy another one. I don't want to take the equity out of it. I'll save enough money for my next down payment. How do I get here? I'd like to own five properties by the time I'm 35. That's the goal. Now you have to have strategy that goes with that. And by the way, if you go to valentinegroupaz.com, go in there as a buyer, fill out the form, you'll get connected with somebody on my team if you want to start that strategy process on the first time home buying. What's important about this is that it's a different mental capacity capacity than the typical American dream of homeownership. This is the American dream of building wealth through homeownership and the amount of people you impact along the way. Now, I myself have been a tenant. Maybe you have been a tenant. That landlord had a great impact on my life. I was there six years. They were a great landlord. It definitely fulfilled the purpose when Wendy and I lost everything until we could get back on our feet. So being a landlord is also a good thing because you're impacting people and if you're doing it the right way. So hey, quick tip. If you're going to be a landlord, just remember we're in the people business and we need to take care of people. And so you don't want to be a disgusting, filthy landlord that doesn't do any repairs and just expects people to live in your dirt and your filth. And because you're a tight ass, if you're going to do that, just don't do it right. Or if you're going to do it, don't do it with me because I won't do it with you. That's important. Owner occupants there are so many creative ways to either do creative financing or to buy things that need repairs. Where you can build equity through sweat equity, there's different lending programs. And the awesome part about this is that you, with the mindset of being an investor, can look at everything. And then if the right person is guiding you, you can have anything because of the creative resources that person is guiding you through. That's what we do at Valentine Group as we create creative strateg for people like you in order to get from point A to point B based on the goals that you set in your investing and where you want to go. So that's another part. First time homebuyers really thinking it from an investments mindset because then the path would be to buy that home, fix up on it, you're putting minimal down. Then you get to keep that home and buy another one in the next two to three years depending on your strategy. And that's what we design for people like yourself where, hey, I really want to keep this property, how do I buy the next one? There are a number of ways to do it and I'd be happy to show you how. The third part of real estate investing is understanding that it is a mindset. Now, when I started to invest in real estate, probably like most of you, I didn't have any money and I didn't have the credit. I didn't have those items. They were obstacles. Most people will not go and figure out what is the cost to get over or through that obstacle. And the reality is it's just who you know and the relationships that you're building in order to do that. So let me give you a story about the very first rental property that I bought as a rental. I was going through the process and this was right after my dad died. That's what I learned. My dad passed away after 40 years in this business and didn't own any real estate. So I started to buy some real estate. I just wasn't sure what the hell I was doing. And it was very fascinating because I was 35 years old. I'd been in the business, real estate agent for 15 years and I'm just now starting to get in the investment mindset and here's what happens. I end up meeting a Zillow lead who is going to list his house. I looked at the guy, I'm like, I'll buy it for 100 grand. I think it was worth 160 at the time. He said yes. I'm like, oh, now what do I do? I don't have any money and I don't have the credit. Which again, may be where you're at. You don't have money or credit. You don't have a money or credit problem. You have a relationship problem. So all of these things can be solved through relationships. Because my guess is you might know somebody that has liquidity, that maybe would be interested in a business opportunity, either partnering with you to buy it as your first time home, or lending you the money to buy it, to fix it up, to live in it, to refinance. So that's exactly what we did. I went to one of my mentors and I asked him for $110,000 at 10% interest. I bought that house. We still own it today, nearly 12 years later. And that house, because we borrowed and solved the problem, that house is now triple what it what we paid for in value. Right. Where's the other path to it? Well, because we went out and created the relationship and we found the money to buy the house, we refinanced the house, and we did have the credit. And then we were able to pull money out of that house to go and purchase two more properties. And this is where you start to learn how money moves and breathes inside real estate. And that the people that you know will help solve the problems that are in front of you, which ultimately impact the people around you. Hey, I'm Steve Valentine. I'm a real estate strategist. These are a couple practical, tactical things that I've applied in my life and to this point in time, which is kind of crazy. Those methods we have used to buy more than a thousand homes. Personally, we have flipped those homes. We've kept several of them as rentals. But more important, we've helped hundreds of people like yourself create the strategy for their short term and long term real estate strategies, either through owning real estate or investing in real estate with us through our deed of trust program, or by being the investor who wants to buy rental properties. And the awesome thing is watching some of my younger clients go through the process of buying, keeping, and then moving on to the next one and seeing what they're developing over years. And this is where my true passion is to show you the strategy behind the real estate business and what it looks like. And it really comes down to this. It's people over profit. Hey, if we're a good fit, I would love to connect with you. You go to Valentine Group az, It's probably down in the notes or there's a QR code or something floating around here. Fill it out. Join my community over there. See, we have to offer. Look, if we're not a good fit, no big deal. If we are, let's connect. Let's figure out how to create your strategy so that you can solve more and impact more people, and we can do that together.