Cashflow Doesn't Build Wealth?

[Shane Pearlman]

While cashflow is key to keep the property safely under control, I seem to find that the larger returns for our portfolio to date come from strategic growth of equity. My wife and I are still fairly small in our investing business and I want to ask if the long-term seasoned investors have found the same to be true, especially in the larger multi families, where value is more closely tied.

Example: A Current Deal We Are Wrapping Up:

My partners and I bought a home in Santa Cruz, CA in May 2011 for 389k and remodeled it. After a cash out refi where we had 108k of our investment left in the deal. Rented the pre-tax profits were $6,840 annually. That is a 6.3% return cash on cash, which in our area is basically a freaking miracle of the crash. I was only expecting 2.8% in my original performa. Haven't seen any deals like that since 2012. The property is being sold and closes in 5 days. For the three+ years we owned it, we basically accumulated $22,550 in rental profits.

In those three years, we saw some serious appreciation. You could call me a speculator, but the indicators were there. A strong job market (thank you silicon valley), a major university, over 3 million tourist annually (to a town of 50k residents), major agricultural center, amazing natural resources / extreme sports meca, a world famous brand and limited room for growth. Houses in a good neighborhood were being sold below replacement cost. I'd call that a strategic acquisition with strong potential for growth. Forcing equity through a remodel provided a nice bit of padding.

We are selling the house for the equivalent of 640k. Net proceeds of the sale minus cash invested is 168k. That is 155% return on investment (37% compounded annualized return). 

Even if I had ended up with a 0% cash on cash, I would still be doing a happy dance. I don't see cashflow deals offering anything in the range of that return

I imagine there may be a day when we need to convert our equity into cashflow. At that point, we will probably pivot again. 

So What Do You Think?

Brandon / Josh often seem to call equity investors gamblers on the BP podcast (although they mostly seem to be warning newbies not to buy stupid), but for those of us looking to build wealth, who are willing to do careful homework, learn the markets, do the deal analysis and make careful strategic plays, make sure we are not upside down or outside our fiscal means, my experience to date says investing in strong equity growth markets, perhaps despite their poor cashflows, seems like the strong play.

Alright, bring on the arguments and tell me where I might be right or wrong (especially as we are moving our portfolio into the larger apartment complexes)!

[Aaron Mazzrillo]

I have a few dozen houses at any given time. As @Account Closed stated, one pile pays my bills and puts food on the table, the other pile is for horse trading. Your experience is EXACTLY why buying California property makes the most sense to me. People brag about their $300 cash flow from their dumpy *** $60,000 house out east of the Rockies. Really? I bought a few dozen houses back in 2009-2011. I'm now selling some of them off as they go vacant. The last house I recently sold, I paid $81,000 for it 4 years ago and just sold it for $274,900. On top of that phenomenal gain (approx $150K net), I collected $1,550/month rent from the same tenant all 4 years. 

Now, the naysayers be like "Well, that was the bottom of the market. That can't be done now!" 

I just closed on a nice Riverside house out by UCR. Paid $90K for it. My private lender wired $125K to escrow. I got a $28K refund check from escrow. (Read that as nontaxable income.) Property will rent for $1,700 when I'm done fixing it up. 

Have fun on your airplane ride and staying in Motel 8 naysayers.