If you’re new to investing in real estate, it may seem confusing and complicated. With all those contracts, property titles, and legal forms, it can tend to look like rocket science, but it’s not. I believe the main reason people get so confused about real estate investing is simply because it’s new to them. I think that as we get older, trying something new becomes harder because we get stuck in our old ways. The good news is I have a solution for you. I’m going to suggest that if you are trying to make a go of it in real estate investing, you develop a childlike attitude. Now let me explain what I mean by that, and I’ll need to use some "science talk" for a minute to make my point clear.

Research shows that before preschoolers enter kindergarten; their brains are more active and more flexible. They actually have more connections per brain cell than us adults. By age three, the child's brain is actually twice as active as an adult's, and the child’s brain consumes twice-as-much energy. It has some 15,000 synapses or connections per neuron, compared to the average 7,500 per adult brain. There's more. At about age 10, the brain begins mercilessly eliminating the less-used synapses. This physiological fact may explain why remediation of learning disabilities, which usually starts in the fourth grade, is such hard work and why it is so rarely completely successful. By the time we’re 18 we have the brain we will have for the rest of our lives. The shape of our brain's internal pathways is, at that point, carved out. For better or worse, our unique physiology and personality is set. That seems to indicate that as we "grow-up" we use only what "brain-power" we need to and dump the unused portion of ours brains capabilities. So, getting stuck in our ways is really nothing more than our brains being hard wired to move us in the same "direction" over and over again.

So, getting back to my suggestion of developing a childlike attitude, as an experiment, I want you to read this article with childlike enthusiasm. Think of no option except this "real estate investing can work for you" because it can - if you apply some proven principles and strategies. As we "grow-up" we tend to lose that childlike sense of awe and wonder, the sense that anything is possible. We start over analyzing and thinking too much and we label that as maturity. In my opinion taking action always outweighs overanalyzing. The right combination of knowledge and action can deliver tremendous results for you no matter what it is you’re trying to achieve. On that note, I want to tell you about my first real estate deal, and I’ll say right upfront that one of the reasons it worked was because I never thought that it wasn’t going to. My youth and inexperience allowed me to keep focused on winning and nothing else. If I’d been older and overanalyze the situation, I may never have done it.

Here’s the story.

I was in my late teens and I was flat broke. There was an apartment house in my town that had once been a decent place, but the owners and let the wrong tenants in and the place began to deteriorate. Soon there were broken down cars in the yard, garbage piled in the hallways, a broken front door, and some busted windows. This apartment house was for sale, but its horrible appearance meant that no bank was going to give anyone a loan to buy it. The worst of its features was an eight-foot tall front porch that was about ready to collapse! It wouldn’t have been able to get a certificate of occupancy, and in most cases, you can close on a piece of property unless a certificate of occupancy exists. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a certificate of occupancy ensures that the property is livable…and this place wasn’t!

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