The Millionaire Real Estate Investor

The bible has over 2,000 references to money, property, and wealth. That is more than twice the number of references to faith and prayer combined.
And whether money reveals you to be honest or dishonest, generous or greedy, it is you – not money – who inherently own those values.
I always hear people say, “God will provide.” I say, God’s already provided. Go out and do something with it.
If you don’t grow personally with the growth of your fortunes, you’re unlikely to enjoy them for long.
You have financial wealth when you’re finally free to stop working for a living and start living for your work.
It takes just as much time and energy to think small as it does to think big.
Your attitude determines your altitude.
Adopt a definite purpose, and stand by that purpose until it had time to become an all-consuming obsession (motivation matters).
A compelling personal reason to achieve is called the BIG WHY.
The spirit has to be extremely strong if you’re going to succeed.
Prioritize your needs as well as the choices and actions that will fulfill them. When you say yes to one thing, you’re clearly saying no to anything that works against it.
The size of their financial lives had been determined by the size of their thinking.
Reinventing the wheel is a monumental waste of time. Life is too short to move slowly.
There is no such thing as a neutral habit. Habits are either good or bad. They either lift you up or drag you down.
What you do with your money in the beginning will dictate what you’re able to do in the end. It’s about your financial priorities – what you actually do when you receive money. While investors see money as an opportunity to invest, consumers see money primarily as an opportunity to spend.
Prioritize investing over spending, to value capital more than consumption.
Your financial wealth is your net worth, which is what you won minus what you owe.
You can’t make a deal until you’ve found an opportunity, and you can’t know if it’s an opportunity until you understand value.
Deals aren’t found, opportunities are found. Deals are made.
I know enough to know I’m heading in the right direction. I need to get started and then keep learning as I go.
An able body is the product of an able mind.
• The winners are actually masters of strategy and negotiation.
• Champions take the luck out of the game.
• The best investors, the tried and true champs, don’t count on good luck showing up.
• Big goals powered by big models lead to big success.
• Everyone has to learn from mistakes. The only question is who's: yours or those of the great achievers who lived before you.
• A proven model is simply a method or system used to produce desirable, repeatable results.
• Financial wealth is about owning assets such as businesses or real estate that generate money for you.
• I wanted to be financially wealthy instead of just rich.
• A relatively small percentage of your efforts lead to the vast majority of your results (80/20).
• Focus is the key to great success, more than effort, experience, or even natural ability.
• Criteria describe what you buy. Does it have the right features and amenities that make it attractive for resale or rental?
• What’s the greatest opportunity with the least risk?
• If criteria define an opportunity, terms define how you turn it into a deal. Once a property meets your criteria, terms determine its value to you both now and for the future.
• Terms are where a great deal can be created from even the most modest criteria.
• It’s also about knowing when to walk away. Remember, you make your money going in, not going out.
• Leverage: the fact that you can accomplish more with qualified help than you can accomplish alone.
• Criteria, Terms, and Network – answer the questions of what you’; buy, how you’ll buy it, and who will help you.
• I’ve learned that what I hold in my mind is what shows up in my life.
• It begins with a state of mind, a way of looking at the world, and ultimately evolves into a way of life.
• I’m an investor. I’m building financial wealth. Is today the day I find an opportunity and make a deal?
• Fears are educated into us, and can, if we wish, be educated out.
• The best financial rewards more than likely will be found outside your comfort zone.
• The image you have of yourself as an investor becomes the lens through which you see the world of investing, and that self-image will either guide or misguide you.
• Financial wealth building is not something that can be accomplished in reaction mode.
• More money just makes you more of what you already are.
• And because your true financial potential is unknown, it makes no sense to place limits on it.
• You can make it big on little deals.
• Investing is not a game where the guy with 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.
• Invest in what you know and fully understand.
• You gotta be able to pull the trigger immediately. And to do that you must know what you’re doing.
• The economy is cyclical. Markets are cyclical. And buying and selling opportunities are created by the ebb and flow of the cycles.
• Timing is all about being active – active all the time.
• The best opportunities go fast (window of opportunity). Investors recognize and seize these opportunities because they are always engaged in the game and close to the action.
• You need to know the fundamentals of a good property: what it will do in a good market, and what it will do in a bad market.
• Any time an opportunity meets your strict criteria and you act, you have timed the market successfully. Timing isn’t about being in the right place at the right time; it’s about being in the right place all the time.
• Basic economic forces show up in the form of things such as job growth, interest rates, population shifts, and area revitalization.
• Step past the short-term thinking and look at the larger implications of small investments. There is a natural growth curve to momentum.
• The trick is to get started and then let the power of growth on growth take you higher. The longest journeys are just an accumulation of small steps.
• Opportunities cannot be observed from the sidelines – you must be in the game.
• Wealth is a state of mind.
• You need to develop the unconscious habits that guide you all day, every day.
• I’m an investor not a consumer (is this the best use of my money?).
• Money reflects your innermost values and has the power to reveal you.
• Discovering your Big Why enables you to prioritize your needs, as well as the choices and actions that will fulfill them. It brings power and stamina to your financial focus.
• Some people let their money wander wherever it wants to go. Millionaires don’t.
• If you have to finance your lifestyle – you can’t afford it.
• A little less today could mean a whole lot more of tomorrow (invest).
• Sacrifice can be fun when you connect it to a reward.
• If you buy it right, finance it wisely, and control your expenses, you can achieve a positive net cash flow.
• Under promise and over deliver.
• Remember that real estate is always ultimately a game of local comparative values, so the location you choose and the selections you make will affect the number of opportunities available to you.
• Generally, discounts come from fixing other people’s problems (or ignorance).
• You must know what you hope to find if you are to have any hope of finding it.
• Be a shopper not a buyer – It’s better to miss a good one than to buy a bad one.
• See properties first as suspects, and only after a thorough examination will they consider them prospects.
• They believe it is as great a day when they say no as it is when they say yes. While a buyer never leaves the store empty handed, a shopper will do so happily.
• Great investors celebrate the decision-making process first and the outcome second.
• Buying and selling makes you rich. Buying and holding makes you wealthy.
• The first rule is that every property has a surprise.
• Your numbers have to be accurate going in. Murphy’s Law: What can go wrong will go wrong.
• In the end all roads lead to buy and hold.
• Repetition is the mother of mastery – and of skill.
• Real wisdom comes from taking action and learning from what happens.
• Talent is the intelligence, behavior, motivation, attitude, abilities, and experience of a person that make a person uniquely suited to do what he or she is doing.
• Begin with the end in mind.
• The job of a real estate investor is not to buy or sell real estate, but to solve people’s real estate problems.
• I cost myself money and opportunities because I wasn’t thinking big enough soon enough.
• First you learn, and then you earn. Learn to earn before you niche to get rich.
• The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
• It’s your criteria that matter, not the conditions that might create their availability.
• It’s an endurance race, not a quick sprint, and you will need to create and sore energy to run it.
• An abundant life is a life focused not on just anything but on the things that matter most.

Source: The Millionaire Real Estate Investor By Gary Keller