4 Signs You’re Ready to Buy a Rental Property (Sooner Than You Think)

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hesitant to buy a rental property? Many rookies think they need more money, experience, or even “perfect timing,” but waiting for these things could just be holding you back from building wealth with real estate. If you’re on the fence about investing, or if you need an extra nudge to get off the sidelines, this is the episode for you! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! Today, Ashley and Tony are sharing four clear signs that you’re ready to buy your first rental property. As you’re about to hear, you don’t need to know everything about real estate investing, have a huge bank account, or stumble across your dream deal to take action. You can start with a little know-how, financial stability, and a clear picture of what you want to achieve with real estate! We’ll show you how to get your financial house in order, when to stop learning and start doing, and how to niche down to an investing strategy that makes the most sense for you and your long-term goals. Stick around till the end for a special seven-day challenge that could help you take down your first property faster than you thought possible! In This Episode We Cover Four clear signs you’re ready to buy your first investment property Building a strong financial foundation before investing in real estate The secret to beating analysis paralysis and finally submitting offers Choosing an investing strategy that aligns with your skills and resources Next steps to prepare you for buying a rental property (if you’re not ready!) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-642 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you've been learning about real estate investing for months or maybe even yours, but you still haven't bought your first property, this one's for you.
0:06.9	Most rookies think they need more money or more experience, but sometimes you're already ready.
0:11.5	You just don't realize it yet.
0:13.3	Today, we're breaking down the four clear signs that will tell you that it's time to buy your first rental property and what's a fix if you're not quite there
0:21.2	yet. So if you're stuck in analysis paralysis, this episode is for you.
0:30.2	This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Care. And I'm Tony J. Robinson. And with
0:34.9	that, let's get into sign number one that you are finally ready to buy your first real estate investment.
0:39.4	So sign number one is that you have a strong personal finance foundation. I guess let's just define what we mean when we say financially ready.
0:49.6	And we just interviewed Liz Carroll on a recent podcast episode, and it was a lot of that conversation
0:55.5	was about the personal finance story behind your first real estate investment.
1:00.3	So you guys can go back and listen to that episode if you want to deeper dive into this.
1:02.8	But really what it means is that it's not necessarily about being debt-free, right?
1:07.2	Like, you know, I invested with student loan debt.
1:09.7	I had my own primary mortgage. I had car debt.
1:12.7	Like I had just the debt that's kind of associated with living your life. But I was still financially
1:17.3	ready to pull the trigger on my first investment because I had really good active income. I had
1:22.3	money saved in the bank to cover my down payment of my closing costs and, you know, reserves and all
1:26.6	those things. So the first piece is, are you financially ready?
1:30.2	If you are living paycheck to paycheck and there's too much month at the end of your money
1:35.9	and that happens every 30 days, then maybe it's a sign that, hey, let me get that fixed first
1:41.2	before I jump into it.
1:42.1	But again, if you can on a very consistent basis, take care of all of your short-term consumption, right, like all the things, just keep your household running, you're saving for your long-term, right? You know, you're saving for retirement. You know, you've got investments that are on stock market, whatever it may be, and you've got money set aside for maybe the medium term, you know,
	...

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