7 Years to Retirement, what would you do?

[Lenore C.]

There are so many experienced and successful real estate investors on this site.  

I have a question that I keep wondering about.  And while this is a hypothetical, I suspect there are many people out there for whom this would fit.  

Say you have 700K that you could invest in real estate.  You are looking to create long-term retirement income.  You have approximately 7 years until retirement from good paying W2 job.  Where and how would you structure the investment? Long-term buy and hold single families? Small apartment complexes? Apartment syndications? Hard money loans? Notes? Some combination?  

I would love to hear from folks who have been doing this a long time, and can see a path to good ($300k per year if possible) retirement income.

How much income could you generate and what would be the plan? (i.e. BRR 5 houses, then sell, move into HMLs? etc) 

Thanks in advance!

[David Thompson]

Hi Lenore,

It really depends on whether you want to be active or passive investor and answering questions around time, resources, interest level, control, etc are influencing factors and what level of risk / returns you are seeking.  I know when I was younger I wanted to do everything myself but once I had family and now as I get more mature (ha) and think about my time and valuing that even more.  I talk to a lot of investors and few want to be more active as they near retirement and gradually increase their passive investments.  Passive investing is sure hard to beat if you hook up with experienced operators who stick w/their knitting and are conservative in their modeling and expectations.

Looking for a combination of cash flow and appreciation (value add investing) may be an avenue for some of your money. There are many niche areas but I favor MF apartments as a core REI syndication holding as well as diversification into self storage and mobile home parks as well may be an option. I also like diversifying geographically. Here's some educational blogs to start your research.

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/9145/59865-div...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/9145/53820-why...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/9145/54155-sel...

https://www.biggerpockets.com/blogs/9145/62927-6-r...