Everyone’s doing it, apparently. It’s all over the infomercials, radio ads, classifieds, book store shelves, and even those scrappy hand-written signs by the side of the road: Need Apprentice! Learn to Make Money in Apartment Investing!

Real Estate Mogul Donald Trump knows how to side-step financial ruin. - Image Businessweek.com

It must be a great idea, right?

Sure, real estate investing can be a great idea, but it can also ruin you financially if you don’t take the time to learn how to be smart and make wise choices. Even the pros sometimes make costly mistakes, so as a person thinking of dipping her toe into the real estate investing pool, you really need to spend some time getting an education before you start happily shelling out your life’s savings.

Let’s talk about 7 Things You Want to Know Before You Pull out Your Checkbook And Buy That Duplex For Sale:

1) Know what you want to do. As obvious as this sounds, many people jump into the real estate market without a clear idea of their endgame. Owning property may make you feel pretty special, but being only vaguely hazy about what to do with it afterward can end up breaking you. Start with a clear, identifiable goal, whether you want to fix and flip, buy and hold, or whatever else you find really floats your boat.

2) Decide where the money is coming from. The last thing you want to do is jeopardize your own ability to live and eat by pouring all the money you own and leveraging all your assets into one daring purchase. While you might end up lucky, the “luck” part is more likely to have stemmed from making sound financial decisions than from some supernatural wink in your direction.

The most popular way to start investing is to use Other Peoples’ Money (OPM). Getting a bank loan, drumming up capital from other investors, having the seller carry back, setting up a Subject-To loan transfer, a seller second, lease option, or another creative financing arrangement are all ways to avoid using your own money to buy a property.

Get yourself thoroughly educated on the methods that are available and decide how you want to approach the financing for your first purchase. As you become more experienced, you will be able to work with sellers confidently to create a financing method that benefits both of you and makes it easier to buy California, Ohio, or New Jersey real estate and investment properties quickly and seamlessly.

3) Know when to buy. It’s almost easier to imagine investing for the long-term in the stock market. Things are volatile, but it generally trends up over the long haul. Real estate, however, can take a longer time to go anywhere. When it does go, it can go quickly (Exhibit A: the bubbles that burst in Arizona and Nevada in the last few years) and it can go in any direction. Or, it might just sit there doing nothing.

While you can’t predict everything that will happen in a given area over a certain amount of time, you can get pretty good at deciphering the signals and making decisions based on your due diligence to a particular property or neighborhood.

It probably wouldn’t be a great decision to buy a property in a neighborhood where prices have been steadily dropping, for instance, and you can’t find many redeeming qualities that would make you think it could be turned around. Read the books and articles, check with the experts, and begin using your common sense as your knowledge expands to calculate the ideal time to buy. Buying yourself a home to live in is a very different animal from buying an investment.

4) Know where to buy. Location, location, location. In some places, investment properties do not appreciate as well as in others. Some neighborhoods are on their way up while others are on their way down. Where are the schools, shopping, and work places? Where are busy main roads or geographical landmarks that may affect the property’s value? Being careful about the location of your investment is crucial to your whether you make a profit, just break even, or end up in the red.

5) Don’t get emotionally attached to your investment. Becoming less than objective about a potential investment means your decisions might be skewed, which can cause trouble. That darling little home you saw on the internet with long-term tenants may seem perfect, but keep yourself looking at the cold, hard facts and not getting wrapped up in the cozy “snuggliness” of it all.

What might have seemed perfect in the carefully worded description could be hiding a multitude of sins, so you must cultivate the ability to let any investment go if it turns out to be a bad deal for you.

Who cares if you have the deliciously old period home if you can’t get a tenant or potential buyer to also love its leaky pipes, sagging foundation, and long undiscovered termite colony?

6) Decide how you will manage your property. If you’ve decided to be a landlord, do you have what it takes to deal with problems? Could you evict a tenant who isn’t paying his rent?

Do you have the skills and time to fix the inevitable problems or would you rather have a property management company or competent complex manager deal with collecting rent, finding a reasonable plumber, and taking emergency phone calls in the middle of the night?

You’ll save money if you can be the hands-on landlord, of course, but you might also save money by hiring someone else to be tough on problem tenants if you know your fear of confrontation means you’d rather let them live rent free than deal with forcing them out. Factor in the costs for the manner in which you will manage the property.

7) Excellent due diligence can save you from ruin. When you’ve found a likely investment, it’s time to uncover anything and everything about the property before signing a contract.

• Does the property have additional liens?
• What is the local government planning for the area?
• Will this affect your ability to rent out or sell the property?

Check soil and environmental issues; you might end up inheriting thousands or millions of dollars worth of clean-up costs if there is an environmental problem associated with the property. If you are inheriting tenants, go over the last two years’ worth of rents collected, rental agreements, etc. In essence, check everything possible to make sure that the deal you think you see is the real deal you will get.

While making that first foray into real estate investing can seem daunting, once you learn the formula and get some experience, you’ll know what to look for and you’ll make better decisions. As with any major step in your life, approach it with care and caution, armed with as much knowledge as you can get, and if you make mistakes (and everyone does), make sure you learn from them.

About author: Lance Williams is a confident person who is into just about anything he can be. He does everything from snowboarding to rock climbing.

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Are you ready to make some things happen in your life and finances, right now? Then I hope you take this 100 day challenge with me.  It’s going to be rough and challenging but there is no time like the present to make a change.

You’ll see what I mean. Watch this video now…

On a mobile device? Visit youtube –> http://KendallMatthews.bit.ly/CreateYourBailoutPlan

I’m going to warn you though… don’t put off doing what I asked in the video .  The reason why is…It’s simply Time to Shine!

You and I can’t afford to wait on who get’s into political office. Or when the higher-ups are going to decide on a bonus or raise. Or when that one customer finally decides to sign the contract. We have to find a way to get busy… NOW and FAST! Like Sean “P. Diddy” Combs once said, “You got to make a way, when there is no way.”

Create the Life You Want,

Kendall Matthews

P.s. While this my request in the video may be challenging…if you’re ready for it… it may also be the very thing you’ve needed to WAKE UP from the inaction… ONCE AND FOR ALL.  That is my intentions & hopes for you and myself. Enjoy the next 100 days.

P.P.s. Please share this with your friends on Facebook & twitter.  Trust me… the world needs more “doers” and less “talkers”

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What used to be a simple matter of printing an ad in the newspaper and buying a billboard now requires extensive knowledge about the inner working of the internet.

For example, say you want to bring customers to your Dublin, CA dentist office.  One easy way you could do this is by using Google Maps optimization.  Optimizing using Google Maps Profile does two things for you:  it allows customers to see your location, find you on a mobile search, and receive honest feedback about your services instantly.

Claim and Complete Your Profile: First and foremost, create and/or claim your listing!  If your business profile is claimed and listed on Google Maps with other pertinent information about your services included in the correct manner, you will begin to rank higher on Google’s local results.  This will mean more customer traffic and click through.

As a side note, if you have no idea what I am talking about and are confused as to what “Google Maps optimization” or “search engine rankings” means, then you may want to outsource your internet marketing campaign to a company that specializes in maps optimization.  If, however, you feel comfortable tackling this Google Maps project on your own, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Be Accurate: If you are going to use Google Maps to enhance your customer base, make sure that you include only truthful information.  Let’s refer to our previous example of a Dublin, CA dentist.  If you want to do Google Maps optimization correctly, include a proper business name, phone number, and street address.  If you include other information, such as hours of operation or business type, it should also be truthful and accurate.

Customer Reviews: Once you have claimed your profile posted your information on Google Maps, customers will start to rate your services. You should encourage your best customers to do the same.  These reviews can be a boon to your business, allowing customers to quickly get a snapshot of the quality of your services with a simple click.  And in this age where a whole host of information can be relayed with a simple internet search, this is one important way that you can make your services stand out in a sea of competitors.

Google Maps optimization is one of the best ways you can differentiate your services and quickly get your name out into the public consciousness.  Use the program correctly and it will, in turn, work for you.

About author: David Smith is an internet marketer, SEO specialist, and professional blogger.  He can also beat the original Contra video game on NES without dying.

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Back in the old days without the internet, Blackberries and iPhones, the way to purchase a home was to walk through each and every possibility.  This would add up to be an incredibly time consuming and tedious process.   Houses that didn’t even come close to matching your guidelines would be on the list of potential homes due to lack of information.  Luckily, times have changed.  Now it is time to go mobile in your real estate market.

Think of it as batman and his utility belt.  Sure he’s good at fighting crime, but how good is he at doing that without his utility belt?  Batman’s belt provides all the tools necessary to get the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible.  It’s time for homebuyers of new jersey real estate to equip themselves with their version of a utility belt by going mobile.  This means grabbing an app for your iPhone to get all the updated information-on the spot-at a moment’s notice.

Sure, if you go home and use your internet, it would do the same thing.  The only problem is you have to go home to do that.  Nothing about that is mobile.  It’s not easy to go back and forth from house to house to get your information and then drive around again for another tour.  There are some incredible real estate related apps that can be used with both Blackberries and iPhones to cut your search time in half.

One of the best things about going mobile as you search through your real estate market is that most of the real estate apps are free!  Yes, that’s right, I said free.  It’s free to have useful, mobile tools and to be able to access the most updated lists of prospects as long as you have a Smartphone of some sort.  This will keep you updated and provide you with all of the information necessary to continue your search.

Imagine having mobile applications that give you direct contact information, an auto GPS locator, property search functions, hyper-local information, video, featured listings, MLS access, loan calculators and more. All of these tools are incredibly useful and having them on the go will make shopping for your next home an absolute delight.  Indeed, there is no reason not to go mobile in your real estate market.

About author: Ryan Chaffin is currently a college student majoring in Business Marketing, who specializes in search engine optimization (SEO).  You can also find Ryan on Twitter @ryanchaffin.

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