What’s Your Best Investment Strategy?
By Ramon Tookes
Real estate investing is and will always be one of the best ways to build wealth. As with any investment, you must have a strategy. In real estate, three main strategies are wholesale, buy and hold, and fix and flip.
Most people think that fix and flipping is my favorite strategy, but it’s really not!! My favorite is buying and holding. I really enjoy buying and holding for several reasons. One, buying and holding creates long term wealth also known as generational wealth if properly managed. My goals include leaving a legacy and properties for my children and my children’s children and so forth. This is the strategy for that. Two, buying and holding gives you the opportunity to control real estate, which is not being made any more. Three, the properties should and usually appreciate (increase in value) over time. Finally, when you buy and hold properly, you can create cash flow for saving, investing, and financial freedom.
I enjoy wholesaling. Wholesaling is making a fee for finding a property for a buyer that will successfully execute their goal. This can be done with assignments and double closings. I like this strategy because it takes away a lot of the responsibilities and stress of ownership. Wholesaling can lead to quick profits. If you are building a wholesale system, it requires hard work, which most people that want to wholesale fail to realize. There are lots of fast moving pieces in the wholesale business especially in this market. I have wholesaled hundreds of properties during my career, but have had the most headaches using this strategy.
And yes, I do enjoy fixing and flipping. I am known as “Mr. Flipology” because I teach/train investors how to properly flip real estate through my investing educational and training course called Flipology 101:the Bootcamp. This not only includes single family residences, but also land, multifamily, and commercial. I enjoy flipping because it leads to large profits, build communities, and I get a satisfaction of seeing a homeowner own a property that they love. As with the other strategies, to successfully flip, you must create systems. These systems involve lots of other people including contractors.
These strategies are implemented according to your preference and what you can use most effectively. Do not try to use one of the other because someone else is using it. Many of the properties that I wholesaled or flipped I wished that I had bought and held them. I know that this is after the fact, but most people who have built massive wealth in real estate have done so through buying and holding.
Ramon Tookes is a real estate investor, coach, author, wealth builder, public speaker, radio celebrity and developer with 20+ years of experience in the industry. Ramon currently oversees the daily operations of The Tookes Group, a firm that he founded in 2005, specializing in real estate investment consulting.
