7 “Golden Rules” That Will Make You Richer with Rentals

Real Estate Rookie

BiggerPockets

How To, Education, Business, Investing, Entrepreneurship

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ever wondered why some people make millions from real estate investing while others barely break even? There are seven things that successful investors do differently, and they could mean the difference between just scraping by and building real, life-changing wealth. What are they? Stay tuned to find out! Welcome back to the Real Estate Rookie podcast! In this episode, we’re unpacking the seven “golden rules” of real estate investing that all rookies must know. There are bumps in the road on every investing journey, but with a little knowledge, you could dodge the most common blunders and fast-track your success. If you follow these rules, your next deal will stay on budget, bring in more cash flow, and get you one step closer to your long-term investing goals! We get into things like budgeting for your full mortgage payment and expenses, planning a value-add rehab project, best practices for screening tenants, and so much more. Whether you’re looking to buy your first rental property or stabilize your real estate business, we’ve got the tips you need to invest smarter and build lasting wealth! In This Episode We Cover The seven “golden rules” of real estate investing every rookie should follow How to properly budget for your full mortgage payment and additional costs Essential systems and software for screening tenants fairly (and legally!) Key contract deadlines you can’t afford to miss when buying a rental property How to plan a successful renovation project (and avoid losing money) Local rules and regulations you must know (no matter your investing strategy) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/rookie-618 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	There are bumps in the road on every investing journey.
0:03.0	But what if you could dodge the most common ones and fast track your success?
0:07.0	Today, we're unpacking the seven golden rules Ricky investors must know, like correctly
0:12.6	estimating rehab costs and tracking key contract deadlines that could mean the difference
0:17.2	between just scraping by and building real life-changing wealth.
0:21.8	We're going to help you learn and implement these rules early so that your next deal stays on
0:26.8	budget, cash flows, and puts more money in your pocket.
0:34.9	This is the Real Estate Rookie Podcast, and I'm Ashley Care. And I'm at Tony J. Robinson. And with that,
0:40.2	let's get into Golden Rule number one, which is always model the full payment. And this is about
0:48.4	analyzing deals. I think what we see with a lot of rookie investors is that when they think about
0:53.1	their payment, they think about their principal and their interest payment. But as we all know, that's
0:59.2	just one part of what we typically pay on a monthly basis because you also have property taxes.
1:04.0	We also have insurance costs. And those are things that you want to make sure you include,
1:09.7	or maybe even HOA dues, right?
1:11.0	We might tack that in with your monthly payment as well. So making sure that you're accounting for everything, your principal, interest, taxes, insurance, your HOA, maybe even PMI, right? Just making sure all of those are included in your payment. I think another one, too, is your bookkeeping. like if you're not tracking your expenses and the income on the
1:28.3	property and you're hiring a bookkeeper to do that or you're paying for some kind of software
1:33.7	to actually track your income and expenses like QuickBooks these days. My gosh, like I think
1:39.9	it's like up to like $90 or something a month. And, you know, so think about that to your bookkeeping and then your tax preparation fee.
1:49.0	Like your CPA will most likely charge you a little bit more because now you have this
1:55.6	property.
1:56.0	And especially if you have an LLC, they're going to have to do a whole separate return.
2:00.1	So I think those are
	...

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