Maybe the wealthy achieve their success because they have been taught the perils of neglecting the basics. Many people who see real estate investing, for example, may harbor the misconception that successful people are simply incredibly lucky or that they have been born with some intrinsic knowledge about handling money.

This just is not the case.

What the wealthy do differently from other people, and, indeed, what all successful property investors do, is prepare. Good investors do their homework.

The ABCs of Property Investing author Ken McElroy tells the story of one of his clients, who became a client only after making a complete and utter disaster of his investment . McElroy and his company manage properties for investors. Ideally, a property owner will hire a property management firm immediately, as opposed to making an attempt to manage the property himself while living in another city. That is what this investor did, and he quickly learned that the time needed to do such a thing was too much for him to handle.

This was not this investor's only mistake. The owner had neglected even to visit the property before purchasing it, and as a result he had no idea it was full of criminals and deadbeats. He hadn't bothered engaging a team of experts who would have been quick to tell him to steer clear of that area, due to its high crime rate. It was not a good area, and he should've avoided it. In fact, he could have avoided it very easily if he had only done his homework.

It's easy to imagine how much money he spent the rehabilitation of the building—an expense he could've spared himself just by budgeting for the real estate experts he so badly needed. There wasn't any way to fix the problem of the property's location; therefore, the property would never fetch much rent.

More often than not, the savvy property investor can't afford to NOT hire the experts.

Wealthy investors also tend to have an amazing degree of focus. That's the reason they are rich. They decide on their target and they narrow their scope till they're zooming in on one property. They've already decided what kind of investment property they want. In fact, they might specialize in apartment complexes or hotels or another type of property. They always keep in mind the locations that interest them and the age range of buildings they are willing to look at.

If their preferred location does not yield anything that interests them, they move on to the next best, and on and on, but they never lose track of what is and isn't acceptable to them.

One important thing wealth teaches people is that money talks. They understand that you do not have to wait till a piece of property is for sale to try to purchase. If a potential buyer surprises the owner of a piece of property with an offer, it's often possible to get a good deal on a piece of real estate in Minnesota that isn't actually for sale. And there are not any competitors to outbid you.

Those with money do appear to inhabit a different world. For them, resources are always plentiful. They will not break a sweat in the event that a deal goes awry, because they are confident there will always be others. A person hoping to improve his life substantially by investing might worry that he let one get away.

Ken McElroy says the best approach is to remain detached, and to assume every negotiation will result in the investor walking away from the deal. Most supposed deals just are not deals, he said. The savvy investor knows that it's essential to become committed to the concept of closing the deal.

Successful property investors know these facts, not because it's innate information, but because they've been taught, or else made the effort to learn. Anyone can potentially invest like the rich; it just takes a commitment to learn.