Would you invest $50K differently from $500K ?

[Mary Joe]

I know this is a very open ended question but just want to get some basic feedback.

I know nothing about those creative real estate investing strategies, so my approach has always been "BUY-HOLD-RENT" long term.

It seems that a lot of people favor the low cost rental properties.

Does it matter whether you have $50K to invest as opposed to $500K? Would your strategy be different if you had $500K cash?

Thanks
MJ

[James H.]

Before I make my statement I will make the disclaimer that my first (and so only) investment property was purchased for 12K and rehabbed for another 12K.

BUT, even though this property has been profitable for me, I do not forsee owning many similar type properties. From what I can see, in my market, the best value for buy and hold is a retail value of about 85K to 100K.

So, if I had 50K, that would not really be enough to acquire and then rehab a house without using a financing vehicle. That means I would be stuck with basically retail or hard money. Neither is ideal, but I would consider either if all I had was 50K.

Now, if I had 500K, I could finance my entire operation from acquistion all the way to retail or rent-out. I could be my own hard money lender. So yes, I would invest 50K differently than 500K just because there are things that one would like to do that can be done with 500K, but simply can't be done with 50K.