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          As a Rehab Investor, you undoubtedly have a difficult job.  Whether it is finding a reliable contractor or locating your next great investment, there are many places that you can lose money.  And by money, I mean time.  As a retired rehabber myself, I know this all too well. (And by retired, I mean not being able to hack it.) 

          As the all too true cliché, ‘Time is Money’, goes you need to be disciplined on where you spend your time when investing in real estate.  Here are a 2 tips to adhere to when buying and selling real estate:

Ø     Hire a realtor – I know, I know.  Some of you are thinking, “They’re overpaid and they aren’t any better at selling houses than I am.” – BUT, what is your time worth? 

          Take a day and write down all the calls you receive.  If you have a property for sale, there will be many (or should be) and add up the minutes.  Then figure how many times you go to the property to show it, and add up the hours.  Do this for a few weeks and then add in the time you spent marketing your rehab, and the time for writing a contract, and time to follow up with the buyer to make sure they’re getting financed, and coordinating closing with the title company, and….. What the heck are you, anyway!?  An investor or a realtor??!  Spend your time doing what makes you money; go buy another rehab and start rehabbing. 

Ø     Sell Right – Obviously, you want to buy every investment property or potential rehab as cheap as possible, but don’t miscalculate what you’ll sell it for.  An After Repair Value is not your sales price. 

          You are a rehab investor and you make money by flipping properties. – More properties, more money.  I think most of you will agree that it goes something like this: 1-Buy low, 2-Rehab quickly, 3- Sell quickly, 4-Get paid.  We all want to get to number 4 and that means going thru number 3.  Don’t allow yourself to screw this up. 

          Find out what buyers are paying for real estate (use that new real estate agent you got for additional input).  Then, when you purchase the property, calculate your profit based on what you can sell it for quickly (somewhere between 3 and 10% below the competition, depending on the market).  And when you’ve completed the rehab, get that overpaid real estate agent out to your investment to re-evaluate the value based on the immediate market conditions.  Don’t get greedy here; it will only cost you more money in the long run.