Owning 3-5 properties I understand, but 20+ ??

[Erik Pilon]

Hi all, First time poster and seriously thinking into dipping in real estate investing. Some background: My wife and I (her 26 years old, me 30 years old) are Canadians currently working in Dubai. After 1 year of working we have enough saved to start thinking about which investing will we do for early retirement purposes (I don't want to leave money in the bank, maybe buy all into gold in case the economy crashes? Maybe some in stock instead? Buy a franchise? Invest in start-up companies? Real estate?) I realized that we currently have enough saved for a 30% down payment on a USD 180,000 property (but will buy in Canada, so CDN 230,000). This looks great, I can maybe buy 1 property per year this way! But on these forums here, I see people having 10+ properties or even 60+ ! That to me is crazy and imagine them as multi-millionaire, but often they are not.... Plus I'm sure they have not worked 20 years at their full-time jobs to get this amount of properties, have they? From my calculations: minus taxes, minus emergency repair fund, minus property managers and etc, I should be getting around $300 per month per rental property. From this calculation, this means I would need to own 40+ properties so that the monthly income equals that of my wife and I's combined salaries for financial freedom! Is this normal or am I missing something? Thanks for clarifying!

[Jon Behlke]

@Erik Pilon

I think you're missing a few different things in your analysis of the situation.  First, people are taking equity from their existing rentals and purchasing more, allowing them to accumulate properties more quickly.

Second, you're looking at replacing your income based on net profit from properties on which you have mortgages.  If the goal is income during retirement, and you're only 30, many of these homes will already be paid off, increasing your monthly take.

Third, you're also discounting the equity and appreciation you've gained over the years, which you could access in retirement either through equity loans or selling off of the properties.  If you bought 1 property a year (at an average of $230k CDN)  for the next 20 years, then by the time you hit 70 years old, assuming you took 30 year mortgages on all of them, you'd be looking at owning 10 of those properties outright (assuming no appreciation at all, they'd be worth $2.3 million) plus 10 more that were almost paid off.  You could sell them all off and have $3-4 million in the bank.