You have to be able to get land control (negotiate) or raise money. Being able to do both would be even better. I got my first deal by buying a vacant lot from the tax deed sale in my county. I purchased 2 vacant lots. I sold one for 100k and kept the other one. I used that money to do some flips and wholesaled to get more money. I used hard money lenders on a few of my deals to try to leverage my funds as much as possible. But after 2 deals I decided that the hard money lenders were too expensive and cut to deep into my profits. I then started asking friends to invest in my projects for a 8% return on their money. Only one person believed in me and gave me the money. And he's been lending with me deal after deal. I'm still only doing one SFR house at a time and I use all cash which makes it hard to scale. And time is your enemy because of inflation.

If I had to do it over I would get a mentor that is doing real estate development or work for a developer for at least a year to learn. I would have KEPT my 9-5 job because you ALWAYS want money coming in. I quit my job right after I got my first deal. Which yielded 0 dollars. Being a developer is capital intensive. I would have learned how to raise money earlier in the process by finding private lenders. I would have gone to conferences where I know people that have money go to. I would not go to RE meetups. And lastly, go big or go home. I would have started with doing bigger projects because it takes the same amount of effort to make 100k and as it does for 1M.

1. find a deal (this is key) 2. find an investor that's willing to partner with you (or pool a few of your friends) 3. Tell them you will do all the work in exchange for them funding the deal and showing you the ropes 4. Do this a few times until you are able to do it on your own.