Symon He - Rental Property Investing QuickStart Guide: The Simplified Beginner’s Guide to Finding and Financing Winning Deals, Stress-Free Property Management, ... Passive Income (QuickStart Guides™ -

A Special Note from the Author

I am writing this book in the midst of the COVID-19 global pandemic, a disruptive event of a scale the world has not seen for more than one hundred years. The effect on real estate markets worldwide is undeniable. Many of you, despite your interest in this space, are sure to question the extent to which rental property investing remains a viable endeavor.

While the effects and implications of the pandemic may have shocked and shuffled the markets, opportunities in rental property, in my judgment, are not destined to fade away, but rather to transform. Some of the rental property markets that have seen their values plummet will see a robust and vigorous recovery, similar to that of the last recessionthe great financial crisis of 2008where countless real estate investors enjoyed lavish capital gains over the decade that followed. In fact, if youre interested in navigating the downturn skillfully, then youve chosen the perfect time to educate yourself on this topic. Throughout the book Ill address some of the pandemic-related challenges, changes, and opportunities presented by these unprecedented times.

Big, disruptive, unforeseen events do more than just damage markets. They also naturally create shifts in behavior. Your challenge as a rental property investor is to learn how to spot those shifts and match them with emerging opportunities both now and in the future. It is my sincere hope that you will use the lessons of this book to equip yourself with the tools you need to survive and thrive in the coming years, aided by a strong portfolio of income-generating properties. You can do it. Ill show you how.

Introduction

This book is for the answer-seekers, those who are curious, skeptical, or admittedly ignorant about rental property investing. Maybe youre unsure of how much money you need to get started or whether youre ready to be someones landlord. Maybe youre not sure whether you have the chops for negotiating great real estate deals and managing properties. There are many competing and often contradictory voices out there, shouting their opinions as to what you should think about rental property investing. From reality TV shows to news stories to the personal and hearsay accounts of family members and friends, Ive found that such anecdotal accounts are more apt to obscure than to illuminate the essential truths of rental property investing. The way a property is acquired and made rent-ready, when depicted on television, rarely lines up with reality. News stories and personal accounts tend to focus on the most extreme, atypical, and negative situations, often involving the nightmare tenant or the evil slumlord. Again, such dramatizations are removed from the day-to-day realities of rental property investing and management. My aim in writing this book is to provide a reliable and realistic source of information on the subject, one based on my own fifteen years of experience in owning and operating rental properties. This type of investing and wealth-building through rental properties is a subject Im fiercely passionate about, and I gain enormous personal fulfillment from bringing my knowledge and experience to others. Over the last seven years Ive engaged and tutored over 350,000 students in 180 countries on this subject. With this book, I aim to expand my reach to an ever-wider class of real estate entrepreneurs.

You should commend yourself for taking interest in such an exceptional entrepreneurial pursuit, one that has the potential to transform your life. Unlike many other wealth-building endeavors, success in rental property investing can be achieved irrespective of a persons education level or how much money they currently have in the bank. Many of the concepts I present in this book are meant to take you from zero knowledge to your first investment. Thats where the hardest challenge lies. And when you have your first investment, the fun part is imagining, dreaming, and planning what it will take to go from one property to a whole portfolio of ten properties and more. If youre willing to work hard and stay focused, then youll find this business has a way of taking good care of you. If you dont quit easily and you know how to roll with the punches as they come, then youll discover that there are invaluable lessons behind every setback and that each obstacle and hardship you encounter is in fact a crucial stepping-stone on your road to success. Im looking forward to sharing my knowledge with you in the pages that follow, but first, allow me to share some of the highlights of my own journey in rental property investing.

I earned my MBA at Stanford after receiving degrees in both computer engineering and economics from UC Irvine. After school, I was hired by a private equity firm to work on commercial real estate acquisitions without any prior background in real estate (we all start with no experience once, even me!). This was a baptism by fire for me, as I was quickly immersed in a new and unfamiliar world, one with its own rhythms and rules, and even its own language. Terms like asset class , rental yield, and internal rate of return soon became part of my ever-growing lexicon. After participating in more than $500 million worth of commercial real estate investments over five years, I jumped at the chance to move back to my hometown of Los Angeles to join the Panda Restaurant Group (PRG) in a supporting role for new store openings and market expansions. There, I continued to build upon my real estate investing experience, ultimately becoming responsible for the evaluation and acquisition of commercial properties for the various subsidiaries of PRG, such as Panda Express, Panda Inn, and Hibachi-San.

It was during my tenure at PRG that I was approached by a few of my colleagues and asked to join a group of like-minded investors. The group included several other Panda employees as well as several associates from outside our organization. Because we all worked full time, we called this ragtag bunch the Weekend Fund. Seeing as I had experience in locating and analyzing commercial properties, I was tasked with building the framework of our investment process. I became the analyst, the trusted member of the group who searched the markets, evaluated risk, and determined our potential profits. Although we all worked to locate potential investment deals, it fell to me to assess those deals and give the ultimate green light for the investment. If I said yes, we would invest.

In just a few years, we located and invested in over thirty rental properties throughout Texas, California, Arizona, and Nevada. My professional experience up to that point in my career had been primarily in commercial properties those intended for business usebut the Weekend Fund venture turned my attention toward single-family home rental properties. I learned the ropes of the residential property investment universe, and I loved it. I even decided to begin building my own personal portfolio, outside of the pooled resources of the Weekend Fund. Fast forward to today: I have invested in more than 150 properties, many in pooled investment funds, while several others are traditional direct investments that I continue to operate on my own.