The Top 5 Mistakes I've Made When Buying an Investment Property

My new coaching & learning community, Rental Property Mastery is now LIVE.

Mistakes! We all make them, but you don't have to repeat the same ones others did. Especially the costly ones! In this video, Coach Carson shares some of the biggest mistakes he's made buying investment properties (both rentals and fix-and-flips) over the last 18 years.

GET MY FREE REAL ESTATE INVESTOR TOOLKIT (with house checklist mentioned in the video):

NEXT VIDEO: "Is Debt Dumb in Real Estate Investing?"

0:00 - It's easy to make expensive mistakes in Real Estate Investing
1:07 - Mistake #1 - Underestimating repair costs
4:43 - Mistake #2 - Letting your emotions cloud your judgment
8:09 - Mistake #3 - Not understanding the "default clause" of the contract
11:39 - Mistake #4 - Buying a property with a title problem
15:45 - Mistake #5 - Underestimating the negative property qualities
19:04 - Making mistakes is all part of the game. Learn from it!
__________

💲RENTAL PROPERTY ANALYSIS🏘️
__________
🧰MY FAVORITE REAL ESTATE & MONEY TOOLS:

__________
SUBSCRIBE for more videos about how to retire early with real estate investing!
----------------
MY PODCAST ON INVESTING AND FINANCIAL INDEPENDENCE
----------------
FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM
----------------
READ MY BOOK ON RETIRING EARLY
----------------
👋👋 SAY HI ON SOCIAL
__________
▶️ MY YOUTUBE PLAYLISTS:

“GET STARTED in Real Estate Investing”:

“100 Year Old Triplex Remodel Vlog”:

“Ask Coach Your Questions Series”:

“Rental Property Analysis”:

“Creative Financing ToolBox”:

“NITTY GRITTY Real Estate Investing”:

“BE YOUR BEST (Productivity Hacks & Personal Growth)”

“HACK Real Estate Debt”

[Carter_Kill]

These are great! I try to stay away from anything I wouldn’t want to live in myself (busy road, corner lot, bad neighbors etc.) biggest mistake I’ve made so far is not scoping the sewer lateral during an inspection. Renters were in for about a week before we were excavating the front yard. Never again!

[seanmckay]

Love it! I've made many of those mistakes, way too many times. Your last part about challenging neighbors and their pets hits home for me. I actually ended up selling a triplex in part because a neighbor was a very challenging individual that was constantly calling the cops on my tenants. He didn't think it was appropriate for them to be able to have guests or to be on their decks after the sun went down. We lost a number of tenants over the years due to this ongoing problem and we finally decided it was best to move on. Thankfully it worked out well as the overall market has appreciated but it was a wake up call.

[eaj]

You the man ! Your video is very informative and detailed enough without including too much buzzword etc. Thx.

[brentsutherland]

Love this. Very applicable, non cookie-cutter insight. Thanks for sharing Chad!

[thinker]

Awesome video, thanks for helping us stand on your shoulders!

[lailaatallah]

Fascinating and so informative. Thank you for sharing your hard won lessons and normalizing making mistakes.

That issue with the title that you ran into sounds hairy indeed. Especially because your own paid legal counsel didn’t catch it.

I wonder how many investors pay for a survey prior to purchase?

[bartmeuz]

I just bought that book this week. Its ok, its hard for my area because its so insanely expensive, but it gives some basic ideas which is helpful.

[robcookrentals]

Could not have said it better, Chad! As I OFTEN do with your great work, I forwarded this to some friends and family.

[ponzianomanning]

Great tips! I never thought it possible that an attorney could so easily miss the legal description. Seems that attorney should be liable for their error. Also, I had a rental that I had a lot of trouble renting ( and selling ) because of complaints about 2 neighbors with barking dogs several doors down. Eventually the dog owners were issued citations. That can certainly be a deal breaker and devalue a neighborhood.

[JWS]

Great video. Just moved into my house. A double I'm using to hack my housing, which I learned from you. I will update in a couple of months and let you know how it's working out.

[Theextremepessimist]

a hundred rental properties, wow!!! thats a baller right there

[j_boogie_]

terrible neighbors/loud barking dogs/loud cars and trucks are my worst nightmare as I'm looking for my next home. What sucks is the market is so hot, there's no time to do drive-bys at various times for a few days to scope the street before submitting an offer.

[davidstephens]

Coach Carson you said that you purchased title insurance but you still had to hire an attorney and track down previous owners. Wouldn't that be the job of the title company that sold you title insurance to hire the attorney to do work of correcting the title?

[thetipsheet]

Excellent points, just trying to understand about your Title Insurance- I thought they took over the costs and handled getting it corrected so you wouldn't loose a buyer? It seems like you had to to everything and pay for it- I was told that if getting title insurance that we didn't need a survey because they guaranteed everything.

[asianinvestor]

Hi Coach may i ask for an advise. Do you think mobile home is a good investment if it has its own land no land rent. Plus its has cheaper property tax with city electricity and city sewer. Do you think over period of time it will depreciate its value?
I give an offer to the seller and accepted in a month I will be purchaser the house. In my calculation it has cashflow if I rented it. My only concern is in your experience over time does mobile home with own land does depreciate its value? Its my first investment since its the only price range i can afford right now.. Thank you

[Frank-nhfe]

You said that the title insurance would pay for your loss. What exactly is/was the loss in this instance? Do they pay the cost of cleaning up the title? If somehow you lose the property due to a bad title?

[bebin]

You stated that you have 100 rental properties. - are you buying any more if a deal comes along or are you at your cap? And are you now retired?

[juliancolvard]

A huge mistake I witnessed a builder make that cost him over $200, 000 was building a $1.1M house on a street where the other homes did not match it in appeal. The house was a contemporary build in a neighborhood with other contemporary that sold for a higher price, but the builders house was too superior to other houses on the street and that caused the house to sell for $880, 000 instead of $1, 100, 000 despite the builders home being the lowest price contemporary home in the neighborhood. I did a open house for that house several time and was fortunate to learn a expensive lesson for free.

Me and my partner are gearing up to build and little nuance stuff like this makes a big difference.

[alvarovargas]

I bought my Primary home back in 2014 for 245k here in Federalway, WA. I then turned it into rental in 2017, it's now worth about 480k. What would you suggest to keep as cash reserve for this type of home?

[norme]

I think I worked on some of those mistakes. 😊