I am sure most people it was the money, but curious what events might have happened to make the plunge?

When i was 30 i was looking at getting into purchasing a multi family but but I got scared about, what if i lose my job how will i pay for it if tenants move out.  It wasn't until 3 years ago that I had a "are you kidding me moment".  I always knew my grandfather owned a small shopping plaza and i knew he had some land lease deal which had a 14 unit multi family.  It wasn't until recently that i actually knew more about the deal and also about my grandfather to learn that he owned a lot of property though his life including a movie theater of all things.  

Well it was the land lease that really made me realize that real estate is a good investment.  See he owned a small 6 unit shopping plaza and this was back in the 50's another guy owned a empty lot behind his plaza and the gentleman wanted to build an apartment building in the 70's, however he didn't have enough land to build the apartment building, as well have a parking lot.  So he made a land lease deal with my grandfather for 30 years it only paid roughly $250 a month (when my dad inherited it not sure what it started at) but I am sure he figured it was land he couldn't use for anything anyway.  

My Grandfather passed away in 1993 which passed the land lease to my father.  In 2000 they renewed the land lease for 25 years my dad was figuring that would put him in retirement age and a great time to then sell the property.  Last year before the land lease was up the other 50% owner of the land lease who also owned the 14 unit apartment building decided that the market was hot and that he wanted to put the property up for sale and terminate the land lease early.  So my Dad agreed and ended the land lease so now my Dad and him were 50/50 partners on the apartment building.

Few weeks later they had a buyer for 2.8 million and about 3 months later it was sold and done.  While going though everything for the closing we discovered a lot of the original costs which is what really gave me that "I have to get into real estate" kick in the ***.

The shopping plaza purchased in the 50's was $3500 it contained 6 units. In the 80's my grandfather split each unit into a separate deeds and sold each of the tenants their units for $70k each which was $420k then the unusable piece of land turned into $1.4 million. Which would be an annualized ROI of 9.5% This obviously does not include the Rent he got from the Plaza or the land lease payments

Which made me realize how powerful Real Estate can be for me over the rest of my life but also how much it can change the future of my family.