For years, the continually rising real estate market in the state of California was the envy of the rest of the United States, if not the entire world. While a dose of reality was introduced in the mid-2000s and brought the market back down to earth, it still left plenty of opportunity for the practical investor using hard money.

There's more to effectively doing real estate deals than just having hard money lenders in your pocket. To get the most out of your real estate activities, there are three key tools that can help you to make better investments and better decisions.

For the inexperienced, entering the world of residential or commercial real estate investment is definitely a process fraught with risk. Not only are there bad deals but also unscrupulous dealers. For this reason, the novice real estate investor should build a strong team around them to advise on a deal and help evaluate it. Here are some tips on finding the most important team members:

While every successful investor understands the tenet to “buy low and sell high,” the world of real estate investing offers a few more salient reasons to negotiate the very best (i.e. lowest) price. Here are four of the most important.

While prices are definitely up from the bottom set during the Great Recession, great real estate properties abound. You just have to look for them and know how to recognize them when you come across them. With some outside help, you can take advantage of today's market.