Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association, Inc.

Key Pointers for Frustrated Real Estate Investors

By: Loreal Loftus

1. Shift Your Mindset

• Frustration usually comes from unmet expectations — focus on progress, not perfection.
• Remember: every “no” gets you closer to a “yes.”
• Real estate is a long game — persistence wins.

2. Go Back to the Basics

• Are you consistently generating leads (daily/weekly)?
• Are you making enough offers? (Most investors underestimate this.)
• Track your activities — leads, calls, offers — not just results.

3. Improve Your Follow-Up

• 70–80% of deals come from long-term follow-up.
• Use a CRM, reminders, or even a simple calendar to re-engage old leads.
• Stay in touch until life changes make the seller motivated.

4. Adjust Your Strategy

• If flips aren’t working, try wholesaling or creative financing.
• If competition is high, target off-market deals&nb
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10 Things a New Investor Should Do (Proactive Steps)

By: Loreal Loftus

1. Educate Yourself Now
   Learn the basics: wholesaling, buy-and-hold, subject-to, seller financing. The more strategies you know, the more deals you can turn into “yes.”
2. Pick Your Lane
   Don’t chase everything. Decide whether you want to wholesale, flip, or hold rentals and focus there.
3. Study Your Local Market
   Track days on market, price reductions, and foreclosure filings in 2–3 ZIP codes. This gives you a feel for shifts before others notice.
4. Build a Buyers & Lenders List
   Start meeting cash buyers and private lenders today. When you get a deal, you’ll already know who can close.
5. Practice Deal Analysis
   Run comps, calculate ARV, and estimate repairs on 100 properties before you buy. Speed and accuracy with numbers is your safety net.
6. Network Consistently
   Go to your local REIA (like MnREIA), meet agents, wholesalers, and other investors. Most deals are shared within relationships, not public listings.
7. Get Marketing Going Early
   Even a small direct-mail, cold-calling, or d
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Don’t Be Scared to Be a New Real Estate Investor: Let MnREIA Guide You

Starting out in real estate can feel like a giant leap into the unknown. Whether you're attracted to the idea of flipping homes, owning rental properties, or finding creative financing solutions, it’s normal to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of things you need to learn. But guess what? You don’t have to navigate this journey alone.

At MnREIA (Minnesota Real Estate Investors Association), we believe in empowering new investors and helping you overcome the fear that can often come with stepping into real estate. The good news is that you can be successful in real estate, even as a beginner—and MnREIA is here to help you find your passion, learn the ropes, and make smart decisions along the way.

Why It’s Okay to Be Scared

First off, it’s okay to be scared. Everyone starts somewhere, and fear is a natural part of the process. You may be questioning, “What if I make a mistake? What if I lose money?” The truth is, every investor—whether experienced or brand new—has faced these same fears.

The key is not letting fear paralyze you. Instead of avoiding challenges, embrace them as part of your learning journey. Remember, the most successful investors didn’t get there by avoiding mistakes; they got there by making informed decisions
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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: Cornerstones of the U.S. Housing Finance System

Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) are pivotal entities in the American housing finance system. Created by Congress, these government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) ensure liquidity, stability, and affordability in the mortgage market. Let’s delve into their roles, functions, and impact on housing finance.

Key Functions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

1. Providing Liquidity to Mortgage Markets

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages from banks, savings institutions, and mortgage companies. By doing so, they provide these lenders with cash, which can then be used to issue new loans. This cycle ensures that lenders have the resources to meet the ongoing demand for home loans.

2. Packaging Mortgages into Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS)

The GSEs package the purchased mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS), which are sold to investors. By guaranteeing the principal payment and interest on these securities, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac attract investors who might not traditionally invest in mortgages. This process:

• Expands the pool of funds available for housing.
• Makes the secondary mortgage market more liquid.
• Lowers interest rates for borrowers.

3. Stabilizing the Ho
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Happy Monday!

MnREIA is the largest REIA in the Upper Midwest and Voted #1 in Minnesota by the Top Leaders and National Speakers in the Country!!

MnREIA is a community of real estate investors that strive to provide the most current, relevant, and fresh training from the top leaders in the real estate industry.

Our main monthly meetings take place on the first Tuesday night of each month. We also have 12 other subgroups to attend each month with different speakers, topics, locations, days and times to meet the needs of new and seasoned investors and everyone in between.

Whether your passion is flipping, short-term rentals, buy and hold, wholesaling, commercial, residential, property management, single-family, multi-family, mobile homes, storage units, sales and marketing, lending, foreclosures, development, agent, broker, insurance, construction, or any other support roles, you will fit right into our community of real estate investors!

I remember the first phone call I got back in March, 2020 from a REIA leader (Real Estate Investors Association) on a Saturday asking me what we were going to do now that they shut down the world and we couldn’t have live events anymore.  At that time I had no idea how to answer that question for 2 reasons.  First reason I wasn’t aware of that because I don’t watch the news and I spend as little time as possible on facebook and other social media platforms because everyone has become so negative.   And the second reason is that we were hosting a live event at that very moment so I told them that we would talk on Monday.

I just assumed that they were talking about their state and that it was not going to affect most of the country.  But by the time I turned a TV on Sunday night, almost the whole country was on lockdown.  That week Vena Jones-Cox from Cincinnati REIA was doing their first Online Main Meeting and there was over 600 people in attendance at that event including myself.  Everyone heard about the Cincinnati REIA and their topic was how to deal with tenant and real estate with all the new rules and restrictions that had been trust upon us in less than a week or 2 weeks for a lot of the country. 

At first it was fun for me and everyone working with new technologies and working through the challenges to adjust to the (don’t yell at me…) new normal.  People were working from home and we had to take all our training session that we have been
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There is a lot of confusion out there with newbies and some seasoned investors as to what exactly wholesaling means.  The easiest way to describe this is to look at the Minnesota State Statue: 82 REAL ESTATE SALES REGULATIONS Sub 55 Definitions. Condensed Version: You cannot sell a property for another for a fee without a real estate license.  So the question is, as a wholesaler, what are you selling?  If you have a property under contract, you can sell your rights to the contract, not the property.  This is done via an assignment agreement which allows the assignee to step into your place as the buyer.  That is the basics of wholesaling. 

Some states actively go after real estate investors for incorrectly wholesaling.  These investors get themselves into trouble because they can’t explain legally what they are doing and therefore say the wrong things, like I am trying to find a buyer for the seller.  That shows intent, and as the previous FBI Director James Comey famously explained, it comes down to intent.

The problem is that your true intentions may not reflect your stated intentions because you don’t understand the legality of what you are doing.  If you just change what you are saying, to reflect your true intentions, then you will avoid a lot of aggravation and harassment from the state.
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When I first started real estate investing back in the early 1990’s, it was a struggle to find good training for beginners.  So I eventually got my real estate license and through marketing, I found a few local and successful investors who took me under their wings and that is where I got most of my training, but it was still very limited, because those investors only did one thing, but they were good at it.  However, for me to get out on my own and do things their way would require me to have a rich uncle who died and left me a fortune to invest with.  But I didn’t have a rich uncle so I had to learn something different.

That is when I started looking for alternative training sources, and in my state, there was no local resource.  That is when I started seeing a rise in infomercials and I started buying their training courses, and I got upsold to their seminar, and then their coaching programs.  And slowly, I started to do a few deals that I never even knew could be done before I bought those courses.  I started creating seller carry back notes, selling those notes to raise the down payments.  We did substitutions of collateral, wrap around mortgages and then I learned how to buy pre-foreclosures.  I was doing short sales for years before the term short sale was first used outside of the loss mitigation departments.  I was rehabbing and then I learned how to Wholesale, which I said couldn’t be done, until I bought a course on wholesaling and I made it work J

I learned all that because of infomercials.  However, these days, our inbox is loaded with infomercials.  And finding resources to learn real estate investing is easier than ever before, thanks to the internet, emails and webinars.  It seems like no matter where you turn, there is another infomercial in your inbox, on your smart phone, on the TV and everywhere you look.
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Many Real Estate Investors start out rehabbing properties to resell for a profit. Many of these investors eventually migrate to wholesaling or become landlords, but some become experts and just keep on rehabbing. Most rehabbers build a system and once they have it fine tuned, don’t deviate from that system. If they build a system rehabbing rental properties for landlords or for first time home buyers, then that is what they always do, because it works for them.

However, a few rehabbers make the leap from rehabbing properties in low to middle income neighborhoods to rehabbing properties in upper middle class to affluent neighborhoods. But very few move beyond that and take the step to rehabbing extremely expensive houses. And even fewer are true visionaries.

A close friend of mine, which many of you already know, Robyn Thompson, the Queen of Rehabs started out rehabbing multi-families in firs time home buyer neighborhoods in Connecticut. She then took a huge leap in faith in herself and her abilities and now rehabs multi-million dollar mansions in Florida. That is something that I hear a lot of people say is too big of a rehab, and to those people I say, you are just not thinking big enough. 
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Before we get into talking about the role of wholesaling in the world of real estate investing it would be fruitful to look at the real estate investor’s role in the bigger picture. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that real estate investors act as a floor for real estate prices, and in a way a recycling center for run down houses. On an economic scale we provide a demand where others aren’t with a particular specialty in renewing property and people. The first natural need a human has is shelter and with so many people in the population the numbers alone will inevitably lead to complications. Where those complications arise, an investor is equipped to step in and create a win-win-win situation to liquefy an otherwise viscous asset.

Real estate investors come in many, many forms, essential a form for each complication and a combination of the sort. Investors work together to create efficiencies to allow investors who have a comparative advantage to focus on those advantages and succeed in flushing out new leads to bring to the real estate investor community. The real battle that investors face is turning sellers and buyers onto the idea of creative financing and alternatives to foreclosure.
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