To Become Wealthy: A Property in Dallas

We have been working with a wonderful realtor in Dallas. We found her thru a Google search. She has put us on an automatic list that sends us newly listed properties each day that fit our criteria. We had further inquired about several properties so far, but none has worked out. This week we are very excited by a Quadplex that has just gone on the market for $174,000. Each unit has 2 beds and 2 baths. We are waiting to hear back from the seller with more details before we can decide if we want to bid and how much we are going to bid.

Let me go back a step and explain how we became connected with different realtors. We are currently working with two, one in Dallas and another in Tulsa.We basically did some Google searches and then sent them a pre-written email asking for their assistance. We stated that we were out of state investors and what our criteria are. The only question we really asked was if they had experience working with other investors. We initially contacted about 3 or 4 realtors in each area and just went with the ones that we got the best feeling from. There are tons of realtors out there, so if we get to a point where one is not working very well for us, we can always switch to another.

These are the criteria we use for our search. The purchase price is based on the amount of money that we have to put down on any one property.
1- purchase price up to $200,000
2- minimum of a two family house/duplex
3- minimum of 2 bedrooms per unit
4- currently used as a rental property
5- the property does not need a lot of work

I am keeping my fingers crossed for the Quadplex.

To Become Wealthy: How to Begin a Search for Properties

Once I created the list of cities that I thought would be good to invest in, I took each and searched further. But to really begin to get an idea of what is available, I spent a lot of time on realtor.com. However the most effective thing I did was to randomly contact realtors. I performed a simple Google search for realtors in an area, and emailed them stating my intentions to buy investment properties within the next 6 months. Some replied with interest, others did not reply at all. I simply concentrated on the area where I got the best responses.
Once again time has become a factor. I simply do not have the time to chase properties in each location. Realtors can set up automatic list services thru MLS that automatically send you daily listings that meat your specific search criteria. Ultimately, I should be set up in all of these areas, but so far I am only set up in two areas. I need to add more areas once we purchase our first property.

There are two different schools of thought on investing. Those that tell you to diversify and those that put all their money into one area. The most common advice that you hear is that diversification is the beat and safest way to go. However, if you look at some of the most successful people in the world in any industry, they made it big by not diversifying and by risking it all in one area and having the payoff be all that much larger because they did not diversify.

I am not a very big risk taker, so I am trying to diversify my real estate holding across the US.