I’ll be honest I stole this title from another blog post (relating to a different industry), but I think it is very applicable to real estate investing.  Another quote I often think of is: “When is the best time to start? Five years ago, but that’s too late, so why not now.”

Most of people I respect most in this business are not people I would consider to have far superior intelligence compared to the average person.  They have just found a way to consistently set goals, pass the obstacles in front of them and start accomplishing tasks one simple step at a time. Before long they got miles ahead of everyone else.

Sit down and make a list of all the things holding you back from getting started and an associated action to accomplish them and before you know it you will be moving forward.

Sorry, I have not been blogging very much at all.  January has been extremely busy!

2010 was a great year for us.

Here is what happened in January:

• We sold 1 property.
• We bought 6 properties.
• We rented 5 houses (4 were new purchases, 1 was from a move-out after the lease ended).
• We have 3 purchases in escrow and are close on a 4th one.  One of them might not close in February.

Now to unveil our goals for 2011.  They are sweet and simple:

• Make 48 purchases
  48 is a good number that is going to take a lot of work.  That is an average of 4 a month.

• Get to 50 rental properties
  As you can probably tell from the blog, we really like owning rental houses.  Managing them has been a great experience.  To get to 50 by the end of the year we need to average just over 1.5/month, which is pretty much the same acquisition pace we did last year.

We have some creative strategies in mind to help us accelerate our rental acquisition pace as 2011 is shaping up to allow us to buy some great cash-flow deals.   I am not going to set a blogging goal, as I epically failed that last year but I am going to try to make at least 10 posts a month.

So after January is over here is were we stand.

Make 48 purchases

We started the year ahead of schedule with 6 new purchases.  February is going to be a slower month, but we should be on schedule or ahead of schedule by the end of February.

Get to 50 rental properties

We are 30 rental houses right now.  Two more are due to close in February so far.

For all the reads of this blog, what are your goals for 2011?  Let me know in the comments.

Well I’m excited to say I can finally check everything off on the goal sheet that stares at me from the wall of my office.  As of Monday we will have hit all of them!

It is perfect timing too, as I am heading on vacation for a week.

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

On Monday, we should close on a house that will make for 36 purchases.  Wednesday, or so, we should close on another one that will make for 37.  I think the year will stop there, I have four other purchases in escrow, but I don’t think I can make any of them happen for 2010.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

On Monday we will be up to 28 rentals.  We have two more we are planning to keep in purchase escrow that should close in January, so we will hit the “ramped up” goal about two weeks behind schedule… I can live with that.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

This will make my eighth blog post for the month, I’m try to get back into consistent blogging.  Let me know what you want me to try to write about?

Now it’s time for a short vacation to think about 2011 goals.  The market is in a weird spot right now, it is trying to decide if it’s going up, down or maybe sideways?  So we don’t want to buy many of the higher ARV projects.

It only took six days for me to get around to writing this review. Things went fine in November.  We have pretty much every rental we own occupied (with paying tenants), the market is slow, but prices are coming down (this will make me happy long-term) so we are pretty much good.

Summary

1. We bought two houses in November.  Both will be rentals.  We still have last months marathon escrow going, there is a title issue the Seller is attempting to resolve and bring in the original Title Insurance’s claims department.

2. We rented three more houses, right now I only have 1 property for rent that we just finished the rehab on this weekend.  One more should be coming up for rent in about two weeks.

3. We sold one house.  House #39 has been very happily sold and the new owner should be enjoying his new house.    I know I was glad to not have to make the hard money payment on that one this month!

4. The good news is we have some decent deals in purchase escrow (four purchase escrows open).  We are still trying to decide what we are going to do with them (retail, rent or wholesale), but most of them should work for any option.  An agent told me today they are just waiting for senior management approval on another deal, so that looks promising.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are still at 27 rentals.  Last month I must have made a mistake in my calculation or something.  It looks like we will end up at 27 or 28 to finish the year.  This is a little bit disappointing as we probably won’t hit our revised goal of 30 rentals, but even if we stop at 27 that still makes for 19 rental purchases in 2010.

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We are cutting this goal as close as ever.  I thought we would hit it easily.  At the end of the November we made it to 34 purchases, we have already closed one wholesale deal so that puts us at 35 houses.  We do have 1 more Fannie Mae deal that is setup to close 12/28, plus quite a few more escrows that I can push to close early if we need too.  That being said, I am pretty confident we will hit 36 and if things go good it might even be 37 or 38.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

I have been so busy, I keep shoving blogging to the bottom of the list.  I have some good ideas for posts, so I will try to get them up.
Happy investing.  How did everyone do on their goals in November?

The months just keep flying by.  Business is moving forward, but things are definitely a bit slow out there.  We are being cautious as we do not want to make any mistakes, but we also do not want to completely stop looking to buy.  This brain process makes business difficult, always second guessing your decisions.  Investors continue to be willing to pay more and home-owners just don’t seem that interested to buy anything right now.

Summary

1. We only bought 1 house.  One purchase we had fell out due to a title issue, another one got delayed and should close this week.
2. We rented 2 house.
3. We sold 1 house – House #39 sold today Nov 1st… so that cannot count, but we just missed cut-off.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are now at 27 rentals; we have two months left to get to our “beefed-up” year end goal of 30 rentals. This goal is do-able, but it really depends on what we find.  We aren’t going to push to do any iffy deals, so I am hoping we find the right houses!

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We have made 32 purchases to the end of October.  We still have 3 properties in escrow.  So that basically puts us one away from hitting our 36 goal.  Our volume sure has gone down as I thought almost for sure we would hit 40-45.  I really cannot complain though…

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

Once again this seems to be the hardest goal.  I got a great head start on this, but I was gone 2 weekends in October which really didn’t help matters.  I do have almost 200 blog posts though!

September has come and gone and I only made one blog post.  That is terrible.  September was another month full of delays and minor problems.  One purchase got delayed another 30 days… and most likely won’t close until October.  The good news is we are on track still, so everything is rolling forward as planned.

Summary

1. We bought 3 houses.
2. We rented 1 house.
3. We sold 1 house (a wholesale deal and a retail deal).

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are now at 25 rentals; we still have our upped year end goal to try to hit 30 rentals.  Judging by our changes in the market and our negative outlook on the short-term future of pricing getting to 30 is going to be pretty tough.

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We have made 31 purchases to the end of September.  Right now we have 3 properties in escrow.  One of the three might not close in October, the Seller needs to deal with a major title issue and that will take some time.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

Oh, this has been my worst month blogging ever.  I have a couple posts written that I need to proof read and post.  I will get better I promise.

August was a bit of a discouraging month.  I thought we where going to kill it and buy 5 to 6 houses.  Two deals got delayed and one got canceled because the previous owner was trying to sue the bank.  Which means we only purchased 3 houses.  That still is on pace for the beginning of the year goals… but I was hoping to crush all of our goals.

September is going to be busy, we are going to sell 2-3 houses, buy 4 and rent 3-4 houses.

Summary

1. We bought 3 houses..
2. We rented 2 properties.
3. We got House #39 listed and in escrow.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are now at 24 rentals; we still have our upped year end goal to try to hit 30 rentals.  It is going to be tough to get there and will probably put a pretty big dent into my capital, but we are going to find a way to make it happen.

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We have purchased 28 properties from January to the end of August (30 as we closed two more so far in September).  We should purchase at least 2 more putting us at 32 purchases by the end of September.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

I screwed up here!  I only made 6 posts in August and it is already September 10th and this is my first post of September.  Truth is I have been swamped with rentals, purchases and sales, making it very difficult to find time to blog.

I have been a landlord for over a year now and I want to write a post that summarizes my experiences and hints to other landlords out there.

July was another on pace month for the goals.  We ended up purchasing four houses and selling one (a wholesale deal).  The good part is we have three retail deals in escrow and if things go as planned all three of them should close in August… well, realistically, maybe only 2 of them.

The market felt like it was slowing in June, but now we are not sure what do think.  There is no inventory out there and there are not very many retail buyers out there.  If the banks dump inventory it should make for a very exciting winter.

Summary

1. We bought four houses.  If you recall, the one that had City issues and was supposed to close in June, closed on the 29^th of this month.  It took a long-time to work out the details with the Seller.
2. We sold one property, a wholesale deal to another investor.
3. We rented 1 property, it turned out to a bit of an ordeal and there were a lot of maintenance issues on the house.
4. Our major project of July was House #39, we should have it listed late this week and hopefully we can have it in escrow just as fast.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are now at 22 rentals; we have upped the year end goal to try to hit 30 rentals.  That would really be an amazing accomplishment.  We purchased our first rental August 5, 2009 and bought 21 in the first 12 months as landlords.

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

Chances are we should beat this goal, I just don’t know by how much yet.  We have purchased 25 properties so far.  The bad news is we only have two purchases in escrow right now.  An agent tells me we are pretty close on another deal, so I am hoping the Seller gives us confirmation tomorrow.  So far this year we have been averaging about 3.5 purchases a month, so that pace would put as at 42-43 deals this year.  I’m all for it, but it has been getting harder to buy almost every month so hopefully we can keep the volume strong.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

I got an early jump on the blog posts and I don’t think I have posted for 10 days or so.  But I did hit this goal again.  Is there anything else you want me to write about?  Let me know in the comments.

In past months I’ve had Mike Z, QkNic, BJ Fitzgerald, Stephen J. Moore, and Jennifer post their goals in the comments section.  It’d be great if you could give an update on your progress in July and previous months?  If anyone else wants to chime in, I can mention you in next months review.

June was a great month, we put a ton of properties under contract.  Sold a house and bought a bunch of houses.

I am a bit uncertain about the market right now, it seems like the retail buyer action has cooled a bit.  Investors are even more aggressive, so the margins have completely disappeared.

1. We bought five houses.  A sixth one was supposed to close yesterday, but we had some issues with the City, so we are still trying to sort that out.

2. We sold one retail deal.  It worked out pretty good.  It was pre-90 day FHA transaction.

3. We rented 3 properties.

4. Cash flow has been pretty tight this month as we closed a ton of properties and I need to work on getting them set up with long-term financing.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are at 21 rentals now, possibly 22 (depending if we find a wholesale buyer or not).  So far I really like being a property manager.  It’s a lot of work, but the truth is no one cares for your property as much as you do!

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We are officially half done 2010.  I am three properties ahead of schedule at 21 purchases.  July should have at least 4 closings in it too, so that would put me a bit farther ahead too. We want to ramp up to 5-6 purchases a month for the rest of the year if we can, but we will be forced to wholesale at least two of those.

Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

I knew if I put it in writing it would happen!  Written goals are the key to success people.  The blog traffic has really picked up again now that I am being more active.

Everything else is pretty boring, all the rehabs are going pretty smooth.  The massive fire damaged House #39 is coming along great, we’re passing inspections left and right and actually will be dry-walling next week.

I have not done as good blogging as I was hoping.  May was a decent month for us, not great, but still chugging along in Southern California.  Inventory is really messed up right now.  People are fighting over very few properties and it doesn’t make for profitable deals.

1. We bought 2 houses in May.  A third one was supposed to close, but we had HOA issues that have delayed things.  We also where high bidder at an auction on a great retail flip property but the bank ended up rejecting our offer after two weeks of deliberation.  This was a bit discouraging.  The good news is we are close on 2 or 3 properties.

2. We rented one property in May.  Now pretty much everything we have available is occupied.

Get to 20 rentals properties (not units)

We are at 18 rentals now.  Our most recent escrow House #47 is going to make one of our better rentals.  We are paying a little bit more for our typical rental but it’s really a Class A property (by our definition at least).

Make 36 Purchases (Rentals, Retail or Wholesale)

We have bought 16 properties so far in 2010.  We are pretty much right on track with our goals and we are really searching hard to buy more properties.

New Goal: Make at least 10 Blog Posts per Month

Well, this goal I failed.  I made a whopping 4 blog posts in May.  Granted I got a bit of a late start.  #1 focus is buying more properties and #2 is blog posts.  So as long as I can open a couple escrows you should see a lot of blog posts!

How did you guys do in May?