When To Stop Buying And Start Paying It Off?

[Justin S.]

I'm 38 and own a small business and 18 units.  I am at a crossroads as to what to do.  When all 18 are paid off it will bring in 90-110k(after 20% off the top for main,vacancy,etc...)      

I can live off of that. 

My question is do I start paying them off as fast as I can now and maybe start buying again when I have them paid off if I feel like it......or

keep buying more now and then sell half of them(estimate) in 10 years to pay off the remainder of the mortgages on the 18 units?

This is keeping me up at night

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You

J

[Dan Schwartz]

There will houses to buy when these are paid off. There will be mortgages available to fund those houses. Both the houses and the mortgages will be priced differently than they are in 2015, but so were they differently priced in 2010, 2005, 2000, 1995, 1990, and so on..... If you want to buy again in the future, you'll have enough experience to buy wisely and make money, just as successful REIs have in every single market. What keeps you up at night is generally "risk." And risk isn't mitigated by following the too-typical BP mantra of equity stripping, using every dollar of cash flow to reinvest in RE, and buying houses like they are going out of style. None of us are going to know your internal risk tolerance. Find a path that has you sleeping well at night, and stick to it for a year. Then ask yourself this same question again. Good luck.