Have $2 Million, what to do?

[Jerry Shen]

I have $2 Million to invest in real estate (part of windfall for selling a tech company). After reading the Ultimate Beginner's guide, I've settled on apartment investing. My question is, would it be better to get multiple properties or invest all $2 million into a single property (down payment on a $10 mill). My goal is to use the cash flow from the $2 million investment to fund my lifestyle and start another company. I would ideally like to get $250K yearly cashflow from this investment. Thanks.

[David Faulkner]

I'd be careful about disclosing such things on a public website ... I can just imagine the sharks starting to circle now that they smell the blood of fresh meat in the water. Your inbox is about to get a workout :) 

I agree you should take a measured approach and don't blow your entire wad on a single deal. If you want to invest in apartments, you may consider finding a multi-family apartment syndication deal being offered by a highly reputable provider with a long term, verifiable track record of successful investments and putting $50k-$100k to work in the deal to get your feet wet. Understand that these investments are for accredited investors (which you qualify as), who are assumed to be capable of taking the risk and doing their own independent due diligence (which you should absolutely do); these deals are not generally advertised in the open market and I would not trust those who come to you unsolicited with such deals but rather seek them out through networking and referrals. Local REI meetups may be a good place to start. BP is another place to look, but always remember the saying "Never ask a barber if you need a haircut" and try to figure out who the "barbers" are.

From there, if you want to get active to acquire and manage these assets on your own, you could tag along with your syndication provider and learn from them ... many are open to educating those that invest with them. Otherwise, you can continue to invest passively this way, or some combination thereof.