7/4/10: Profiting from Your Vacation – Exploring New Markets in Your Bathing Suit

Most people don’t get into real estate investing because they like tenants, toilets and all the tribulations you go through. And most of the time, they don’t get into properties they would like to live in or visit on vacation. In fact, most investors would be happy if they never saw their properties. That’s probably why stock investing is so popular. You just buy a line item on your brokerage statement. You never visit the company or meet the management. It’s all very sterile and anesthetized. Maybe that’s why you almost can’t feel it when the stock market gives you a networthectomy. But we digress (how unusual).

Anyway, with summer time in full swing and people heading off for a well-deserved vacation, we thought it would be refreshing to talk about how to combine real estate business with vacationing pleasure.

In the radio mini-van, headed to the beach of broadcasting for fun in the sun and investing too:

Your host and mini-van driver, Robert Helms
Captain Speedo, Russell Gray
The Godfather of Real Estate, Bob “Board Shorts” Helms

Before we hit the road of conversation we do a quick check of the packing list. Did we remember to pack our investor mindset? What about our notebook to keep track of our ideas, conversations and those all important (potentially) tax-deductible expenses?

We’re all good, so off we go!

Since most people don’t vacation in C-class neighborhoods, we start our conversation on the idea of resort area investing. But as soon as we jump out of the mini-van, we are faced with that ugly limiting belief, “I can’t afford it”. It’s easy to look at real estate in a beautiful area and disqualify yourself before you even get started. So we talk about how to push through the traffic of doubt in one’s mind by asking the question, “How can I afford it?”

We decide to ride this train of thought and talk about the importance of getting the right answers and advisors, by learning how to ask the right questions. Bad questions yield bad answers. It’s like, “Which Speedo looks best on Russ?” That’s a bad question (and worse visual) with no good answer.

Of course, we can’t miss the opportunity for some shameless self-promotion, so we hang a u-turn on the notion of making one’s vacation an opportunity to look for real estate. What about the idea of using a real estate trip as a vacation? Many of our listeners have come with us on our Investor Summit at Sea™ or field trips to Belize, Cabo San Lucas or other fun places we’ve gone. Even though the main purpose of the trip is to look at real estate, is it against the rules to have fun? So, when time and budget is limited, it just makes good sense to leverage your vacation / real estate “research and development” budgets.

We have a fun time with this show. We think you’ll like it too!