During my years of foreclosure investing I've identified four key principles that have led to my success. This article describes those principles--do you have them?

1. You need to make a commitment to succeed. Real estate investing is simple, but it is not easy. Many, many long hours--punching in numbers, looking at houses, evaluating deals, talking to people, constructing deals, seeing where your profits will come from--are going to have to be spent in order to become proficient at buying and selling real estate.

You need to have a plan and execute your plan to succeed. Remember, those who fail to plan are planning to fail. The investors I know around the country who are wildly successful have overcome challenges, stuck with it when times were tough, never gave up, and had a true belief in themselves that they would succeed and that failure was not an option.

2. You need capital or a way to raise capital. You can buy real estate with little or nothing down, as many people have indicated over the years. However, the person that has capital at the ready is the person that is able to pull the trigger quickly and potentially reap very large rewards. So you need to have money for your real estate transactions in some way, shape, or form.

You might think that your resources are extremely limited. Through perseverance, ingenuity, creativity and enthusiasm, though, you can find all the capital you need through what is known as "private funding". Private funding is the use of individual investors' money to fund your deals. These individuals are far less critical than banks when it comes to funding deals. Private investors look for a lower loan to value ratio than lending institutions do. Of course, it's easier to find willing private investors when you have a solid track record of success in real estate. But there are proven ways to find private investors as a beginner, too.

3. You need to leverage your resources. Real estate creates wonderful leverage for the investor, allowing them to parlay their investment into bigger and better real estate transactions each and every time, through shrewd research and prudent investing.

4. You need to take massive action. This means doing whatever it takes to make tons of offers and create massive activity that drives your investing business forward. If you do not create massive amounts of action in the first six months to get your property funnel filled with deals, you more than likely are going to lose your initial start-up money.