Property Investing – What Type of Property?

Being an investor that is actively looking over the market for a new piece of property to invest in can leave you with a few decisions that you’ll want to settle before you begin looking at investment properties. You have to know what type of goals you have in mind, whether you want to be a landlord, home renovator, apartment owner, or commercial real estate investor and then begin looking for an agent that can connect you with the type of properties you have in mind. Property investing is a big decision, but also a very lucrative one if you do it right and fill all of the holes throughout the process as you go.

For those of you seeking to become landords, or home renovators, purchasing your first home, or even adding a home to your portfolio isn’t going to cost near as much as those seeking higher end properties. For landlords, you can easily make your money back each month from the tenants paying rent to you. However, for the home renovating investors, you are going to have to invest more money up front to purchase the house, renovate it, and then hold onto it for as long as it takes to sell it off. Depending on the market, the neighborhood you are selling it in, as well as the quality of work you have done to the house will determine exactly how long you have to hold it, but if these three key items aren’t in place during in economy like this, you can expect it to take a while longer to sell.

Apartment building owners stand to make quite a large sum of money if they invest right. You can’t just go out and purchase any apartment building and expect to make your money back, because some of these units have tenants in them that will refuse to pay you for up to three or four months, and once you bring the police to their door they will give you enough rent to get you to leave. This is a poor situation to run an apartment building in, and you are going to be hard pressed to find a manager that will want to handle these duties for you.

Purchasing commercial real estate is another great way to make back a large return on your initial investment, and you can approach it one of two ways. If you are intending to lease the units, while still maintaining the deed to the property, then you are going to have to expect your up front investment to be recouped over the course of a few years, instead of up front as if someone were purchasing the building from you. You do make your money back over time, and it is a great strategy, but for those of you that intend to buy and sell commercial real estate, you are going to quickly find that you can easily make back a huge return on your investment in a very short period of time if you approach this right.