VIDEO: When You Should Start Real Estate Planning - 3 Step Guide

My quick answer to the qu​estion, "when should I start estate planning" is NOW. Real estate planning is for everyone and you can never start to early. Like any investment or major life decision, the process will run much smoother if you develop a plan before you make the first move. Making the plan doesn't have to be difficult. There are lots of professionals out there that specialize in helping your real estate investment succeed. Read More for my three stage of real estate planning.

Like I said, ​real estate planning really is for everybody. The way I look at it for my personal real estate planning, and for my clients' planning, there are really three distinct stages to real estate planning.

1. Make a Plan

My first step for all real estate planning is to actually create a plan. At TriStone Group, we recommend that being a written plan. Start by defining your real estate goals. Typically that starts with a three to five years plan, but we really recommend planning 5, 10, even 15 years out.

For most people, this plan starts with a major life event. A lot of cases I work with start with my clients buying their first home. For some people it could be when you get engaged or married or have your first child. Regardless of what life event triggers your need for a plan, we've noticed our clients come to us when they get to a point in their life where they feel like they have something that they want to protect.

2. Develop a Realistic Savings Strategy

Second, step is having a real strategy for savings as well. Whether that's covering monthly payments in case of a job loss, relocation, anything that could come up in your life. So we - like I said - we encounter that most of the time when it's someone who is purchasing the first home. At this point, you have to protect yourself, your family and your investments against some sort of mortgage deficiency or something that could happen, if for some reason, you aren't capable of making a payment.

3. Create Your Investment Strategy

One of the things that we typically do with our clients at TriStone Group is recommend they work with a team of professionals from financial planners to estate planning attorneys. Building your team is incredibly important when creating your plan for real estate investing. This team can be made up of anyone that can really help you really formulate your written plan. At TriStone group we work hand-in-hand with our clients through every step of the way in conjunction with what we're doing behind the scenes for them. This way everyone involved is talking to each other. With this communication, your plan really becomes something that we're looking toward for the future versus just something that's going to happen day to day. This way we can anticipate any bumps in the road.