Financial Planner w/ Real Estate Investment Focus

[Gary Langlais]

Hello all, I just joined Bigger Pockets. Been listening to the podcasts for about a year after my wife and I purchased our first STR in Maine in October 2020 and have (thankfully) enjoyed incredible success. We have been hunting for the second property. Finished as backup offer on 3 properties and had another fall out of closing because of a really bad appraiser and a seller who refused to budge off their number.

Despite the setbacks our interest/passion for real estate investment has only grown.  As we continue to property hunt we're taking a step back and looking at this investment strategy from a broader perspective.  Which brings me to today's post.

We currently have a financial planner. And have spoken with him about our plans to focus our investment strategy around real estate (likely a STR focus initially with plan to expand thereafter). No fault of our financial planner, he just doesn't have the background and experience in this area. His response is always in some form or fashion - "you're too leveraged in real estate and should spread out to other investment areas".

It's not wrong.  But it's also not what we want.  We want to be leveraged in real estate.

With that in mind, have any others experienced these same sorts of conversations with their financial planner?  How did you respond?  

Has anyone found a financial planner with specific experience in a real estate investment focus?  Have you found that to be beneficial?  How did you find them?

Thanks in advance and looking forward to collaborating in the forums!!

[Brad Jacobson]

The tricky part of most financial planners is that their compensation comes as a percent of the money invested in their offerings.  Therefore, their advice is almost always going to be to invest in funds or programs offered by their establishment.  The other issue is that they're not always well versed in real estate and don't have the RE license to steer you towards specific purchases or offer direct RE investing advice.  

Maybe there are financial planners out there that do both but I'm yet to find them!  My advice would be to make your personal retirement plan and pursue it like crazy.  Having both stocks and real estate is awesome but only you can make the decision on how to create your portfolio!