What’s the best way to build wealth? Buy stocks, bonds, equities, gold? While other assets may have characteristics that make them more appealing than property, there’s no doubt that the property market is the largest market by far, and there’s a reason for that.
Ask any billionaire investor, and they’ll tell you that the way to get rich, at least to begin with, is to buy property. Warren Buffett, for instance, got his start when he bought an Omaha ranch for $400,000 nearly forty years ago. Though it was just a farm, it’s continued to produce an annual income for him ever since. He’s earned millions of dollars from his original investment: dollars that have helped to fund some of the shrewdest investments in history, such as his investments in Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo.
New England Style House Luxury Property
Credit: Max Pixel
Getting into real estate, however, is a different proposition than other investments. Some characteristics make it unique.
Perhaps the most important is that it is decoupled from fluctuations in other asset class markets. Property prices tend to ebb and flow more closely with wages over time – or the ability of people to afford the monthly repayments. Stocks and bonds less so. Property is also a cash flow generating asset because of the rental income it provides.
Lastly, property is usually bought with debt (a mortgage) unlike stocks or bonds, and so leverage is an important consideration. Because the asset will always exist, lenders are more willing to send you money to carry out a real estate investment project. And that means that just about anyone with a satisfactory credit rating can get involved.
Buy Multifamily Dwellings
Making money out of property investing is relatively straightforward, so long as you know what you’re doing. What you don’t want is a situation where the mortgage payments to the bank on the property exceed the rental income. And so you need to find ways to make each property generate as much revenue as possible.
One common strategy is to buy large, old-fashioned townhouses in areas that have seen a growth in the number of young, independent professionals. Markets in London, Indonesia, China and Brazil are ideal for this kind of purchase. The idea is simple: buy a large house and then divide it up into two, three or even four different dwellings.
The reason for doing this is that it is much easier to charge more overall when a property contains four separate dwellings. Each person is willing to pay a premium for the square footage they have, even if their living areas are small.
It’s also a good strategy for reducing risk. Rather than relying on one tenant to pay you rent every month, you have two or three different paying renters, making it much more likely that you will get paid at least something every month.
Why More People Don’t Invest In Property
Property investing has made thousands of people wealthy and given them the opportunity to rely on passive income rather than giving up their precious time at work. So why doesn’t everybody get involved?
One of the problems with investing in property is that it is difficult. You need to have the courage and the tenacity to stick with it, even when things get tough. It’s also complicated, especially when investing overseas.
Building A Portfolio Is Difficult
We’ve all heard about the difficulty of getting on the property ladder, and that same difficulty applies when it comes to building a property portfolio.
The problem with property investing is that it takes up a lot of time. You have to do more complicated accounts, make sure the properties are maintained and fit for habitation, and search for new investment opportunities.
Because of this, you need to have the luxury of time. If you don’t, you’ll be forever outsourcing these administrative tasks which will bump up your overall costs. And when your costs go up, all of a sudden renting out properties becomes far less lucrative.
Knowing Where To Invest Is Tough
The property market is one of the most eclectic in the world. And that makes it difficult to know where to invest, especially if you want to build a portfolio overseas. Sites like https://www.rumah.com/rumah-dijual/di-area-surabaya-idji29 give a flavour of the variety of properties and locations in the market, especially in emerging economies.
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Investors want a high return on their initial investment. It’s not just about rental income. It’s about building equity directly through price rises. Housing prices can rise for all sorts of reasons including population growth, local wage growth, lowering of interest rates in the domestic market, a lack of supply, and less strict lending rules. Factors that influence price vary from country to country, so as a property investor, you need to have your eyes and ears open to potential changes coming down the pike. Many investors, for instance, predicted the boom in house prices in the Silicon Valley and San Francisco area when they saw that the technology industry was kicking off. House prices in San Francisco more than tripled between 1990 and 2018, providing owners with fabulous amounts of equity.
You Need To Be Patient
Day traders and people who buy stocks are used to reaping the rewards of their investments quickly. Profits can be taken after months or weeks, not years. But that’s not the case with property. If you want to become a property investor, you may have to wait several years before making a return.
The good news, however, is that if you can wait, the rewards are excellent. Not only do you get paid money for doing very little, but you also avoid a lot of the risk associated with other asset classes. It’s not uncommon, for instance, for stocks to drop more than 50 per cent in a week: it’s happened throughout history several times. But rental prices rarely drop by that much, if ever. According to http://www.propertygeek.net/article/property-investment-without-money/ this makes it much easier to start a business based on property.
So there you have it: why the costs of investing in property are worth your while. Good luck.
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