I’m about to quit before I even started (18 years old)

[Omer Cohen]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes, English is not my native language :)

After 2 years of learning everything I can about investing, I decided that I want to invest in real estate. I made that decision six months ago, and I already knew then that I can’t buy a deal on my own. Therefore, my first goal was to convince my father that we should buy an investment property. It took me 6 months, but I succeeded.

The problem is that after doing some research, investing in real estate in my market (Israel) doesn’t seem to be a very good idea, for the following reasons:

1.Houses have doubled in price in the last 7 years, and prices keep going up. I’m afraid that it’s not a good time to buy real estate, and many people think that there is a real estate bubble here.

2.We can invest up to 50K, and mortgages are limited to 50%. Because of that, we are limited to 100K houses. There are no more than 70 houses in total for sale within that price range - so I don’t have many options about choosing my investment city / neighborhood. (these houses can be found in 2 neighborhoods in 2 different cities)

3.Rents are very low. Most of these houses will rent for less than 500$/month. After mortgage and insurance payments, we’re not left with much – not including vacancy, repairs, etc. Investing 50K for monthly cash flow of 100-150$ isn’t a very good idea in my opinion.

I once heard that the best time to buy real estate is right now. The problem is that the numbers just don’t make any sense.

On one hand, I know the importance of taking action, and after hearing so many successful people say that – it just has to be true. But on the other hand, I just can’t see how buying property in today’s market is a good idea.

I don’t want to find myself say in 5 years: “I wish I bought a property 5 years ago!”
but I also don’t want to find myself say: “It was the worse timing ever to buy my first deal”.

What would you do? What do you think I need to do?

Thanks!

(And sorry for the long post :) )