If you’ve never considered real estate as a viable addition to your investment portfolio – now is the time. After all, they can’t make any new land, and real estate has always steadily grown in value as a result. It’s a secure and very lucrative investment vehicle, and CRE investors are often well-positioned to take advantage of tax benefits that are more or less exclusive to the field.

The following tips to maximizing your venture into real estate as a new CRE investor are short and sweet; do not underestimate their power even if some of the advice seems more on the general side.

CRE Investors Have Access to Multiple Sectors

Although conventional real estate entails single-family residences, multifamily residences, or outright apartment buildings, it’s worthwhile to consider other sectors that are often overlooked by beginners: self-storage units, for example, can be much more lucrative in areas separated from hubs of municipal activity.

Lay the Groundwork

In a sense, the groundwork has already been laid for you; all this means is you must conduct all the research you can before “pulling the trigger” on a real estate deal. All the successful CRE investors understand not just their particular property, but the market in the region of interest.

The Financials: Run the Numbers

There’s a lot of lingo in the real estate field, and you should be familiar with all of it. Location matters but numbers matter more; you have to make enough from your ventures to cover the loan costs and the time you’re investing in this endeavor; furthermore, the better you understand the financials, the better able you are to take advantage of the various real estate tax benefits that are attendant with land, property, etc.

Lastly, find a way to gain access to experts in the real estate fields that surround you. Most CRE investors become real estate agents, themselves so that they can be tied to a firm that has attorneys, commercial agents, insurance agents, and even contractor ties.