Beginning investors are often curious about when the best time to start a real estate investing career is.

I talk about the kind of things you’ll want to have in place in your personal life in another article, but economically speaking…

Is it best to start in a down economy? An up economy? Somewhere in between?

When is the best time to start?
The trick is that when the opportunity strikes it’s usually too late to start learning how to take advantage of that particular opportunity. It’s usually gone by the time you’re fully ready to take advantage of it. If you were to get into real estate right now, who knows what condition the housing market will be in by the time you get really good at some form of real estate.

Does that mean you shouldn’t try? Is NOW not the time to get into real estate because today’s opportunities will be gone? Of course not!

Here’s what it means: if the housing market is down, start learning how to work in a down housing market. What if you start to get good at foreclosures and suddenly they dry up because the economy improves and everyone is buying? At that point you’re in a position to adapt very quickly to a rising housing market. A high appreciation market makes it hard to lose money on any kind of a real estate deal (because you wait a couple months and appreciation wipes out a lot of the mistakes you make). And then, by the time the market tanks again, you’ll be perfectly positioned to take advantage of that market because you’ve already experienced it once.

The key is this: you have to start sometime, and there is opportunity in every market. NOW is the best time to get into real estate, and that will be true a month from now and a year from now. The only difference is that some people will get started now and a year from now will be well on their way to success, while everyone else will wait for a year wondering if this is the best time to start.

Which person are you going to be?

What to do:
The first thing to do is align yourself with people who are in a better position to see opportunity and understand what’s coming. If you’d like figure out how to start your career in real estate, look at the information here.