9 “Boring” Investing Habits That Will Actually Make You Rich

**Dave Meyer** (0:00)
Most people think successful real estate investors have some secret strategy. A special lender, a market no one else knows about. Insider access to off-market deals. They don't. What they do have, though, is habits.
Boring, repeatable habits that they do over and over, deal after deal, year after year. Following a process, getting better and better at this process, while everyone else is chasing the next shiny strategy they heard about on social media.
And this is good news, because habits are things anyone can implement. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, how much cash you have, what market you're in. If you can develop the habits of the best investors, you can succeed in this business and achieve your financial goals. Today, I'm giving you the nine most important habits of successful investors and you should steal every single one.
Hey, everyone, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. I have been investing for 16 years now. I've talked to hundreds of investors on this show. And at this point, I think I have a good grasp on what separates the best investors from the OK ones or from the people who never actually get started. And what differentiates these people is probably not what you think. The investors who actually win long term don't have wildly different strategies from everyone else. They don't live in some perfect market, and they definitely aren't even necessarily the smartest people. They just have the best habits. The things you do repeatedly in your business, in my opinion, are more important than any one deal or resource.
Habits are in your control. They can scale with you, and they are accessible to every single person in the BiggerPockets community. So today we're breaking down the nine habits of successful mom and pop real estate investors. The actual behaviors we're talking about, not just the mindset fluff you hear about. We're talking actual behaviors that separate the people who build real wealth from the people who stay on the sidelines, or the people who buy one property and quit, or those who wind up getting themselves in trouble. Some of these habits may feel obvious. Some of them might sting a little bit, because sometimes we need a little taste of bitter medicine. But if you can build even three or four of these habits into how you invest, you're going to be ahead of most people in this space. Let's get into it.
Habit number one of successful real estate investors is patience. This might be the single biggest differentiator between investors who build wealth in real estate and investors who flame out. Because the reality of this industry is that real estate is not a get rich quick scheme. It is very difficult to get rich quick in real estate. The way you should think about it is get rich for sure.
The wealth that comes from real estate comes from being in the market a long time, not being perfectly timed in the market, not taking huge swings and trying to get everything all in one deal. What really allows people to build that wealth is staying power.
Staying power, being in the market a long time. And patience is absolutely key to that. And I want to be clear about patience because patience can sound kind of passive. But today in the show, we are talking about habits. And so, I want to talk about how patience can actually be a behavior. So, what patience looks like as an actual habit for real estate investors are number one, not stretching and buying deals that are too thin. This to me, number one red flag in real estate investing. It's very hard to lose if you only buy deals that are sure things. But only finding sure things takes time. So, this is what I mean by patience as a practice. Learn to say no to a lot of deals.
Learn to go back to the seller one more time and push for that extra concession. That's what patience actually looks like as a practice. Because it is easy to get excited when you see a deal. It's easy to get excited when you catch the bug with real estate and you want to go out and buy that next deal or that first deal. I get it, I feel the same thing. That's why it has to become a habit.
Take time and develop the skill of taking a deep breath, running your numbers the second time, running it the third time. Call your investor friend to make sure that your underwriting criteria are correct. Not selling something out of a panic. Patience is actually a skill that you can build, and it is one that is perfectly suited for real estate investing. You can't sell a property quickly, you can't buy a property that quickly. We're talking about weeks or months. It's not like opening Robinhood and selling something. Patience is your best friend as a real estate investor.