In addition to helping you purchase assets, increase your net worth, and lower your tax rate, real estate has other benefits as well…
You can invest in it using leverage aka “other people’s money.” When you purchase real estate, either as a home to live in, or as an investment property, you don’t have to pay the full cost of it upfront.
When people buy a home, they usually pay a small percentage of the cost as the “down payment” and then get a loan from the bank (i.e. a mortgage) to cover the rest. This method can be used in the investment world as well.
For example, you can buy a home to rent out to family members or even buy an entire apartment building in your local city with the help of a loan from the bank. In fact, many investors fund a majority of their real estate deals using other people’s money (whether that’s money from the bank or money from investment groups, private funds, grants from local city governments, or small loans from family and friends).
Experienced real estate investors raise money for the down payment from other rich people and then get a loan from the bank to cover the rest. By using other people’s money to fund the down payment and securing a loan from the bank to cover the rest, these investors get to own real estate properties even though they didn’t use any of their own money to purchase them. Quite a deal, if you ask me.
Although they have to pay back these funds eventually, there are several investment strategies (like refinancing) that allow these investors to pay back that money much sooner while still keeping a big profit for themselves. You can do this too.
Having the ability to use other people’s money to make a decent profit for yourself, and for them, is a pretty sweet deal.
Investing in the stock market doesn’t really offer this kind of advantage. Banks, private funds, and wealthy businessmen are far more willing to loan you money for a real estate deal than for almost any other kind of investment.
You can protect your assets. As you can imagine, the more money you get the more you are going to want to protect it.
The last thing you want is to get into a car accident or make a costly mistake on your job and have someone sue you for every dollar you’ve ever earned (yes, people do this). Thus, “asset protection” or protecting your net worth from creditors and lawsuits is an area of extreme interest for wealthy people in America. Real estate can be great for that.
Oftentimes, when people purchase a piece of real estate with the goal of making money from it, they don’t purchase it the way you would normally think.
Instead of having money in their checking account and simply paying for all or part of it, they set up a protection entity called an LLC. The main goal of setting up an LLC and buying the property through that LLC is that it protects the value of your investments from lawsuits.
Thus, if someone sues you personally they cannot get any money or value that is within the LLC and if one of the tenets in your property decides to sue to the apartment that is held within the LLC, he or she is not able to get any of your personal money or net worth.
In other words, the LLC separates your personal money from your investment money, even though you are in charge of both. In fact, many rich people and smart investors set up tons of LLCs.
For example, they may partially own 20 houses and set up a different LLC for each home. That way, if someone sues them personally or someone sues one of their LLCs, that person cannot get any of the money in any of the other properties.
You have the freedom to decide how involved you want to be in the investment. You can invest in real estate “actively” and use it as a job OR you can invest in real estate “passively” in your spare time. You get to decide. It caters to everyone.
Many of us enjoy our day jobs. We like the work we do and the impact it has on others. However, our jobs often take up a significant portion of our time and don’t leave much room for anything else, especially for those who have a spouse or kids.
One of the things I love about real estate investing is that once you learn some investment basics, it doesn't have to take up much of your time.
If you’re the opposite of me and you hate your day job entirely, there are other types of real estate investing that are more active and can be used to completely replace your old job.
In other words, if you want to quit your job and instead make real estate your career, then you can invest actively. However, if you love your job and just want to use real estate as an additional stream of income then you can invest passively.
Both types of investments make money, you just have to decide which side you are going to be on.
Theoretically, the active investors put themselves in a better position to make more money (or use less of their own money in the deals) than the passive investors, but believe me, both types of investors walk away from the investments very happy (provided they found the right deals in the first place).
My point? In addition to things like extra monthly income, lower taxes, and appreciation, real estate offers several other benefits. It gives you the chance to invest using other people’s money which makes it less of a risk and a much lower financial burden for you. Real estate investing also has several entities, like an LLC, which will allow you to protect the money in your investment from lawsuits and creditors. Plus, there are so many different forms of real estate investing that you can choose how involved or uninvolved you want to be in a way that caters to your lifestyle and competing demands.
Tell me, are you considering real estate investing? Which advantage of real estate investing appeals to you most?
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