If you’ve ever spent hours shopping for the best deal on your car insurance, the most reputable daycare, or even the best price on hamburger, you’re well on your way to developing the most important skill for successful real estate investing. That’s right, it’s the ability to shop until you find the right property.

Deals in real estate come along every single day. Some are excellent deals, some are okay deals and some are downright bad deals. The secret is to recognize the bad deals, be willing to walk past the okay deals, and spend whatever time needed to find the excellent deals. This is especially true if you have limited investment resources or if you’re new to the investing arena. It’s easy to understand the principle behind this analysis. If you tie up your resources on an “okay” deal, you won’t have anything to invest when that awesome deal comes along. And unless you simply stop looking, it will come along.

Which brings up one of the most important traits in a good real estate investor – patience. Not only is it necessary to differentiate between the okay deal and the great deal, you have to be willing to hold on to your capital for the right investment opportunity. That’s a difficult lesson for many, just like a child who has a dollar and can’t wait until next week’s allowance to buy the music he wants. Instead he buys something less and next week he’s still in the same situation. The same is true of real estate investing. It’s often tempting to make an investment that you know won’t net you an excellent return just so your money is working. What you lose in the long run could be equivalent to a significant financial investment.

But how do you know which category a particular deal falls into? This is another point of patience because nothing will help you out more than practice. You have to be willing to shop, watch sale prices and resale prices, keep track of time on the market and remember what you learn. Just as a professional fisherman develops a feel for where the big ones are hiding, you’ll start to develop a sense of a property’s potential.

You say you don’t have the time to invest in this process? You might be surprised at how little time it actually takes. Pick up your Sunday real estate section, grab a notebook and make a quick tour of a few properties that catch your eye. Note your impressions and follow up by checking to see when the property actually sells. Check the courthouse records for selling price and see if your gut instincts were right. Look back over your notes periodically and you’ll probably find that it takes only a few weeks of this simple trial and error research method to make you confident of your decisions.