I've got two homes I'm eyeing. Both built in 2005. Location the same. One's 1900 sq ft home selling for 190k. Will definitely rent out for $1500 a month. Another is 2950 sq ft home selling for 220k. Will definitely rent out for $1700k but if you're willing to wait a month, you might get up to $1900.
While I know neither of the 2 fit the 2-50 rule, and not even close, if you had to, which one would you do?
There's a huge difference between stocks and real estate, and if you haven't considered that, perhaps you should slow down and think about it for jumping head-first into either market...
Stocks will never cost you more than your original equity investment (as long as you don't short), whereas real estate can cost you much more than the purchase price of the asset.
Maintaining stocks requires no support on your part, whereas real estate will require at least some time and effort. If you believe your time and effort has value, then the cost of real estate goes up the longer you hold it.
It's much, much easier to diversify in the stock market than it is to diversify physical real estate holdings; additionally, it's difficult to hedge a physical real estate investment with other real estate investments, though hedging securities with other securities is fairly straightforward.
Stocks are much more liquid than real estate. If you ever find you need the cash for any reason, you can liquidate securities much more quickly and easily than you can liquidate real estate. Additionally, the cost to liquidate securities is minuscule compared to the transaction costs associated with liquidating real estate.
Look, we've given you all the advice we have to give. You're a big boy, and as long as you're comfortable with your investment decisions, that's all that matters. Nothing we say is going to change anything, and in a few years, either you'll be making lots of money/equity or you'll be regretting your investments...as long as you're willing to live with either of those outcomes, you certainly don't need to be defending yourself to us...
I would not buy either as a rental. What is the exit?
Ditto Jeffrey...
Well then that should tell you that both are bad deals.
With the information given, i'd take the smaller house as the return is better and i'd assume the cost to maintain will be lower. That said, it isn't an informed choice nor would i prefer to have either as a rental.
While I know neither of the 2 fit the 2-50 rule, and not even close, if you had to, which one would you do?
While I know neither of the 2 fit the 2-50 rule, and not even close, if you had to, which one would you do?
It's my investment strategy. Buying newer properties to hold for the long haul.
It's my investment strategy. Buying newer properties to hold for the long haul.
Given that this is your investing strategy, it would be very difficult for any of us to make an informed recommendation, as I assume most of us have very different strategies.
So, which one fits you specific strategy better?
Since these homes were built in 2005, my guess is they originally sold for more than $500,000.00 and possibly up to $700,000.00.
Using the 50% rule, House one returns 4.7% and House two returns 4.6% unless you can get $1,900 and it will return 5.2%.
I actually like both of them IF 1. You put down enough so that your PI is 50% of the rent 2. There are no major repairs 3. A very strong chance for appreciation.
I would call this a possibility for a "Planned Delayed Flip." This is a planned flip for less than 3 years. If you were to pay $190,000 for house one and put $90,000 down, and then sell it in about 2 years for $300,000, it would not be a bad investment. There is not an investor on BP who wouldn't invest $90,000 today if they were to get $200,000 in 24 months.
Is this a good investment? Probably not, making Hard Money loans, doing short term flips and buying homes that rent for 2% of the purchase price are better investments TODAY. Is this a viable investment strategy? Yes, but it is a GAMBLE.
Personally, I would chose house 1 because in a recovering economy, the lower priced homes appreciate first and quicker.
Glad you got some balanced advice from Mike. Those of in the midwest/southeast can't even wrap our minds around the concept of buying a rental with a <5% cap rate. But we've never seen the kind of appreciation that can occur in places like CA. Still yet, a gamble, no doubt. Compare to successful flippers on here knocking out triple digit ROIs.
Using the 50% rule, House one returns 4.7% and House two returns 4.6% unless you can get $1,900 and it will return 5.2%.
I actually like both of them IF 1. You put down enough so that your PI is 50% of the rent 2. There are no major repairs 3. A very strong chance for appreciation.
I would call this a possibility for a "Planned Delayed Flip." This is a planned flip for less than 3 years. If you were to pay $190,000 for house one and put $90,000 down, and then sell it in about 2 years for $300,000, it would not be a bad investment. There is not an investor on BP who wouldn't invest $90,000 today if they were to get $200,000 in 24 months.
Is this a good investment? Probably not, making Hard Money loans, doing short term flips and buying homes that rent for 2% of the purchase price are better investments TODAY. Is this a viable investment strategy? Yes, but it is a GAMBLE.
Personally, I would chose house 1 because in a recovering economy, the lower priced homes appreciate first and quicker.
These both sold at the peak. The smaller sold for 288k. The larger sold for 387k. So, no, not 500-700k. Location is in the Tacoma, WA, not CA. I'm an out of state investor. Repairs for these 2 are minimal.
My plan is to put down 25%, buy, and hold. Maybe I might sell one or two to pay for my kids(they're toddlers now) colleges, but my hope is to generate enough cash flow in the future to pay their college bill as it comes due.
Right now, I don't need cash flow. If I do get a positive cash flow even better. I want to build long term wealth. I'm willing to pay now and reap the rewards later. I don't need the cash flow from day one.
Maybe 2 months ago, I posted a question about my uncle buying his primary residence 30 years ago, for 150k. He moved to another place but rented this original property. It's now valued at 700k(post bubble burst), paid off, and he rents it out for 3100 a month, a nice additional supplemental income. I asked if he were an RE investor. I got comments like, he was lucky(probably), he's better off than 95% of the rest of the population, he's not an good RE investor just someone who makes passive income on one rental property.
To me, the people on this board are savvy investors, probably based on the 2-50 paradigm. I don't have the time to be this good. Plus RE equity is only going to be 25-30% of my net invested assets. I'm trying to duplicate what my uncle did, just by a few multiples.
I don't mind getting slammed her on this board, cause the tid bits I get here are sometimes pretty valuable.
Jordan, I hope you don't think you got slammed by me, I was only posting my opinion to help.
Here is more of that opinion:
You appear to have a strategy to buy new or almost new properties and pay higher prices for them as a trade-off to not having repairs (or at least anything major) inside the first 5-10 years. That is certainly understandable, but I would offer the following option: Buy somthing older and not in as good of condition, but for a screaming deal, then replace everything new. Now you have an investment wich will not have any major repairs for 5-10 years and you got it, including costs to rehab for a much better discount than what you have proposed originally.
I honestly hope that you succeed and make a lot of money in real estate. But, if in a few years, things are not going the way you expected, I hope you'll recall this statement and realize that you never really gave yourself a fighting chance...
Education and hard work are the keys to success, but they both take a good bit of time...
To me, this is equivalent to looking at someone who got a job working at Google back in 2002 and now has $100M and saying, "I just want to duplicate what he did...so I'm going to just get a job at a random startup so I can make millions as well..."
It doesn't work that way in 99% of the cases...
I honestly hope that you succeed and make a lot of money in real estate. But, if in a few years, things are not going the way you expected, I hope you'll recall this statement and realize that you never really gave yourself a fighting chance...
Education and hard work are the keys to success, but they both take a good bit of time...
To me, this is equivalent to looking at someone who got a job working at Google back in 2002 and now has $100M and saying, "I just want to duplicate what he did...so I'm going to just get a job at a random startup so I can make millions as well..."
It doesn't work that way in 99% of the cases...
I think my experience in Southern California may be skewed. But my uncle's experience is not a 1/100 longshot. I have a whole slew of family examples having bought new and improved their wealth.
My parents and their friends are from Asia. They all immigrated here in the early 1970s. They could barely speak english and certainly weren't RE experts.
1. You know my 1st uncle's experience.
2. My god parents bought and moved twice over 20 years. They held on 2 homes as rental properties and after 25 years ended up with almost a million in equity and 5k in monthly cash flow.
3. My parents bought in 1975, but sold to upgrade. Had they held on to the 100k home, they'd have 650k in equity and 2800k extra in cash flow.
4. Another Aunt/uncle bought their home for 80k and bought an adjacent similar home. They have about 600k in equity and live off the rent from the 2nd home.
5. Another uncle bought a 4 plex. Don't know the equity or cash flow, but he's had it for decades, and from a financial point of view, he's the best one off.
6. My godfather's brother bought the house next to him. Don't know their cash flow, but their equity is well over a million dollars.
7. Another Uncle and Aunt bought a 8 unit apartment and held on. No cash flow for the 1st decade. Now they have a torrent of cashflow and bunch of equity. Enough to pay off their son's tuition to Stanford and Med school without having to bat an eye.
None of these examples are in the same city, all spread out in various southern california suburbs. No war zones. No buying and selling. They were all engineers, so hands on, they all had profit eating property managers and just held on.
Now. I'm not expecting these types of returns. My investment growth expectations come from my mutual funds/stocks. I consider RE my inflation hedge(lock in low interest, creep up the rent as population and money supply grows, build equity with mortgage pay down, appreciation only considered as icing, but not expecting it).
Jordan,
I believe several of your family members have faired well in their RE endeavours per your posts.
However, the point Jason and I are attempting to deliver to you is that you can IMPROVE on their examples through your education learned here and applied in the real world. You stated you do not have the time to become a savvy investor, yet you have enough time to read and post here. That my friend is a reasonable source to improved success. You certainly have the right idea to apply RE investments as one of several sources to wealth/retirement and are to be commended for that.
We are only attempting to stress the importance of buying right in this market we find ourselves in so that your returns are maximized. Having two or three (or more) paid off RE parcels providing positive cash flow for future years is wonderful and a wise choice of semi-passive investments. We only want to encourage you to buy smart, particularly in this market environment where deals are plentiful, no need to buy the first thing that comes along, new or otherwise, and pay a premium for it.
I wasn't making that comparison. I was comparing someone who got lucky by buying a piece of property without knowing about investing and having it be worth a LOT, and someone who got lucky by taking a job at a unknown startup (for example, Google 10 years ago) and having his stock options be worth a LOT.
Both situations are very possible, but are not the norm...
What you need to realize about all the situations you described was the fact that all these people bought BEFORE the market run-up and the real estate bubble.
No one here is disagreeing that if you bought pretty much ANY property in 70s or 80's, you probably have a lot of equity by now, even with the drop in home prices the past few years.
What we're disagreeing with is the fact that buying just ANY property today will result in the same run-up of equity in 30 years time. It may. Or it may not. And in the case where it doesn't you'd be much happier if you had cash flow to support holding those investments.
You seem to be 100% convinced that any random property today will be worth many times as much in 30 years.
But, just to have the property worth 4x as much in 30 years, you'd need about 5% per year in appreciation.
Most of us (and probably most economists) aren't convinced that we'll see 5% year-over-year for the next 30 years...
To top off what jaosn stated, most RE invstors can make beter than 5% returns with just some basic strategies and basic knowldge all of which can be learned right here.
I wasn't making that comparison. I was comparing someone who got lucky by buying a piece of property without knowing about investing and having it be worth a LOT, and someone who got lucky by taking a job at a unknown startup (for example, Google 10 years ago) and having his stock options be worth a LOT.
Both situations are very possible, but are not the norm...
What you need to realize about all the situations you described was the fact that all these people bought BEFORE the market run-up and the real estate bubble.
No one here is disagreeing that if you bought pretty much ANY property in 70s or 80's, you probably have a lot of equity by now, even with the drop in home prices the past few years.
What we're disagreeing with is the fact that buying just ANY property today will result in the same run-up of equity in 30 years time. It may. Or it may not. And in the case where it doesn't you'd be much happier if you had cash flow to support holding those investments.
[b]
But, just to have the property worth 4x as much in 30 years, you'd need about 5% per year in appreciation.
Most of us (and probably most economists) aren't convinced that we'll see 5% year-over-year for the next 30 years...
This is what I said about real estate in my last post:
What we're disagreeing with is the fact that buying just ANY property today will result in the same run-up of equity in 30 years time. It may. Or it may not. And in the case where it doesn't you'd be much happier if you had cash flow to support holding those investments.
[b]But, just to have the property worth 4x as much in 30 years, you'd need about 5% per year in appreciation.
Most of us (and probably most economists) aren't convinced that we'll see 5% year-over-year for the next 30 years...
This was what I said about my RE investments:
"Now. I'm not expecting these types of returns. My investment growth expectations come from my mutual funds/stocks. I consider RE my inflation hedge(lock in low interest, creep up the rent as population and money supply grows, build equity with mortgage pay down, appreciation only considered as icing, but not expecting it)."
You're right about having cash flow to support a property. While it may be foolhardy and naive, I don't mind paying a premium and having less of a cash flow margin for a newer property.
I think everyone is missing the point here. I might have missed something but if he is not investing in his home city why not go to another place in the country where you can get a better deal on newer properties. I get letters every week from an outfit in florida (Harper Realty Inc.) trying to sell me houses that are a few years old for 50k that they claim they rent for 900. Why not try another state unless I missed something. I do not know anything about this company BTW but it is just an example.
As for the 2 properties I was eyeing, they both went pending yesterday, so the point is moot.
There's a huge difference between stocks and real estate, and if you haven't considered that, perhaps you should slow down and think about it for jumping head-first into either market...
Stocks will never cost you more than your original equity investment (as long as you don't short), whereas real estate can cost you much more than the purchase price of the asset.
Maintaining stocks requires no support on your part, whereas real estate will require at least some time and effort. If you believe your time and effort has value, then the cost of real estate goes up the longer you hold it.
It's much, much easier to diversify in the stock market than it is to diversify physical real estate holdings; additionally, it's difficult to hedge a physical real estate investment with other real estate investments, though hedging securities with other securities is fairly straightforward.
Stocks are much more liquid than real estate. If you ever find you need the cash for any reason, you can liquidate securities much more quickly and easily than you can liquidate real estate. Additionally, the cost to liquidate securities is minuscule compared to the transaction costs associated with liquidating real estate.
Look, we've given you all the advice we have to give. You're a big boy, and as long as you're comfortable with your investment decisions, that's all that matters. Nothing we say is going to change anything, and in a few years, either you'll be making lots of money/equity or you'll be regretting your investments...as long as you're willing to live with either of those outcomes, you certainly don't need to be defending yourself to us...
Enough said!