Staying ahead as a real estate professional means not only guiding clients through more basic buying and selling transactions, but also being aware of investment strategies, so you can support them better. 

One investment strategy involves refinancing an existing property for leverage to buy another one. This “Refi, Buy, and Repeat” strategy is an excellent way to build wealth through real estate, but the expertise of the real estate professional involved is crucial to its success. 

Refi, Buy, and Repeat

The refi, buy, and repeat strategy involves:

• Refinancing: Accessing equity from existing properties.
• Buying: Investing that equity into additional properties.
• Repeating: Continually cycling through this process to grow a diversified portfolio.

Your clients will need to work with experienced lenders for the refinancing process. As a real estate professional, your role in pinpointing profitable investment opportunities and assisting clients in growing and diversifying their portfolios is essential. By identifying suitable properties, you help mitigate the risks associated with leveraging equity to finance investments.

How Real Estate Professionals Can Add Value

Providing Property Market Insights

Your comprehensive understanding of the market is invaluable to clients looking to reinvest their equity.

Stay on top of current market trends and emerging hotspots, so you can better guide clients towards areas with high growth potential, robust rental markets, or favourable development prospects. Provide clients with detailed reports to help them make an informed decision, and help them understand the true value of potential investments as well as any challenges or considerations. Include not only the purchase price but also data on value appreciation and rental income potential.

Identifying and Evaluating Investment Properties

Once clients have accessed funds through refinancing, they need to identify suitable investment properties. Your expertise is critical here.

Use your network and resources to present a curated list of properties that align with the client’s investment goals and risk tolerance. This might include off-market deals, pre-construction properties, or distressed assets with potential for value uplift.

Evaluate properties based on investment criteria such as return on investment (ROI), cash flow potential, and risk factors. Provide detailed comparisons to help clients choose the best options. Presenting a comparative analysis of potential investments, including expected rental income, projected appreciation, and neighbourhood growth trends, enables clients to make data-driven decisions.

Guiding clients on ways to diversify their portfolio, in terms of geography, type of neighbourhood, and type of property, can help them mitigate the risks associated with leveraging their existing assets to finance their investment speculation.

Providing Continuous Market Support

Maintaining an active role in your clients’ investment journeys fosters long-term relationships and positions you as a trusted advisor. Unlike clients who are simply looking for a home or recreation property, where their search ends once they have found the right property, investors may be open to buying or selling at any time. Keeping contact with them and posing yourself as a key source of helpful information ensures that you are the go-to choice when anything changes.

Keep clients informed about changes in the real estate market that could affect their investments, such as shifts in rental demand, interest rate changes, or new development projects in their areas of interest. Let them know of potential properties they may be interested in which could add value to their portfolio.

Offer to review the performance of their properties periodically, advising on potential refinancing opportunities or suggesting when it might be beneficial to sell and reinvest.

Again, this ensures that your name is top of mind when the “buy” phase of the refinance, buy, and repeat cycle comes around for a client, as well as if a client needs to sell or is trying new tactics. 

Expanding Your Role

To further solidify your role in your clients’ investment strategies, consider expanding your service offerings.

Collaborative Partnerships

Build relationships with mortgage brokers, property managers, and renovation experts to provide a seamless experience for your clients from refinancing to property management.

Educational Resources

Develop resources such as guides, or host informational workshops and webinars to add value for your clients. Sharing tips on what to look for in an investment property, new regions or areas to diversify into, and updates on legislative or policy changes that impact the real estate market both helps potential clients and reinforces your expertise in the field.

Your role in helping investment clients is to provide critical insights and support in property selection, market analysis, and portfolio diversification. By leveraging your expertise, you empower clients to make informed investment decisions for better chances of success.

About the Author

Ryan Coyle is a distinguished real estate investor and the founder of the Connect Group of Companies. With over 18 years of real estate investment experience, Ryan has built a personal portfolio of over 40 properties and has facilitated the creation of over $2 billion in wealth for his clients.