All Forum Posts by: Brent Shields

My friend bought a property at a tax sale for $100k and found out later that it had fuel from airplanes dumped on it, the county went after him to pay $8 million to clean it up. I would try to avoid that.

The NNN properties I had were not paying much, so I sold most of them along with all my single family rentals and all the notes I could. I started investing in syndicated apartment deals, they are more passive and pay better than any of the previous investments I had. If anyone would like to know more about how I invest please click here and send me a message I would be happy to explain.

@Davin Randolph If you have never failed then you are not trying very many new business ideas.

My failures lead to my successes, that's the way I look at it. 

So don't be afraid of your failures try to keep them small and learn from them.

@Tony Kim That's a great question and it represents the problem. Some people would say money in the bank is a great asset. But if someone told me for the last 10 years they have had a million in the bank drawing no interest. I would say for the last 10 years that was not an asset. It could be quickly converted to an asset, but as long as it sits doing nothing, it's not an asset.

@Antonio Pican I need to qualify my previous answer, about renting vs buying. If your looking at buying a house for $100k and you qualify for a first time FHA with a $3k down payment and your monthly payments are less than rent. Then you should buy. I have found deals like this for some of my friends who were renting.

Taking that $3k and investing it is not going to get you that far, and probably is not going to do much better than the appreciation on the house.

Before I was talking about owning a house that is $1 million or more and paying cash for it. That is where it is very clear if someone took that money and invested it, then it would make enough to pay to rent a similar house and have additional money left over each year to reinvest that will far out pace the appreciation you would make from buying a home. If anyone wants details on how that would work feel free to message me.

That's about the same deal I got with all the property managers I tried, or they were worse.
So that's the reason I sold all my rentals and invested the money in more passive investments that paid better returns.

There are a bunch of different definitions of the term "asset".
My definition is really simple, did it make me any money in the last year?
If the answer is no, then to me it's not an asset.

My house costs me money every month, and has not made me any money for the last 10 years since I bought it.
I bought my house just because I liked it, and I wanted it, so I bought it.
That was not a financial decision.
If I was looking strictly at my finances I would not have bought my house,
Here is why, I could have invested the money I spent on my house in some syndicated apartment deals and they would have paid me a lot more than the amount my house has appreciated.

I just read that houses on average appreciate 3.7% per year.
The goal for most of the syndicated deals I have invested in is around 20% per year.
I could take out the rent and keep reinvesting the excess profits.
Had I done that I would be several million dollars ahead of where I am now.

So at some point in the future when I sell my house I will be better off than someone who rents an apartment and blows all their money, and the year I sell my house, that year I can call it an asset.
However, I will never come close to the person who took their money and invested it in syndicated deals while continuing to rent. 

I took a course one time and they said to visualize it like a ladder,
your first objective is to figure out what wrung the other person is on,
and then move to that position on the ladder and then try to keep the conversation at that level.
That has always worked pretty good for me.

You also need a title company who will do a double close, several I have been to lately have told me they would not do them.

Are backlinks still important?

Do you really get penalized if they are from unrelated sites?

I am in a similar situation and decided on the syndicated route.  It is much less work and I am making much higher returns than I did with my rental properties.
If you want to know more about the research I did on syndications and how I invest in them just send me a message.

Brent Shields