I often hear new investors say that knowledge is what they need in order to get started. That they must accumulate all the knowledge they can about real estate investing before they can take any action. (Absorb ALL OF IT.) Well, if there was ever a dumb statement, this is certainly one.

The truth is that you will never learn everything before you get started. It’s only when you get started, that you will begin to start learning what you don’t know that you need to know, in due time. It takes years to learn a lot about the entire real estate marketplace. You will never learn everything – at once – even if you wanted to. When you are on the cusp of starting an exciting new venture/career, as you are now, there is a lot of information that you will have to learn, of course, without saying, but be aware of the “I have to know everything before I get started” syndrome.

A common cause of failure is that some people go crazy and try to learn everything before they try anything. They get overloaded, burned out, overwhelmed, confused, deterred, disgusted and begin to think negatively, eventually deciding to simply give up. You don’t need to know everything in the universe about the entire real estate industry before you begin chasing the good deals to begin investing, in due time. This excuse is also the same as not knowing what to do or exactly what to say.

I would tell anyone to go to a local real estate investing meeting and buy a course from a speaker. These meetings always have speakers selling courses on investing. Buy one. Then listen to what the investor says and try to emulate him/her. If you do what successful people do, you too will eventually become successful, in due time. So practice saying what they say to Sellers & Buyers – and in time you will know what to say yourself. You’ll begin to internalize how they handle objections, how they show benefits to their prospects and turn them into clients, along with many other useful tips on how and what to say. Remember, it’s about learning what not to say, as much it is about learning what to say to Sellers & Buyers. Always strive to improve yourself, but don’t let it stop you if you don’t consider yourself to be all-knowingly equipped – right now. No one is. The key is to understand how to speak the “lingo” and keep at it until you are very professional.

Whatever you can fix now, do so. If you have things in your circumstances or personality that you feel will hold you back, put your plan into action now, and then work on fixing these – as you go through your learning curve. I have found that listening to audiotapes on motivational subjects is a great way to start each day. I listen to them when I start out my day or while I’m working or driving in my car. I checkout the tapes I listen to from the local library, or go to a liquidation type remnant bookstore and buy tapes for 20% of their original cost. If you have a factory outlet store near you, go to the bookstore in that outlet center. It will probably have inexpensive audio books. Amazon.com on the Internet is also a good place to get discounted audio books. Or, go to Audiobooks.com. It offers 4 free audio books if you become a member. Or you can go to your local library and checkout these types of tapes and/or books for free!

Success is an On-going Learning Process:

You should continually read real estate investing books. Make a point to take some seminars. And proactively network with investors who are more experienced and knowledgeable than you are and then learn from what they do to become successful within their respective real estate niches.

But simultaneously while you are doing this, go out there and take MASSIVE ACTION. Be willing to “get your nose bloody.” No pain – no gain, they say. Make some mistakes via taking action. Then, learn some more along your learning curve and take more action. Make fewer mistakes, with increasingly more positive outcomes, one step at a time. It is a learning process that is better than any seminar, real estate book, or audiotape on the marketplace today. Even although I know quite a bit about the real estate investing, business, people, finance, mortgage notes, Short Sales, Rehabs, Lease Purchasing, Subject-To, Wholesaling, and a number of other business skills, I’m still learning – and I’ll never know everything there is to know about the entire real estate industry. It’s the realization of this fact that will keep you humble and on the path to greatness, in due time.

Another effective way to learn is to use the knowledge of others who have experience and are willing to teach, coach, or mentor you. Join a mentorship program and you will learn a lot faster while minimizing your mistakes, this way you won’t have to get a bloody nose – or as many. I’m only half kidding. When are ready to get started, go to the street. The street is the best teacher for you. Rather than talk about doing deals, reading in the library about doing deals, getting more courses and doing deals, JUST GO OUT THERE AND DO IT –in the streets of your local neighborhoods.

In the long run, you’ll find that the street is the best teacher. Not only will you discover this fact, but by getting out and doing it, you’ll learn your MARKET, meet more and more people to build an excellent NETWORK. You’ll better learn the demographics and geographics of your areas, and of course you will have overcome the biggest obstacle in getting started: PROCRASTINATION.

Action is a Fear Killer

I have a favorite saying for new investors and that is “Action is a Fear Killer.” So if you are out there doing deals, you may make mistakes in the beginning but that too is a good thing because you will learn from your mistakes, as I’ve stated earlier. Soon you will make fewer mistakes. And then you will reach a point where you are very efficient at what you do – and you will soon be a “pro.” At that point you will have no fear because you understand that you learn by doing and learn from making mistakes. Just reflect about when you were a little child – learning to ride a bike. You may have fallen down at first – but after you learned how to do it better, it became second nature to you and you never fell down again.

The residential mortgage-related assets that the government is proposing to purchase in  the bailout plan are for the most part not mortgages themselves.  Rather, the assets are mortgage backed securities (MBS).  An MBS is a security issued by a trust (SPV) that has been specially  created for a securitization transaction.  The SPV will purchase large pool of mortgages from a  financial institution.  The SPV pays for the mortgages by issuing securities.  These securities are collateralized by the mortgages owned by the SPV, hence they are “mortgage-backed” securities.  These MBS are typically referred to as “certificates,” and most are debt securities that entitle the  holder to a series of regularly scheduled payments, as with a corporate bond.

By purchasing MBS, the government will not become the direct owner of the mortgages. Instead, it will simply hold securities of an entity that owns mortgages.  This is insufficient to  give the government the ability to modify the mortgages.  Just as corporate bond holders have no right to control the bond issuer’s management decisions, so too do MBS holders have no right to control how the SPV’s management of the mortgages.

The decision to modify mortgages held by an SPV rests with the SPV’s agent, call the  servicer.  The servicer to performs the day-to-day tasks related to the mortgages owned by the SPV, such as collecting payments, handling paperwork, foreclosing, and selling foreclosed  properties.  These servicers, including many “mortgage companies” like Countrywide and Wells Fargo owned by bank holding companies, are the entities that actually consider loan modification requests.  Confusingly, the servicer is often, but not always, the originator.

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