Today's guided visualization focuses on the next set of 10 Commandments of Real Estate Investing that Jason Hartman espouses. As a reminder, they are:

11. Thou Shalt Not Be a Sucker
12. Thou Shalt Hold Thy Tenants Responsible
13. Thou Shalt Look at the Big Picture
14. Thou Shalt Make Rational Decisions
15. Thou Shalt Have a Reality Check
16. Thou Shalt Pursue Quality
17. Thou Shalt Embrace Fragmentation
18. Thou Shalt Use Shelters to Protect Wealth
19. Thou Shalt Not Make Emotional Decisions
20. Thou Shalt Look at the Big Picture

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today's Guided Visualization focuses on revisiting the 10 commandments of Jason Hartman's real estate investing:

1. Become Educated
2. Seek Guidance
3. Stay In Control
4. Remain Prudent
5. Do Not Gamble
6. Always Diversify
7. Be Area Agnostic™
8. Use Borrowed Money
9. Identify Universal Needs
10. Purchase Tax-Favored Assets

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today we focus on Jason Hartman's Commandment #20: Thou Shalt Look at the Big Picture.

What this means to us as investors is that we need the ability to step back from the daily fluctuations, hassles, and difficulties to think about our long-term goals and vision.

The first component of the big picture is a knowledge of what we are investing for in the first place. The simple answer “to make money” is nowhere near sufficient. Every person invests to achieve some future goal. Keeping this goal in focus is how we weather the difficulties of any particular day of our investing life.

By coming back to the core components of successful investing on a regular basis, it will assist each of us in consistently moving toward our goals. To many people, this focus will seem to be “boring” since it does not involve hair raising excitement. However, true success is born of discipline, which frequently takes the form of continuing to do what is necessary long after it has ceased to be novel.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today's guided visualization looks at Jason Hartman's Commandment 19: Thou Shalt Not Make Emotional Decisions.

In the world of finance and investing, the single greatest enemy that most people will face is themselves. The reason for this is because even seasoned investors can fall prey to making emotional decisions.

The danger is that emotional decisions are very seldom intelligent decisions. This is compounded by the fact that the situations when most of us act emotionally tend to be at inflection points for our investments, the market or both. In this way, many people miss some of the greatest opportunities for investment because of emotional decision making.

The way that we can move from “dumb money” to “smart money” is by making smart decisions. The way that we can push ourselves toward consistently making intelligent decisions is by maintaining an even temperament and staying disciplined. The importance of this cannot be over-stated, since there is no amount of market knowledge that can overcome emotional decisions. Thus, learning to make rational decisions must be the first discipline that we master as investors, since it is the foundation upon which all of our future success will be built.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today's guided visualization is focused on Jason Hartman's Commandment #18: Thou Shalt Use Shelters to Protect Wealth.

As children, we’re taught that a human only needs three things to survive—food, water, and shelter. And while real estate offers a physical shelter (which is one of the reasons it is so great—people will always need shelter) what we’re talking about here is real estate as tax shelter.

It might first be helpful to define what it is we mean by tax shelter. Simply put, tax shelters are a means of reducing taxable income which results in payment reduction to tax collecting entities. This can include state and federal governments. Local and international tax law can dictate the methodology of tax shelters. In the United States, a tax shelter refers specifically to a method that recovers more than one dollar for every dollar spent within a four year timeframe.

Once you’re an advanced investor and have dozens of properties, speak with a qualified professional about ways you can best protect your wealth. Until then, remain focused on acquiring high quality properties, properly insuring them, and building your wealth through the ownership of income properties. Protect your wealth with the ultimate tax shelter—and don’t overthink it.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Jason Hartman's Commandment #17 is Thou Shalt Embrace the Fragmentation. Fragmentation acts as a defense mechanism for investors. It is more difficult to confiscate and the act of doing so costs significantly more than 401k and IRA assets, so it is less likely to happen. Laws governing the landlord-renter relationship happen on the local level. This local focus ensures that large, sweeping changes (even on a national level) are less likely to change the renter-landlord relationship for income properties throughout the country.

Next, fragmentation helps real estate investors by keeping institutional investors out of the business. Because you’ve got property managers doing things differently, every developer, every real estate broker in every different market around the country, these institutions stay out of it, which allows more opportunity for individuals. When large institutional investors become involved, they sell shares and collect money off the top (hello, Wall Street!). Fragmentation helps prevent this.

Finally, you should embrace fragmentation in real estate, but specifically within your own portfolio, by diversifying (fragmenting) your own investments across different areas and markets.

Fragmentation doesn’t mean broken—it means diversity, control, and income.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today's guided visualization is centered around Commandment #16: Thou Shalt Pursue Quality.

One of the traps that many new investors fall into is rushing to buy, and purchasing investments of marginal quality. Frequently, this also involves partnering with people of marginal quality to find the deals. The unfortunate part of all this is that it is unnecessary.

Quality deals and quality people are out there to be found. The trick is that they need to be found … you can’t expect them to come find you. The reason for this is because the best people spend their time doing business, not turning the crank to try and reel in more inexperienced customers.

What this ultimately means to us as investors is that we must put in the work to find quality. This consists of two distinct parts that are equally important. The first is that we must learn what quality looks like so that we can recognize when a good deal is available. The second is that we must be patient to wait until quality deals become available.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com/Properties

Today's visualization focuses on Jason Hartman's Commandment #15, Thou Shalt Have a Reality Check. There are many times during your investing career that you're going to hear about deals that sound too good to be true. When you hear about them, however, make sure you put on what Jason calls your "sanity glasses" and look at it for what it really is. Look past things like rent guarantees and make sure the deal is being evaluated on real market conditions.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

Today we focus on commandment 14: Thou Shalt Make Rational Decisions. It's a reminder to be wary of impulse decisions that grab the heart, not the head. Keeping a cool head and refusing to be swayed by impulse can prevent a lot of regret later on. A study on the effects of stress examines the way both chronic and short term tension can affect the brain’s ability to process information, adapt to new situations and, yes, make clear decisions and plan for long term goals.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com

When most people hear of “The Theory of Relativity” they think of Einstein and E=MC^2. As it turns out, there is another theory of relativity that investors need to know about. This relativistic view of the investment world can be summarized by the phrase: “Compared to what?”

When viewing income producing real estate as an investment vehicle, we must always ask what we are comparing it against. This is especially important in a zero percent interest rate environment where risk free assets provide almost no yield. All of this is juxtaposed against the fact that the zero percent rate of return on “risk free” assets like Treasury Bonds may carry no risk of default, but they carry a significant risk of having their real value eroded by inflation.

In short, income property is one of many imperfect investment vehicles … it just happens to be one of the least imperfect investment opportunities that we have available.

Website:

www.JasonHartman.com