Your Credit Score

Important or Not?

Your Credit Score - Should you know it, yes. Do you need it to invest??? Maybe not.

Open up the business page of your newspaper, turn on a financial show on the t.v., call your lender to get approved for a loan - it's all anyone wants to talk about.

But is it as important as everyone says it is? In other words, if you have a bad credit score, is your real estate investing career over? Let me answer that in two parts.

I'll be honest. If you plan on investing the traditional way with getting a loan from a lender, then yes, it will be extremely important.

And from a financial responsibility standpoint, you should definitely know your credit score at all times, and also monitor your credit report if not monthly, then at least the three times a year you are allowed to (for free) by law.

Having said that, the old saying there is more than one way to skin a cat couldn't be more true than in real estate investing. There are more ways to buy real estate without getting a loan than you can shake a stick at, many of which I discuss on this site.

You can use partners and take advantage of their great credit, or just use their money. You can arrange financing with the seller. You can use options to tie up a property. Or you can assume a seller's mortgage. The list goes on.

The important thing to note here is that if you have a great one, than good for you! Take advantage of it. But if you don't, you know what? You'll probably do more deals with less cash out of pocket and fine tune your creative money mindset quicker than someone who has their's to fall back on.

A mentor of mine once told me, "If I had $100,000 to invest, I would try to use zero of it, just to see if I could do it." What an amazing thought! As creative and successful people, we should all be thinking like that.