Today I looked at a duplex to purchase. I don’t like the neighborhood and the house is only fair, however, It’s a great buy at $25000 and both sides are currently rented with a monthly income of $475. As a real estate investor, you don’t have to like the location to make money, assuming you’re not going to live there.
With real estate, you have more options and more control than other investments. You can protect yourself every step of the way from the home inspection, adding clauses in the purchase offer, the purchase price offer itself, tax benefits, location,and much more.
Real Estate is something everyone needs. If the property value goes down, you control the property itself and can make it valuable. Generally, a property increases in value. By some reason a property goes down in value, you can still live there or rent it for the same amount of dollars before it happened or sell it at a price you determine. If you don’t like a purchase offer, don’t accept it.
You choose what tenant lives at your property, how much to charge them, and you can even have the tenants do work you don’t want to do and take money off their rent for them. You can fix up the property the way you envision it to be.
There’s pros and cons to every type of investment, but with real estate, there’s much more pro’s than con’s. You have the power and control. You have options you don’t have in an investment like stocks. You can call a company of a stock you own and only recommend them to improve the value of something at the company to increase it’s worth, unless you’re a majority shareholder, which normally takes millions of dollars. With a property, you can choose to improve it or not. You’re the owner. You have the cookie. You’re the boss.
Real Estate is much more stable than media talks about. Rent it, live in it, fix it, sell it, do what you want with it.
A property is easier to understand than the stock market and more visual. People need shelter and you have the cookie they need. I’ll rent the house to you for x amount.
I’m not against the stock market and other investments. I own stock and an IRA. Real Estate is the easiest to understand, the most stable, and the most controlled investment you can own.
You control the Who(you choose the renter), the What(the property), the When(when you want to buy and sell or fix), the Where(location you decide on), and Why you decide to invest in the property, whether it’s to live in, to flip, or to rent it out long term. You control the who, what, when, where, and why. That
s awesome.
If a tenant doesn’t pay, you have the power to evict and get someone that will.
If you want to sell a property, sell it. With the stock market, you have to have the correct timing. With real estate, timing is rarely a big deal.
If you want to make an improvement, perhaps add siding, you can choose when, what color you want, and make the place more valuable than it was when you purchased it.
Put at least one investment property in your portfolio to have an investment that gives you more control.