Real estate investing is all about money. You have to have it to make it, but you need more than just money to make an investment. You also need the know-how that will help you make the right investment at the right time so that you can maximize your returns. If you're new to the real estate investments game, don't flounder around in the dark. Ask the experts. They can help you figure out how to get your employment insurance refund to work for you. Here's some investment advice and tips on finding experts.

The first thing to remember about investments (any sort of investments, from spread ETFs to investment real estate) is that there's no guarantee you'll see any sort of return on your money. You may even lose it. There are, however, probabilities of making money, and each investment opportunity (in real estate that means each property) has a different amount of potential return attached to it. It's by investing your money intelligently, not by investing a lot of money, that you'll have the best chance of making more.

How do you invest smart? You do your research. On every deal you're considering, look into who will be in charge of spending your money once you've invested it, what they plan to do with it, and whether they've seen success in the past. If they were fired for mishandling the expense account at their previous job, they may not be very trustworthy. Investments are not something you should make on a whim, on a deadline, or because they sound good in the ads. It should be a reasoned decision where you've weighed the pros and cons.

The most important part of investing smart is keeping up to date on the trends in the real estate market. If you see circumstances that are developing, like a lot of homeowners applying for refinancing, you can make educated guesses as to how that would affect any investments you might make. The basics of investing are buy low and sell high, so ideally you want to keep on the lookout for drops in real estate prices that can't last. The earlier you discover them, the larger your profit margin will be when the prices recover and you can sell up. You can always speak to experts, such as those at Cannect, who are private mortgage lenders in Toronto and see what type of advice they offer you.

How can you keep informed on the real estate trends when you spend most of your time working for executive search firms for instance? You can get pure statistics from Royal Le Page's quarterly reports on housing prices and from the Canadian Real Estate Association's website. For interpretation, follow the blogs of local Toronto real estate agents, as they are only too willing to share their expertise if they think it will win them new clients.