20 Time-Saving Tips for Investors

Tip #1: DO NOT go look at houses unless you sense the seller is motivated

This is a very common mistake that investors make. Think about how much time it really takes to get in your car, drive all the way to the house, walk around it, and then drive home again. It might take half or all of your whole evening (away from family) when you've only got an hour or two per day to devote to real estate.

The reality is that there is very little to be accomplished by actually seeing a house. There is no purpose other than confirming the condition, and it's also a good place to meet the seller to make the offer. Anything else you need to know can be found out from your computer or on the phone.

So the solution is to A) Determine if the seller is motivated before you go to the house (see The 7 Signs of a Motivated Seller), B) Get all of the facts about the house ahead of time, like the after-repaired value, what the seller is asking, what they owe, what repairs it needs), and C) Run the numbers in your head and ONLY go to the house if you're pretty sure you could get a contract.

Tip #2: Get someone to run errands for you

Real estate investing, like any business, requires errands to be run. Let's make a quick list of all of them, as they seem like only a few minutes here and there, but believe me—they add up.

Avoid going to:

• The bank
• The office supply store
• Your personal mailbox or P.O. Box
• The Post Office to make deliveries
• Home Depot
• Making deliveries across town

These tasks are going to tie you up from getting any real work done. Instead, run a Craigslist ad in your city in the Help Wanted section. Say that you are looking for a part-time errand person to pick up and deliver items to and from your house, 1-3 times per week. Offer some flat fee per delivery, like $5. Then, let's say they do 20 errands for you. You pay $100, but save around 10 hours of precious time. I guarantee you that if you spent 10 hours knocking on doors of people in foreclosure or networking with other investors it would be 1000 rimes more profitable.

Tip #3: Don't do repairs yourself

This one will be easy for you if you you don't know how to do repairs anyway. In that case, promise yourself now to never learn how to do repairs, only what repairs need to be done and when (and what they should cost). But I still don't want to catch you doing things like sweeping a house, hauling trash out, mowing the lawn, or anything else repair or maintenance-related.

But if you are able to do repairs, then it's time to give it up cold turkey. If the few thousand dollars you save my doing the work yourself is going to make or break the deal, then you didn't have a very good deal anyway. If you delegate the repairs to a contractor and make $25,000 on the house instead of $28,500 is that such a big deal?

I promise you again that if you spend the time you'd be working on a house on finding a new house to buy instead, you could make another $5,000-30,000 or more. Don't walk over dollars to save a few dimes. Besides, do you really want to spend your life sniffing paint fumes?

Tip #4: Don't meet sellers or tenants at the house

I'll preface this by saying that the house IS a convenient place to meet the seller and make your offer, but only if you have already sensed motivation, gotten the facts necessary to making an offer, and have run the numbers in your head. There is no other reason to meet a seller at their house—not before making the offer, and not even after they have accepted it.

With tenants, there is no reason to ever meet them at the house. Just use the phone. What is there to talk about that couldn't possibly be communicated over the phone? You don't have to be there to show them the house (have a lockbox and give them the code on the phone). You don't need to meet to get the lease signed (you can explain it on the phone and they can mail it to you with the payment, or drop it off at your personal mailbox, or at your work, or you can send a Paypal Money Request or something.

Just pretend that your houses have a restraining order against you and you'll go to jail if you go near them. And even though that's not the case, if I find out you're doing this, believe me, I will come after you myself.

Tip #5: Limit calls to 5 minutes unless motivated

You may have to talk with 8-12 sellers before coming across one that is motivated. Is there anything to talk about with people whose house you will never buy? No.

Your goal, then, is to A) find out as quickly as possible whether they are motivated, and then B) get off the phone as quickly as possible without sounding like a total jerk. I downloaded a free program called Clockwise that shows a stopwatch on my computer screen. I start it as soon as the seller picks up, and I compete against myself to get off the phone within 5 minutes if they're not motivated.

My record is 45 seconds, and I challenge you to beat it. Just make sure they're not motivated, as it would be a shame to lose a deal because you were trying to save a few minutes. Your skills at analyzing people's level of motivation will grow over time until you can start to tell within a minute or so on the phone.

Tip #6: Don't pull comps yourself

This is something else that can be outsourced to a real estate agent or an assistant. If you don't have access to the MLS, then find a realtor who will pull comps for you. If you do have access, then get an assistant to pull comps for you.

Think about how many hours you'll spend in the next few months alone researching properties. Now ask yourself if it would be worth spending 2-3 hours one afternoon showing someone else how to do it. You can record yourself doing anyway it using a free program called Jing, then send them the video to watch and it will take you no time at all away from your work to train them.

Tip #7: Outsource your lead generaion–signs, letters, etc

Delegating your marketing to someone else is the #1 smartest thing to delegate. I repeat, your different marketing methods are the #1 thing to delegate to someone else. Never forget this.

The reason is because marketing is what makes you money. So it makes sense to do more of it–much more–and you can only do so much yourself. With other companies and team members doing multiple methods of marketing for you, you can ensure that you always have a steady stream of new leads coming in, which will result in deals that pay you and everybody else, too.

And by "marketing," I mean actually doing the work needed to send out the mail, run the ads, find the houses, etc. You will still need to decide what kinds of advertising to do and when.

Tip #8: Don't take initial calls yourself from sellers

I recommend talking to sellers yourself until you feel like you're pretty good at telling 1) who is motivated and who isn't, and 2) when the numbers make sense and when they don't.

Once you're at that point, record yourself talking to 10-20 sellers on the phone and use those recordings as training material. Spend an afternoon with your assistant and go over how to do #1 and #2 above. Then, have them be the first person that sellers talk with. If they pass your assistant's test, then they can be transferred to you, or set a time nearby for you to call them back.

It took me a while to have the guts to do this, and you might want to wait a while, too, but once I did it started saving me an hour or more per day (or 240 hours per year!)

Tip #9: Eliminate having to talk with buyers

There are two main phases of communication with buyers–1) Showing the house, 2) Getting the contract to sell, and 3) Proceeding to Closing.

1) Showing the house–You can set up a voicemail message or website with the lockbox code for buyers to use to see the house at their convenience. Or have them get all the facts about your house from your voicemail or website, but call an assistant to get the lockbox code.

2) Getting the contract to sell–Once they have the code, an assistant can follow up with them by phone to see if they liked the house, answer any questions they have about it, and see if they are interested in buying it. If the buyers want to negotiate, you can either have your assistant relay messages to you or just schedule a time for you to talk to them yourself, which is better than talking to 30 other people.

3) Proceeding to Closing–There are a lot of phone calls between the time of contract signing and the closing. Your assistant, or you, can do this, but try to get the buyer or their agent to use email instead of calling you constantly. There are very few items that can't wait a few hours or a day anyway.

Tip #10: Educate yourself during passive time

Do you know when your "investing hours" are on your schedule? I recommend marking the time you'll spend on your investing business on your calendar, and then NOT reading or studying during those times. Instead, get something DONE that produces income directly, like making offers.

That's work time. Educate yourself during passive time (waiting in line, late at night, Sunday afternoons, on break at work, stuck in traffic, on the train, etc). You might not think there will be enough time for that, but I promise you if you carry a book or course around in your car at all times these educational moments will appear and you'll be ready to take advantage of them without taking away from your work time.

Tip #11: List the most important things and do them first each day

I'll warn you that the most important things are probably going to be ones that aren't fun to do, or that you want to put off until later—things like calling sellers, calling private lenders, etc.

Do them FIRST during work time, because A) you never know when something will interrupt you and you have to stop working, B) when work is over, you at least know you're getting results, and C) it disciplines you to be effective and overcome inertia.

Sometimes I reward myself by saying, "Okay, I'm going to do XYZ first thing, and if I knock it out in 30 minutes or less, I'll reward myself with a smoothie tonight," or something like that. Try it!

Tip #12: Check email once per day

Again, there are few messages that cannot wait a few hours or a day to be returned. And it's also true that when you batch tasks together, they get done faster (ex: moving the front, sides, and back yard in one hour vs one at a time over the space of 4 days).

So set a time that you will check your personal or investing email once per day (after you've done the most important things first), and then get through it as fast as humanly possible. Be ruthless. Time yourself. Just get it done and then don't go back. Pretend Gmail or Hotmail has a restraining order against you!

Tip #13: Have special phone # for sellers

When the phone rings, it interrupts what you're doing and is a waste of time 80% of the time. But you also don't want to risk missing an important call from a seller and blowing a deal. So what's the solution?

Easy. Get a special phone number for sellers to use. You can get an 800# from the list of Investor Resources on this site. Then, when someone calls that number it will forward to your phone and you'll see in the caller ID that it's coming from your 800 number, which let's you know it's important.

Or, call your phone company and request a second number on your phone line, that will have a different ring tone so you'll know the difference. The key is to ONLY give this special number to sellers, or else your contractors and title company will start bugging you on it and you won't have accomplished anything.

Tip #14: Create an email group for investor list

Can you believe that my investor list used to be a stack of papers that I would call on the phone one at a time when I had a deal? What a waste!

Instead, you can create an email list by storing everyone's contact information in a spreadsheet and then copying and pasting the emails from it into your "To" field when sending an email. Or, see if your email provider will let you put certain addresses into a Group, and call it Investor List. In Outlook, you can create a Mailing List and do this very easily and it will let you communicate with hundreds of people in just a few minutes.

Tip #15: Batch tasks together, like mail, bills, email, phone calls, etc

Similar tasks get done faster when you do them all in one sitting. You get into a state of "flow" and become very efficient because your mind is focused and not wandering all over the place. So make a list of everything you have to do in a given week, and try to do them all in one sitting. Then schedule them.

Examples are:

• Check email once per day at the same time. Go through entire inbox until empty, then STOP.
• Go through all of your mail once per week, on the same day and time. Pay your bills at this time, too.
• Set a time each day when you will make phone calls. Start on time. Try to finish on time or sooner.

Tip #16: Schedule the hours you will work every week

You don't show up late for work, do you? It helps to set an appointment with yourself to work on your business and then get there on time as you would with a day job. Take it seriously!

You can use Outlook or Google Calendar to set recurring appointments, so that time is marked on your calendar for certain tasks on the same days and times every week.

Tip #17: Put things off until they are closer to being needed

Procrastination is putting off what needs to be done now until later. Putting off what could be done later, though, is just plain smart.

So if there's something you want to do eventually, just put it in a long master list of things to do and then pull it out and schedule it later when the time is right. Each week, you'll have your core tasks which must be done (schedule these) and then 2-3 other major things you want to accomplish.

EVERYTHING else can wait until later 90% of the time.

Tip #18: Have a notary available

Know who you can use to get something notarized in a pinch before it becomes urgent. I have a list of preferred people and places, and then when the need arises, I just contact or go to them.

Get to know which banks in town will do it for you quickly for free, and go to sites like www.NotaryRotary.com and www.Notary123.com to get to know mobile notaries in your area who can meet you at your convenience.

EVERYTHING else can wait until later 90% of the time.

Tip #19: Make checklists for repeated tasks

Some things in this business you do over and over again, like closing on a deal. Instead of reinventing the wheel every time, why not make a checklist and add tasks to it as you think of them?

Then, the next time you do the thing, you can print up the checklist and you won't forget anything on it. For example, I would often forget to have the main circuit breaker in the house in the off position so that the power company could turn the power on in the house. So they would drive there and not be able to do it for fear of frying the house. So I added to my "renovating houses" checklist an item called "have contractor turn off main breaker during initial walkthrough," and then it was always off when the power guys came around.

Tip #20: Have a sense of urgency–use timer if needed

Lastly, have a sense of urgency with everything you do. Use a timer for tasks. See how quickly you can get things done. Go home early!

Remember, investing isn't about work, and it's not about being busy or filling up time—it's about results. Get what needs to be done done, and then GO HOME and have a life. Hopefully, these 20 time-saving tips will help you to do just that–to do more deals, in less time, and to have the lifestyle you deserve.