Real estate – Sales & Rentals

Owning real estate, especially income producing real estate, is still the best way to get rich.

It is somewhat amazing to how quickly people forget. They forget good times. They forget bad times. Most people act like the way things are now is how things will always be. We know this is absurd but it is true. It is true that people act like it is true but it is not true. What is true is that times change. Change is the only permanent thing.

Back in 2003 when houses were appreciating in Orlando at thirty two per cent per year, most of my students in real estate licencing school could not imagine that the hot market would ever stop or even slow down.

I remember one incident that occurred in class in 2004. I was teaching about investment real estate. One of the characteristics of investment real estate is that it has risk. It is a question on the Florida exam. When I got to that part in the real estate textbook, one of my students raised his hand and said,”They should take that out of the textbook. There is no risk in real estate. You can buy a condo in downtown Orlando for four hundred thousand dollars today and,as surely as the sun comes up tomorrow, it will be worth five hundred thousand dollars next year”.

Lots of people made big money investment decisions based on that erroneous belief. Times change. Things change. Beliefs change. I believe this. Since Ponce de Leon came to Florida in 1513, real estate has appreciated in value. why would it stop now? It will not. Real estate will continue to appreciate.

If you could jump into a time machine and go back to 1971( the year Walt Disney World opened ) with fifty thousand dollars in your pocket, would you put that fifty thousand dollars in the bank or would you put a down payment on an apartment building with that money. If you put it into the bank at five per cent interest, it would have turned into three hundred sixty seven thousand dollars forty years later if you never made a withdrawal. You could make a down payment on a income producing apartment building in Florida with that fifty thousand dollars. Forty years later that building would be paid for and still producing income.

An average house in Orlando in 1971 was thirteen thousand eight hundred dollars. Today an average house in Orlando is about one hundred thirty thousand dollars. Your apartment building would have, no doubt, appreciated at the same rate. There may have been some dips and spikes along the way but this article is about the long haul. Do not forget that apartment building would be paying you a cash flow for the last forty years. Today you would own a free and clear building worth about one million dollars.

Why am I writing this now? Now is the perfect time to buy real estate. Now! You do not need to wait for the market to get better. You do not need to wait for the market to “bottom out”. Today is the day. Now.

Today, you can buy a nice single family home in Orlando for one hundred thousand dollars. This is a nice house in a nice neighborhood. If you put ten thousand dollars down and get a ninety thousand dollar mortgage, your total payment will be approximately seven hundred fifty per month.

You can rent that house for a nice cash flow above the payment. You might experience a small amount of aggravation. If you find a way to get rich without aggravation, let me know.

Now, you can start with one single family home or start larger. Start now. Buy some real estate. Real estate has gone up in value since 1492. It is not going to stop in your lifetime. Did I mention that interest rates are unbelievably low. There is no better time than now. Call a Realtor. Buy a house or a building and wait.