Recovering from Bad Real Estate Investments

Investing in New York City can bring huge rewards, but risks come with that. As any long-time investor will tell you, eventually, you’ll end up with a deal gone wrong. Maybe you bought a property worth far less than what you paid. Perhaps you’ve got one you can’t rent or are renting for significantly less than you planned. You’ve now got a bad real estate investment you need to leave and move on. Bad deals can shake the pride and confidence of any investor. In such times, it’s easy to give in to self-doubt and regret.

But that’s not the way to handle it. Every mistake has a lesson buried in it, and if you’re determined to succeed as a real estate investor, you have to be willing to take a hit from time to time. So, if one of your deals has gone wrong, you can take some actionable steps to help minimize your losses.

Face reality and accept the situation

Every moment you spend agonizing over your mistakes and imagining what you should have done is time wasted. Yes, you have taken a loss, maybe a bad one. But the sooner you can start recovering from it, the less you stand to lose. Face the grim reality of what happened and start drawing up a response plan. You may have a lot of work ahead of you, so you’ll need to conserve as much energy as possible. Use the bad situation you’re in to motivate you to climb out. After all, once you’re at the bottom, the only way is up.

Cut your losses and get rid of them.

Never hold onto a bad investment. The longer you do, the more you’ll need to pay out on loans and other costs tied to it. Better to cut your losses and start looking for an exit strategy as quickly as possible. Your best bet will often be to sell the property at a lower sales price than you’d hoped. You should consider yourself lucky if you can come out of it breaking even or taking a slight loss.

Assess what happened

Once you’ve put a recovery plan in motion, take the time to sit down with yourself, and assess what happened. You made a wrong move somewhere, and you need to find out where so it doesn’t happen again. Did you miscalculate the time and costs of a renovation? Were you too excitable at an auction and bid too high? Perhaps you failed to do a full inspection and found extensive damage once renovations started. Maybe you didn’t do your market research and bought in an area experiencing a downturn. Whatever your mistake was, it’s one you can learn from with the proper perspective. Go over it in detail and look at what you could have done differently. Then, you’ll know what to watch out for when the next deal comes along.

Don’t be too hard on yourself.

Mistakes happen to the best of us. It’s okay to be critical of yourself when assessing your mistakes. Even when one was staring you in the face, please don’t dwell on it too much. If you allow your mind to be clouded with statements such as “Why didn’t I….” or “I should have…,” you’ll get nowhere. Please don’t allow yourself to become discouraged entirely by making further investments, which brings us to the final step.

Pick yourself up and get back in the game.

How do you come back from a bad investment deal? Simple, make a good one. Real estate investment is something you very much learn on the spot. All those books on theory and best practices are good for getting started, but you won’t get a feel for it until you’ve been in the game a while and taken a few hits. So get back in the game and look for how you can make good on your losses. Each mistake carries an invaluable lesson that will serve you well in the next deal. If you’re serious about becoming a real estate mogul, you won’t let one lousy deal ruin your aspirations.