9 “Boring” Investing Habits That Will Actually Make You Rich

BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast

This episode of the BiggerPockets Real Estate Podcast reveals the nine boring but powerful habits that separate top real estate investors fr

Key takeaways

• Wealth in real estate is built over time through discipline, not quick wins.
• Patience isn't passive—it's actively saying no to bad deals and waiting for the right ones.
• Knowing your 'why' helps align every investment decision with long-term goals.

Main topics

• Real estate investing habits
• Long-term wealth building

Notable quotes

"The wealth that comes from real estate comes from being in the market a long time, not being perfectly timed."

"Patience is actually a skill that you can build, and it is one that is perfectly suited for real estate investing."

Conclusion

Success in real estate isn't about flashy strategies or lucky breaks—it's about mastering simple,

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Most people think successful real estate investors have some secret strategy. A special lender, a market no one else knows about, insider access to off-market deals. They don't. What they do have, though, is habits. Boring, repeatable habits that they do over and over, deal after deal, year after year. Following a process, getting better and better at this process while everyone else is chasing the next shiny strategy they heard about on social media. And this is good news because habits are things anyone can implement. It doesn't matter how much experience you have, how much cash you have, what market you're in. If you can develop the habits of the best investors, you can succeed in this business and achieve your financial goals. Today I'm giving you the nine most important habits of successful investors, and you should steal every single one. Speaker 1 (1:05) Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the BiggerPockets podcast. I'm Dave Meyer. I have been investing for 16 years now. I've talked to hundreds of investors on this show. And at this point, I think I have a good grasp on what separates the best investors from the okay ones or from the people who never actually get started. And what differentiates these people is probably not what you think. The investors who actually win long term. don't have wildly different strategies from everyone else. They don't live in some perfect market and they definitely aren't even necessarily the smartest people. They just have the best habits. The things you do repeatedly in your business, in my opinion, are more important than any one deal or resource. Habits are in your control. They can scale with you and they're accessible to every single person in the BiggerPockets community. So today we're breaking down the nine habits of successful mom and pop real estate investors. The actual behaviors we're talking about, not just the mindset fluff you hear about. We're talking actual behaviors that separate the people who build real wealth from the people who stay on the sidelines or the people who buy one property and quit or those who wind up getting themselves in trouble. Some of these habits may feel obvious. Some of them might sting a little bit because Sometimes we need a little taste of bitter medicine. But if you can build even three or four of these habits into how you invest, you're gonna be ahead of most people in this space. Let's get into it. Habit number one of successful real estate investors is patience. This might be the single biggest differentiator between investors who build wealth in real estate and investors who flame out. Because the reality of this industry is that real estate is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is very difficult to get rich quick in real estate. The way you should think about it is get rich for sure. The wealth that comes from real estate comes from being in the market a long time, not being perfectly timed in the market, not taking huge swings and trying to get everything all in one deal. What really allows people to build that wealth is staying power, staying power, being in the market a long time. And patience is absolutely key to that. And I want to be clear about patience because patience can sound kind of passive. But today on the show, we are talking about habits. And so I want to talk about how patience can actually be a behavior. So what patience looks like as an actual habit for real estate investors are number one, not stretching and buying deals that are too thin. This to me, number one red flag in real estate investing. It's very hard to lose if you only buy deals that are sure things, but only finding sure things takes time. So this is what I mean by patience as a practice. Learn to say no to a lot of deals. Learn. to go back to the seller one more time and push for that extra concession. That's what patience actually looks like as a practice because it is easy to get excited when you see a deal. It's easy to get excited when you catch the bug with real estate and you wanna go out and buy that next deal or that first deal. I get it. I feel the same thing. That's why it has to become a habit. Take time and develop the skill of taking a deep breath, running your numbers the second time. running it a third time. Call your investor friend to make sure that your underwriting criteria were correct. Not selling something out of a panic. Patience is actually a skill that you can build, and it is one that is perfectly suited for real estate investing. You can't sell a property quickly. You can't buy a property that quickly. We're talking about weeks or months. It's not like opening Robinhood and selling something. Patience is your best friend as a real estate investor. And don't mistake patience with a lack of ambition. I'm not saying you shouldn't go out and buy as many good deals as you can. What I'm saying is wait for the good deals. Then go buy as many as you can, but be willing to wait until the absolute right deal comes to you because it will come. Real estate takes time. You are not going to be at a disadvantage if you wait two to three months to buy that next deal instead of two to three weeks. you will be better off for it actually. So that is the number one habit of being a real estate investor, being patient. The second habit of successful real estate investors is knowing your why and always thinking about that. This is a skill that is difficult and it actually gets harder the more you get into building your real estate career. It is easy at the beginning to know why you're doing something. Maybe you have a bill that you need to pay. Maybe you're feeling insecure in your retirement plan. Maybe your family needs some extra capital to do something. It's easy at the beginning, but something happens as you start building wealth in real estate, as you start to have a little bit of success. You kind of lose sight of why you got into it in the first place. It's happened to me. It's happened to pretty much every real estate investor I know. You wind up getting shiny object syndrome or FOMO because you listen to this podcast maybe and hear all the exciting, cool stuff that real estate investors are doing. But the habit you need to develop before you buy any deal, before you make any decision as a real estate investor is to orient it all to that original goal. And your goal can change. It doesn't have to stay the same. I've been pretty open. on the show talking about how my goals have absolutely changed over the 16 years. But I always update my goals and know why I'm doing this. What is my next deal for? Is it for cash flow? Is it to increase the risk in my portfolio to take more swings? Is it to get me over the line to my retirement where I can stop working and quit my job? All of these things should be going through your head with every single decision that you make. Because the reality about real estate is there's a million different ways to do it. There's no right answer. Should you sell? Should you refinance? Should you invest into a property? The answer is going to be different for each of us. Even if we had the same property, there is no right answer, which is why you need to force yourself as a habit. Every time you make a big decision in investing, why are you doing this? Is this decision in line with my long-term strategy? If you can do that, if you can build this habit and make this the number one framework for how you make decisions, you are going to be successful in real estate. The way I see most people lose their way in this industry and make bad decisions is not because they're bad investors. It's because they get away from what they're good at and what they want to be doing. So many times I've heard people start flipping just because they know flippers who make a lot of money. They don't really want to be a flipper. They don't have time to be a flipper. They don't have the skill to be a flipper. And that's how they get in trouble. It's