2 whys
I guess there is no need to tell everyone here that why you need to invest. Going through the economic crisis that we are still in right now, everybody has learned in a hard way that a well-informed investment is a must to secure our own financial future, or to some extent, our true freedom and destiny.
So let’s go straight to what I called “2 whys”
Why No 01, why should we invest into real estate?
There are numerous ways of investing, why should real estate? Here, I just want to share some personal experiences to demonstrate these answers.
First and for most, Real Estate is a low risk and rather safe investment if you know what you are doing. The low risk factor is actually prefabricated when a decent real estate investment is being well structured starting from the beginning. It all boils down to:
v When you don’t buy (I just follow one simple rule: Never get into multiple offers)
v Where you buy (location, location, location, the golden rule for real estate)
v What you buy (Emotion has to be out as it is their dream house, not yours)
v How much cost you (a motivate seller, not a motivated buyer leads to a safe margin)
v How much you should pay (Engineering your safe net with bottom and up line)
v Who is your partner? (strangely enough, your renter will be the key to your success)
v When is the time to sell (when you hear real estate three times or more in one day, sell! And I am not joking.)
Now I pretty much tell you all the secrets I know and practice to be a successful real estate investor. And really none of them is exciting, super-hot, breath-taking, or any anything at the same line. It is actually quite the opposite: boring, patient, discipline and some guts, are few things to get there.
Secondly, Real Estate always has the position of imbalanced supply and demand in the long term, it is especially true if you understand the net effect caused by geometrical location combined with long term economy growth. For example, Alberta has the 2nd largest oil reserve in the world. There are still 98% of the inventories untapped. On the other hand, the word of desperate attempting to describe the need on the oil resource is still nowhere close to the reality: if you realize that all of sudden, 1.5 billon of the world population wants to throw their bicycles away and jump into cars. To make the situation worse, the world has also reached the time so called “the end of peak oil”, no matter we like it or not. The simple truth is that we will need a lot of people here in Alberta in a very long time work hard to maintain this important supply to the world economy. Therefore, real estate here is going to be likely in demand for long time to come.
Lastly, Real Estate is the only merchandise in the world that appreciates, and combined with the leverage power from bank’s money, it makes Rate of return, the ultimate goal of any investment, very attractive, even at an average rate. Let me explain this using a simplified example. Let us say, you have $50,000 cash, you face two options, Option A is to buy a really nice car, worth $200,000.00, Option B is to buy a rental house at $200,000.00. And for argument sake, you get bank loan for 25 yrs amortization at 4.0% rate. Your mortgage (for car or for the house) is $790.00 monthly. For the car, you will need to pay insurance, maintenance, gas and so on, so let us the average monthly additional cost is $250.00 (could be a lot more than that, as we all know). Oh, by the way, does this nice car make any money? Out of luck. Even worse, the moment you drive this car off the dealer parking lot, the price goes down by 20% and it depreciates down to $5000.00 by the end of the 25th yr. so your rate of return, negative for sure.
Now let’s take a look on the house. Firstly, it appreciates, which means it likely beat the inflation rate by at least 1-2%. So let us say it is 5% appreciation rate. By the end of the 25 yr term, its value should be $677,270.99 (yes, it is no brainier by the end of Y 2035, which will be the face value of this small dingy house, if you know everything you put on the table is increasing price by 3% at least yearly, if not more). By the end of the Year 2035, you sell this house, and pay off the mortgage, which will leave you $627,000.00 profit. Minus $120K capital tax, you have $507K left as pure profit. What is the rate of return yearly? 40.56%, if you understand the power of leverage of 80% of bank mortgage you borrowed 25 yrs ago, and realize all in all the money you put in is only $50,000 at the beginning.
40% ROI after tax, within the term of 25 years, not even mention the cash flow you may build up through the years if you really know what you’re doing, is not a hard fact to realize why through the human history, 90% of millionaires are made from real estate. Numbers don’t lie.
In short, the low risk and safe features that built-in with the “real” real estate investment, the 2nd nature of imbalanced demand and supply that built in with real estates in certain areas, and the secret of high ROI due to its appreciation and leverage power, give the true and solid answer to the question why you should investment into real estate, actually, yesterday. But, just like a Chinese proverb says: “the best time to plant a tree is 20 yrs ago, the second best time is today”.