Let me start by saying that I am currently in the process of acquiring my first rental property (a house hack), so my advice is not that of a seasoned veteran.
Let me immediately follow by saying that the property I am currently acquiring is a triplex, and I'm getting it for $45,000. If that sounds absurd, it's because it is. It's an absurdly good deal.
I'm sure that many people reading this will at this point be scoffing and saying things like "Bullshit, that's not possible" or "Yeah, okay, how many hundreds of thousands of dollars is that dump going to take to fix up?" The answer is that it's not bullshit, it is possible, and after a thorough inspection the grand total for all repairs and renovations to get all three units move in ready is less than $20,000 (and that includes a new roof!). Including the repair costs yields a total purchase price of ~$65k. Monthly rents will conservatively be $1400 (would be $1800 if I weren't house hacking it), with PITI (principle, interest, taxes, insurance) coming in at a whopping $480. So I'll be generating ~$900 in positive monthly cashflow from my primary residence after subtracting 10% for potential vacancy and 10% for maintenance expenditures. I will share a link to my full story at the bottom of this post (it's an ongoing adventure).
Now, with that out of the way, let me tell you some things that fly in the face of much of the input of those above. Firstly, the people coming to you with stories of fantastic deals, like the one I just told you about, didn't just "get lucky". Sure, at a casual glance it's easy to dismiss stories like mine as luck, because lord knows not many people are house hacking $45,000 triplexes in the current housing market to earn upwards of 20% ROI off their primary residence. But to dismiss these stories as blind luck and/or irrelevant to your own situation is to fall victim to Excusitis, the Failure Disease. MMM has entire articles about this, and I'll link one at the bottom of this, but I'll summarize by saying that there is no such thing as an irrelevant success story. There is *always* a bit of actionable info you can walk away with and apply to your own life. Furthermore, what appears to most as luck is usually much more than that. People don't just wake up one morning and get a call from someone asking if they want to buy a triplex for $45,000...
Unless they have taken specific steps to make such a thing actually happen. And sure, maybe some measure of good fortune was involved, but that's to be expected of anyone who is actively seeking opportunities. You're very unlikely to ever get "lucky" if you begin with the assumption that the odds are stacked against you. Which brings me to my next point:
Being optimistic is a fundamental trait of being a Mustachian. Don't believe me? Ask MMM himself. Again, there are several articles on the subject, and again, I'll link one below. The short of it is that if you aren't being optimistic, you are probably not going to be successful. If your reaction to seeing a hidden issue (like a leaky roof that the owner never told me about when we agreed on a price of $55,000) is to say "Aha! I knew it was too good to be true - I'm out!" then you will miss the best deals. Instead, you should take the Mustachian approach, which is to say "Woah, this is a big obstacle I've been presented with. Awesome! Now how can I still make this work?" Obviously there is still a need to temper your optimism with sound reasoning and logic, but the two are not contradictory, no matter what the Complainypants tell you. Sometimes, when you respond to problems this way, you end up miraculously making the deal
even better, like I did when I used the surprise roof leak to negotiate a 20% price drop, despite the fact that even with the new issues, my repair estimates were still within my original repair budget. Mustachians are optimistic, but Mustachians are also not stupid. We understand the power of Outrageous Optimism, and we employ it through our awesome and badass
Optimism Guns. We laugh in the faces of nervous complainypants who warn us that "real estate is hard, real estate is risky" and "these people got lucky because they bought at the right time or stumbled blindly into great deals". We know that real estate
can be hard at times, but we don't shy away from the challenge. We know that real estate
can be risky, but we understand those risks and learn how to mitigate and manage them. We know that there are always great deals to be found, and we sniff them out like the success hunting bloodhounds that we are. In a boom, in a bust, in the middle of a global pandemic, the Mustachian grins a cheeky grin beneath their broad bristles and boldly charges forth, optimism guns blazing. And because of this approach, we generally win far more often than our non-mustached colleagues.
The best advice that I can give you is to be optimistic, and facilitate your own good fortune by proactively seeking opportunities. This means networking, this means negotiating, this means getting creative when things go sideways. If the numbers absolutely don't add up, then they don't add up and you move on. But you *always* remember that the good deals are out there, and you just might be the only one with the tenacity and positivity to find them.
MMM on the dangers of Excusitis:
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/05/28/weekend-edition-the-magic-of-thinking-big/MMM on Optimism:
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/10/03/the-practical-benefits-of-outrageous-optimism/Me, on my $45,000 triplex (this link got messed up because of the dollar sign. You'll have to copy/paste it or just find it near the top of the Real Estate section of the forum):
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/real-estate-and-landlording/the-great-$55-000-triplex-saga/msg2739009/#msg2739009