In real estate investing, we will encounter problems, petty and mundane. What separates successful real estate investors from could-have-been winners is the way they confront these problems. Sometimes we grow too smart in what we do that we “skip the obvious.” Hence, this story shared by my rehabber friend.

There was this house he bought to rehab. It needed the usual cosmetic stuff. Since the owner was out of state, he told my friend that he hasn’t been in the house for a couple of years. When my friend checked the heater, it turns out that “it wasn’t working.” Since he has been so used to inspecting furnaces, what he immediately did was to check the propane control valve. It was open, so no problem there. He checked this and that inside the appliance and everything was in place. He stared at the gas furnace for minutes until he realized that it simply wasn’t turned on.

The lesson, and my friend admitted it himself, is to not skip the obvious. In real estate investing or in any other business, the tendency of jumping into more complicated solutions comes with time. When we become experts on one thing, we tend to solve it the way most people don’t know. We are experts after all. But sometimes, even the simplest and most obvious solutions will do.

In the same way, this story also means that we must check the obvious – the basics – first before we move to other more complicated stuff. This applies in rehabbing, or any form of real estate investing.

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