Can You Get Rich Quick Through Real Estate Investing?

Many late-night infomercials feature a slick real estate guru sipping drinks on the back porch of his beachside home next to beautiful women in expensive (or minimal) clothing, telling you that this is the life for you. All you have to do is pay them X dollars!

Can real estate investing really do that for you, though?

The truth? Maybe!

The TRUTH About Getting Rich Quick Through Real Estate

No doubt, one of the largest draws to real estate investing is the image of investors driving fancy cars, living in large homes, and being all around “rich.” While many real estate investors do build significant wealth over their career, let’s get this out of the way: real estate investing is not a “get rich quick” scheme.

Yes, there are some who make a lot of money in a short time; however, these situations are generally the exception, not the rule.

Sorry for those looking for a better answer! But maybe I can help.

Stay with me. If by the end of this post you still love the idea of real estate investing, do me a favor and click thumbs up on my video above and subscribe to the BiggerPockets YouTube channel.

How Real Estate Investing Is Similar to Other Wealth Building Strategies

OK, here goes. Investing in real estate takes planning, patience, and persistence. Don’t expect to make millions of dollars in your first year.

Instead, plan on creating a business through real estate that will grow steadily year after year to enable you to meet your financial goals—and hopefully make your dreams come true.

No matter what you might hear otherwise, being successful in real estate requires hard work (just like it does in any other field). It is also important to know that there are no shortcuts, products, or tools that will do the work for you. You must learn the fundamentals, and then apply them.

How Real Estate Investing Is Different Than Other Wealth Building Strategies

I believe real estate is one of the fastest ways to generate real wealth in today’s world. Many financial gurus’ advice is to simply set aside 10 percent of your paycheck into a 401(k) or IRA, and wait patiently for 40 years so you can retire with a moderate income when you are too old to truly enjoy it.

No thanks. Real estate, when done correctly, gives you the ability to supercharge your growth because of the power of leverage (the ability to use other people’s money to get higher returns) and the ability to hustle.

For example, if you were to start with $10,000 and save $200 per month, after five years you will have a bit more than $22,000, depending on the interest you earned during those five years. However, if you took that same $10,000 and used it to successfully flip a house, you could turn that $10,000 into $40,000 in less than six months.

Now, could you turn that $40,000 into $70,000 in another six months of house flipping? Work your deals right, and you definitely can! Or maybe you’ll simply put the money into a rental property, and if you get the right deal, begin earning a passive return significantly higher than other investments.

In another video on YouTube, I share a strategy I like to call “The Stack,” which utilizes the power of exponential growth to scale your real estate business to a healthy level of success in under a decade. (Be sure to watch it!) But even this requires several years of taking massive action.

It ain’t “quick” and “easy” like late-night TV gurus want to make it seem. Yes, real estate investing can make you wealthy, though. And I believe it can make you wealthy faster than any other investment out there if you are willing to work toward it.

How to Achieve Wealth Through Real Estate Investing

So again, what’s the key? Work.

Unlike that 401(k) or IRA or stock account, real estate investing is going to require more work from you.

What does that work look like?

You need to learn what a good deal is.
You need to learn how to find those deals.
You need to learn how to fund those deals.
You need to learn how to manage those deals.

That’s exactly what I’m here to help you do—learn the fundamentals so you can build wealth faster than you ever thought possible.

And let me end with this. I started investing in real estate at 21 years old. By 27, I had enough cash flow to quit my job and live on the profits from my rental properties. And by the time I was 30, I was a millionaire.

So was it “get rich quick” for me? Definitely not. But was it worth it? Definitely!

So start learning. Listen to podcasts. Read books. Attend local real estate meetups.

Talk with other investors. Analyze deals. Learn, grow, and don’t give up!

If you do all that, you’ll get rich quicker than most.

Have you bought into any of the gurus out there? How has their advice served you?

Let’s talk about it in the comment section!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.