So you’ve decided to start your career in Real Estate investing. Great! But where do you start? Do you start by sifting through the data available in your market on what type of investing has the best profit potential? How about finding the latest, hottest investment technique and jumping on that? No. When you make the decision to get into Real Estate, you should start with YOU. That means you do what the Real Estate Heavyweights do: determine your Core Competency first.

Something can be said to be your Core Competency in Real Estate investing when it satisfies the following criteria:
1. You can do it almost perfect every single time
2. You can do it consistently.
3. You’re passionate about it, i.e. you’re exited every time you get to work on it.
4. You get paid well to do it because you’re providing a valuable service.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

The first is the most important. Sure, you may love doing lots of stuff, but if you can’t pull it off almost perfectly every time than it doesn’t qualify as a Core Competency. You may really enjoy haggling with banks while trying to work foreclosure deals, but if you can’t actually get a good deal negotiated, that you should NOT consider it to be a Core Competency. Many people overlook this step. They tend to think “the hottest trend in Real Estate investing right now is technique XYZ, so that’s what I’ll be best at.” Nope. It doesn’t work like that. If you can do it perfectly almost every time, without mistakes, it doesn’t qualify.

Being able to do something consistently follows from the first point. If some technique or skill is your Core Competency, you should be able to get good results every time you do it. Not only do you not make mistakes in deals as mentioned above, but you get good, profitable returns when you use this technique or skill. If you aren’t getting consistent results, move on.

Your Core Competency has to excite you. As crazy as it sounds, many people don’t think about this step. I didn’t at first. I used to work short sales a few years ago, but I don’t anymore. Why? Because even though I was able to get some deals done, I hated doing it! The very thought of having to talk to another person in loss mitigation made me long to do something else, anything else. So, I stopped doing them. I know some people who get a real thrill from working short sales. Not me. It’ll never be my Core Competency.

The ability to get paid is obviously an important. What’s the point of doing something well in this business if you can’t get paid for it? Not only will you quickly tire of Real Estate investing, you won’t have the means to do it for very long anyway!

Once you determine your Core Competency, you’ll have taken a big step toward succeeding in Real Estate investing. Finding that “sweet spot”, that niche that you can work well, enjoy, and get paid to do, will put you head and shoulders above your competition. It’s the first thing the Real Estate Heavyweights do, and it’s the first thing you should do.