How did you convince YOUR spouse about real estate's awesomeness?
Brandon TurnerPro Member
Investor · Maui, HI · Member since 2009 · 13k+ posts · 3k+ votesI'm working on a potential article about this...
So, it's rare that two romantic partners discover the awesomeness of real estate at the exact same time. So, if you discovered real estate first, how did you convince your significant other? OR if your significant other drug you into the game, how did they accomplish this?
Thanks all!
My wife and I met when I was 18, she was 17 and we were both working in a grocery store. I wanted more out of life and was always thinking of ways to make money. I remember she and I sitting around the dining room table at my parent's house, where I was living without electricity because they couldn't pay the bill, stuffing envelopes by candlelight so I could get rich quick. Convincing her was easy because we were too young and dumb to know any better. We just did it because we didn't have much else to do.
It took a long time to make RE work. The first property we bought was a year later...a rental with 100% financing and we rented it to my mom because she needed a roof over her head for my younger brother and sisters. She couldn't afford to pay rent after a while and we couldn't afford to carry it and pay rent on our apartment on grocery store wages, so we were forced to kick out my own family and sell...a really bad experience right out of the gate that didn't exactly warm my wife up to real estate investing. By now we were a couple of years older and no longer too dumb to know better. It was a really low point in our lives.
It took a couple of years to do another deal and I got her to go along with it because I'd been working so hard for so long and constantly studying and "I'd do better this time". She went along with my plan but wasn't nearly as excited about it as I was. We flipped that house and made a whopping $1,500 which was less than I'd spent on computers and supplies to have this "business". Again, I had failed to show her how great my idea was and I could see that she didn't share my excitement. Even I had my doubts...maybe she was right and this was all a waste of time?
Fortunately for me she (and I) hung in there and supported me in my passion long enough for me to do a few profitable flips and once the money was coming in the proof was in the pudding...maybe this crazy business idea does work, after all. By now she was my biggest cheerleader, and it was that alone that propelled me to do better and do more.
Then along came 2008. We lost millions. We didn't lose any properties like many folks did, but our net worth was completely wiped out and we were over $2 million in debt. Now I had the task of convincing her that not only does this business work but we should start again! Imagine how tough it is to make that case, but she ultimately knew that we had to get back up and keep going. There was just no other way to dig out of a hole that deep so with her support we went right back at it and she was there by my side making it happen. I'm so glad she did, because within one year from starting over we paid off over one million of debt and built a bigger business than we would have ever imagined.
I couldn't have done it without my wife's support. Thinking back to being 18 with nothing to my name but a dream, there was no way to get from there to having bought over $200 million of real estate over the last 25 years without her support when times were good but especially when times were bad and supporting me was probably the hardest choice.
I just happen to meet my fiance and we both had an interest for real estate. It was at the end of 2013 we met. I was just getting my start on the learning process and she was at the time already a property manager. We both share the same passion about it and we LOVE IT!!
Every married person knows it is easier to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission. This is especially true if checks are flowing in on a monthly basis!
I was already in the game when we met, so she sees the success. But I spend 50% of current earnings on real estate which can take a bit of convincing. Usually, I take a little candy out of each deal before reinvesting.
When I met my husband he lived in an old, tiny , did I mention OLD townhome rental. He drove a car that needed a new transmission that he couldn't afford to repair, and he didn't even have a credit card to put it on. He didn't have cable or internet at his apartment. His entertainment comprised of an old tube TV with bunny ears.
He meets me....fast forward five years.
We live in a new, 3400 square foot home with all the bells and whistles. We drive late model cars with no repair bills. We max out retirement accounts. We have two kids that I am able to put in part time daycare instead of full time. Life is good, and it's due to our investments and my job as a broker.
I am still working on the convincing. My wife believes money should go in the bank, or you could lose it. The first time she seemed really impressed was in 2013 when I bought a property she detested, she said looking at it made her want to shower, and I sold it 2 weeks after closing for about a $14K profit. It is the only one I have had like that, but it was impressive. Not all of my purchases have impressed her.
My wife and I met when I was 18, she was 17 and we were both working in a grocery store. I wanted more out of life and was always thinking of ways to make money. I remember she and I sitting around the dining room table at my parent's house, where I was living without electricity because they couldn't pay the bill, stuffing envelopes by candlelight so I could get rich quick. Convincing her was easy because we were too young and dumb to know any better. We just did it because we didn't have much else to do.
It took a long time to make RE work. The first property we bought was a year later...a rental with 100% financing and we rented it to my mom because she needed a roof over her head for my younger brother and sisters. She couldn't afford to pay rent after a while and we couldn't afford to carry it and pay rent on our apartment on grocery store wages, so we were forced to kick out my own family and sell...a really bad experience right out of the gate that didn't exactly warm my wife up to real estate investing. By now we were a couple of years older and no longer too dumb to know better. It was a really low point in our lives.
It took a couple of years to do another deal and I got her to go along with it because I'd been working so hard for so long and constantly studying and "I'd do better this time". She went along with my plan but wasn't nearly as excited about it as I was. We flipped that house and made a whopping $1,500 which was less than I'd spent on computers and supplies to have this "business". Again, I had failed to show her how great my idea was and I could see that she didn't share my excitement. Even I had my doubts...maybe she was right and this was all a waste of time?
Fortunately for me she (and I) hung in there and supported me in my passion long enough for me to do a few profitable flips and once the money was coming in the proof was in the pudding...maybe this crazy business idea does work, after all. By now she was my biggest cheerleader, and it was that alone that propelled me to do better and do more.
Then along came 2008. We lost millions. We didn't lose any properties like many folks did, but our net worth was completely wiped out and we were over $2 million in debt. Now I had the task of convincing her that not only does this business work but we should start again! Imagine how tough it is to make that case, but she ultimately knew that we had to get back up and keep going. There was just no other way to dig out of a hole that deep so with her support we went right back at it and she was there by my side making it happen. I'm so glad she did, because within one year from starting over we paid off over one million of debt and built a bigger business than we would have ever imagined.
I couldn't have done it without my wife's support. Thinking back to being 18 with nothing to my name but a dream, there was no way to get from there to having bought over $200 million of real estate over the last 25 years without her support when times were good but especially when times were bad and supporting me was probably the hardest choice.
How do you define a successful man? A man who makes more money than his wife can spend. How do you define a successful woman? A woman who finds such man.
If you can make more money than your spouse can spend, convincing shouldn't be that hard.
Kidding aside even though it has some truth to it, I have loved real estate since Tom Vu's time. I cleared $49k on my first flip although I did almost everything wrong. I told my wife that I can make six figures just by doing 2 - 3 flips a year. Let me try this for 3-5 years. If I don't make it, I will ask for my job back. She agreed and said she believes I would do well. Almost everyone on my side and my wife's side of the family said I was crazy. Remember this was in 2009 when the sky was falling, and the world was coming into an end.
Result speaks volume. Everyone on both sides of the family now says that was the best decision I made for myself and our families. At meet-ups, I normally tell everyone that "my wife works so I don't have to" in a joking way. @J. Martin can attest to this. At the end of the day, a supporting spouse is so important to our success in real estate.
Cheers.
@Deshan Kennedy At first he had to help me paint rental properties when they turned over. He hated it, but doing stuff on a shoestring budget in the beginning allowed me to get to the point where I could pay contractors to take care of everything today. Now when a rental turns over, I pay cleaners, carpet cleaners, a handyman and painters to do it all for me.
Now, I just need him to sign loan docs so I can buy a new property every now and again.
I think the best way is to constantly talk about your interest in real estate. If you show your significant other how interested that you are in real estate investing and that's it's become a passion of yours (because let's be honest, if you're not passionate about it then you're much less likely to succeed) he/she will be much more inclined to except your investment ideas. If they also have seen first hand that you've spent time educating yourself with books, forums, and webinars, your spouse will be much more trusting and supportive of your decisions.
This is the approach that I took, and when it came time to do my first deal, she was pushing me when I became a little hesitant. Now she's my biggest supporter.
I talked RE everyday for a while ,my wife thought I was obsessed and wanted me to Shut up about it .So quit talking and I bought two properties at a nice bargain price , the best of the two I was offered $20,000 then up to $28,000 above what I paid in the first week .all I had done to it was a load of gravel, a gate, and change locks.
I'm still working on it...
...but I did make some progress this weekend when I took her with me to drive neighborhoods and look at properties. She enjoyed 'the hunt'!
She has also heard me listening to some of the podcasts, when I didn't even realize she was listening, then later asked me questions like "So you can REALLY get a seller to finance your purchase of their property?" So I think she is slowly coming around!
Well showing her the rent checks coming in each month doesn't hurt.
Really though my wife and I both know where we want our family to be in the future and know that real estate is one of the ways we will get there. We both also just love everything about real estate and is really something we enjoy together.
For those who aren't lucky enough to have a spouse that is equally as thrilled about REI as they are I wouldn't let that stop you. I would just make sure to keep learning as much as you can and let your spouse see that this is a passion of yours. Start slow and let them see that you know what you are doing and keep them in the loop of what is going on. It may take some time to get them on board or maybe they won't ever have an interest in it but as long as they can see it is something that makes you happy hopefully they'll be supportive either way. Hopefully over time they will see real estate's AWESOMENESS and jump in the boat with you!
Hmmmm.. I don't think my wife is 100% on board, so she better hang on for the ride! Our first real state venture put a bad taste in her mouth due to a flooded rental market, time and budget constraints, and forced to live 1500 miles from each other and away from the kiddos. We then we're floating both our mortgage and rent as her guesthood wore down as a very short term roommate turned in to 5 months.
Fast forward a few pages and I'm raving about Real Estate. I've been dropped right in a bucket of real estate once I got out to TX. It was my intention to become a real estate agent once out here, but my priorities quickly shifted once the veil lifted. I saw real estate for what it is and fell in love with the realization that this year I could potentially make over 100k and that's only within 8-9 months.
Get this.... at first, I was **asking** my wife if she thought we should do this or that and she dejected. Even though she saw how hyped I was, she's the type that is content just renting, working full time, putting money in a savings account rather than paying off interest accruing debt etc; now pair that with the bad taste in her mouth from our prior real estate venture and you've got a wall of "No's!"
So in the meantime, I'm learning all I can. I'm working overtime at my current job and then flooding myself with knowledge from night to the early morning. I've got the podcasts playing on the laptop speakers in our home, conveying the oooohs and aaaahs of the potential to her. She still shows little interest.
But then...the shift occurs... I **tell** her we are about to start investing in real estate. I tell her what exactly and how we are going to start. She appears to reluctantly be wearing her sea-legs.. Mind you, she's the main source of reliable income for our family, so it took some careful prodding and poking. And... now it appears she is on the wagon but just along for the ride. I do wish she were in to it like myself. I see some power house couples and am impressed. It's those who work together that I'd imagine would gain the most..m think agent/ investor combo. I can dream.. but in the meantime will pursue real estate and hope she comes around. I think she will once she sees the first few checks... only time will tell...
By not overselling it with words like AWESOMENESS.
Our first real estate investment happened when I was very well established in my career, had healthy balances in our retirement accounts, and could afford taking a loss if it came to it.
I didn't.
My wife and I did not see eye-to-eye when it came to money. I had a real hard time landing our first four-plex because she was not willing to go along. I finally told her that I was investing with or without her.
She never could come to grips with the lifestyle. We were both able to quit our jobs after a couple of years but she always lived in fear.
We divorced and she had no problem collecting half of the properties.
I remarried to someone that was secure and content with life.
I had already set out to buy a rental property when we started dating. She was with me when I viewed that first rental. She supports me but would probably not be involved in real estate if not for me.
With that being said, little by little she has become more involved, often because we start out living in the property before converting it to full rental. She is great with design; choosing furniture, paint colors, decorations, cabinet color/style, fixtures, tile, etc... She is also very helpful at times with the work when an apartment turns over, such as painting and cleaning. Lastly, she has helped show apartments with me from time to time.
We started out by becoming accidental landlords when we moved from VA to SC & were way too far upside down to sell our town house. We started renting it out and I saw the advantages of our tenants buying property for us.
I worked with a bunch of people who owned rental properties, kept bring up the subject to my wife, but she wasn't sold on the idea. After a while she started warming up to the idea & started to see some of the advantages of it. When she finally agreed to it she insisted that I get some sort of business partner. I know everyone says don't partner with friends, but I did, and it has worked out pretty well. She also holds this friend is high regards, most of the time.
She has become comfortable with the normal aspects of the business, taking the checks to the bank & paying mortgages, but she has dug in her heels that she doesn't want an active roll. Although, I use her as my guinea pig when I am looking at properties, if she says it feels like home, then it is usually worth putting an offer on.
As time has gone by, she is more comfortable with different types of properties & deals. She originally didn't want anything more than single family houses, now she is good with small multi-family properties, tax liens, re-habs etc.
These stories are a beautiful thing. The other side that I have seen is that when the portfolio becomes large enough to make 2 people rich one leaves to pursue their dreams without their partner. I think that the partners that work so hard to accumulate large amounts of property can burn each other out and sometimes need to get away from each other to get a break from RE. Ever lie in bed and talk RE? Been there...burned out...economy crash...failed marriage...rebuild from ashes...life is good...the story still unfolding...
My "professional" speciality is in software engineering and communications security which saw me spending up to 160 days a year on the road. I had started dabbling in building management and control systems and we (my business partner and I) had bought a property to use as a test lab.
When we discovered we were going to be parents, I proposed buying a few rental properties (4 at the time) to my wife which would allow me to travel less and a be stay-at-home Dad. It was an easy sell and the reward of being able to be present during my son's first four years has been immeasurable.
Thank you for posting this question @Brandon Turner .
This question prompted a great discussion between us this morning. She says she's almost 50/50 now which is a long way from where we started.
At first she was frightened by my interest in real estate investing, but she knows I have been carefully and patiently learning as much as possible from the good folks on Bigger Pockets, reading RE books, and going to REI meetups.
We have also started playing the Rich Dad board game "Cash Flow" and now she is using terms like "getting out of the rat race" and "financial freedom" The game has helped us to spend more quality time with the family too (young adults) . We laugh a lot but there is also serious discussion about real life investing.
My wife is very fact based and #'s oriented so the task was relatively straightforward.
Education and Awareness - You don't know what you don't know.. I had to educate myself on everything real estate. I read a lot of books, got my license, constantly discussed strategies with my wife, she challenged my thought process and we refined our strategy.
Demonstrate the business potential - Test out our strategy and took action. We bought a MF that generated sufficient cash flow - Was able to demonstrate the business potential and the idea of wealth building. Showed Balance Sheet and P&L statements. The numbers don't lie. We were able to see actual increase in the net worth. Positive CF = Happiness
Demonstrated additional demand - Our rentals were always full so there was additional demand for rentals. Once I was able to show the business potential the next step was to buy a new property where #'s would make sense. Next year we bought another property and this year another MF (closing April)
We plan on continuing the same trend every year by buying right and treating each acquisition as its own entity, buying under market value that way we have built in equity and maintaining clear communication at all times (good or bad). Communication is key to have wife on board. My wife has seen some of the tangible benefits on building wealth through Real Estate so she has been taking a lot more interest. I don't try to oversell anything or claim as things will always be hunky dory. We are realistic and both of us understand the risks involved.
I didn't have to convince my wife of anything, she has been 100% on board with my investing from the start. Why? I am not sure cause I never ask her, but I think it has to do with the fact that she sees how much time and effort I put into the business and the decision making that comes along with it.
Having my wife on board and supportive has made all the difference in me being able to grow the real estate ventures I am apart of. I don't ever lose sight of how important her support is or take her for granted because I have seen investors who deal with negativity from spouses and it crushes their enthusiasm for the business.
I'm working on a potential article about this...
So, it's rare that two romantic partners discover the awesomeness of real estate at the exact same time. So, if you discovered real estate first, how did you convince your significant other? OR if your significant other drug you into the game, how did they accomplish this?
Thanks all!
I am the luckiest woman on the planet because that is how I met my husband!!!
I had an online dating profile and half of my pictures were of me painting my house or shopping for fixtures at Home Depot and in my hobbies I listed my number one hobby is restoring up my 1921 bungalow.
He was working as a finish carpenter and painter with a background in set dressing (aka staging) and had a good friend who was a great residential broker.
We sold the bungalow and bought another wreck of a house which we are currently living in. We made a huge leap up in quality of neighborhood, which is huge in LA!! This one we hope to rent out when when its finished and buy another one.
We Dream of multi unit but were stuck in Los Angeles for now and the live in flip is how we can make it work in LA LA land!!
Didn't require any convincing. She always has been interested in REI. My first go around in REI was a disaster. But this second go around is another story. When I can show my wife we are making $8000 a year on 50-60k houses and not responsible for repairs, it sort of speaks for itself.