• Credit inquiries: 10%
By knowing your credit score, you’ll have a clearer picture of your investment strategy. If your score is high enough, you might be able to get a traditional loan and help with down payments. If your score is lower than you’d like, take a look at the determining factors and see where you can improve — making on-time payments should clearly be a priority. You can also consider paying down balances as you’re able, and not opening up a bunch of new credit cards. BEWARE OF SCAMS F SCAMS With so many people out there looking to make money in real estate, it’s pretty much expected that there will be people out there ready to take advantage. The two main types of scams to watch out for are seminar scams and lending scams. Seminar scams can give some truly helpful tips, but it’s always used as a way to gain people’s trust. Once they have the trust, they’ll offer “limited-time” investment properties or expensive classes. When people fall for the trick and buy a property, they often find that it’s got a lot of issues and is quite likely a money pit. However, signing up for classes can be negative, too. Why? Because people often end up spending thousands of dollars for little to no new information when that money (and their time) could’ve gone toward their investments. To make things even worse, people who get taken in by scammers often sign agreements without reading them through. These documents often include a section that keeps the scammed people from taking legal action against the scammers. So how do you find genuinely helpful seminars? (Yes, they do exist.) Do your research! Look up the organization, the 56
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