Choosing real estate investment as a career can be a great way to make a lot of money. In a short period of time, but it can also be a way to lose a lot of money in a short period of time. The good news is that most of the skills that you need can either be outsourced or can be developed yourself over time.
Real estate development is not something you can go into without any understanding. You need to have a very clear plan about how you expect to profit and have good evidence supporting your investment thesis.
But with the right support and the right experience you can have a great career doing real estate investment. Throughout this article, we explore some of the positives and pitfalls of real estate investment as a career to help you decide whether estate investment is a good career choice for you.
Positive Characteristics of Real Estate Investment As A Career
Income Potential
One of the biggest drawcards of real estate investment as a career is how much money you can potentially make. One good real estate deal can be enough to set you up for life if you do it right.
Most seasoned real estate investors accumulate their wealth over a long period of time. But it is possible in some cases to create generational wealth in a very small space of time with some shrewd investment when you sell a home for cash.
When you undertake real estate investment as a career, you are not exchanging your hours for those like you are with a typical occupation. You are finding an alternative way to add value.
When you do this with property, there is the potential to add a significant amount of property value depending on how you structure your investment, which can create outsized returns in a very small period compared to other investment activities.
Time Control
Like many other forms of self-employment, a lot of people are drawn to real estate investment because they become the boss of their own time. They are longer beholden to an employer who tells them what to do and when. They are free to do what they want to do when they want to do it.
This does not mean that you work less when you’re self-employed as a real estate investor. In many cases, you actually work a lot more than you would if you were doing a salaried job for an employer. But when you work for yourself, all of the results and the potential upside of those results come to you so you can be motivated and fulfilled by the extra effort that you put in.
Enact Your Own Ideas
In real estate investment, if you are doing it for yourself, then you have full control over the deals you take and what you do with those deals following settlement. You aren’t required to develop and purchase properties in a way that is requested by somebody else because you are in full control. Whilst this does bring freedom, it also brings responsibility, because anything that goes wrong is purely your fault.
Negative Characteristics of Real Estate As A Career
Very High Risk
Depending on the source of your finance and the way you have structured your deal, real estate investment tends to be a very risky endeavor. Although real estate itself is a pretty safe investment per se, when you are undertaking development you bring a whole lot of variables into play that you may not have complete control over.
There are risks in terms of finance and being able to get the money that you want to complete your deal, getting the relevant government approvals to do the development you would like to do, and getting access to the relevant trades and services in the right amount of time to complete the work you need to do to finish the job in time to make money on the deal.
Lots of Hats To Wear
When you undertake real estate investment as a job, you need to wear many hats. What we mean by this is that you need to have a decent understanding of many different roles and job functions in order to successfully undertake a real estate investment project.
Final Thoughts
Though real estate investment can be a very profitable occupation, there is a significant amount of risks involved that you must be aware of before you embark on this journey.
You take on a significant amount of risk and many things are out of your control throughout a real estate development deal. But if you think you can handle these risks and you have access to adequate financing and properties that you can invest in for the right price then real estate can be an extremely profitable career.
