How to start a real estate portfolio from scratch with no money or experience

Ignore the gurus who tell you that you can only make money in real estate if you’re already wealthy. 

Here’s how I got started at age 25 with no money and ended up travelling the world:

Where It All Began

Back in 2019, after many failed projects, I was living with my parents with no money and zero confidence. 

One day after meeting an old friend, I had my eureka moment and decided that real estate was my next venture. 

Only I didn’t know where to start.

Get Clear On What You Want

Knowing where to start means knowing where to end. 

That means taking the time to figure out your dream life, how much it will cost and the best way to get there.

Action: 

• Journal about your ideal lifestyle. Be as honest as possible and get clear on why

• Work out the financial requirements of that lifestyle 

• Start planning how to bridge the gap

Now you can reverse engineer a plan to get there.

Finding A Tribe And Education

The two most important factors in my real estate success were getting an education and finding the right people.

Knowledge is one thing, but having a team of people to bounce ideas off and get specific advice on your situation is priceless.

Stop trying to go it alone and start finding people to bring on the journey and learn together.

Action:

• Start hanging out where people with similar interests will be and make connections

• Make a list of books, courses and coaches who can help plug your knowledge gap

Building A Strategy

Cashflow was my priority. I had little experience & capital, so I focused on: 

• High rental demand cities 

• Multi-let residential properties 

• Creative finance to secure deals quickly with little capital

Practical > clever.

This will vary for each person, but if you’re starting out, you should also prioritise a cash-flowing business such as Airbnb units, storage rental or multi-let shared housing.

Action: 

• Look for trends and areas with high demand and low competition 

• Prioritise cashflow which is consistent and has high margins

Building Systems 

With a blueprint figured out, I relied on systems to get me there. 

My top 3 were:

• Raising finance

• Sourcing deals

• Operations and management

From day 1, I started building processes for everything and bringing in team members to help.

Remember, you’re going to have off days and be doing a lot of the same tasks, so your life will be a lot easier with a clear process to follow. 

Action: 

• Prioritise your high-value tasks

• Create a one-page process to follow for each task

Do the work

The key here is to prioritise the important tasks over comfort. For me, this looked like:

• Late nights building furniture

• Running between property viewings

• Spending hours on hold with utility providers

Was it easy? No.

Was it necessary? Yes.

Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty in the beginning. You’ll have plenty of opportunities to outsource later.

Action: 

• Decide which levers to pull

• Prioritise anything which moves you closer to your goal and avoid the rest

There you have it. I hope this brings you some clarity on where to start in real estate investing.

If you enjoyed this and you’re figuring out your next move in real estate, drop me a message on Twitter or reply to this email.

If you are already active in real estate and looking to land more investors on autopilot, grab 15 minutes on my calendar.

Until next time,

Tom ✌️