General Real Estate Investing
Market News & Data
General Info
Real Estate Strategies
Landlording & Rental Properties
Real Estate Professionals
Financial, Tax, & Legal
Real Estate Classifieds
Reviews & Feedback
Updated about 6 years ago,
Well-intended Feedback on "From 0 to XX units" stories
Hi,
As a relatively new investor I also share other newbie investors' wonderful feelings about BiggerPockets. Thanks to everyone for massive free info provided.
I would like to point out an issue that I believe could be improved.
In blog, youtube channel or forums we come across titles like "from 0 to XX(some double digit number) units in Y years!". When you click and read/listen to details what you learn is, reality is more like "making the downpayment for XX units" rather than from 0 to XX units. An example is a recent newsletter I've received:
Mail title is "From FedEx Job to 51 Doors in 3 Years". When you click on the link you go the topic "WOW!! What a long way in 3 years!!". We observe that the description "from FedEx Job to 51 Doors" is added by the editor, the original topic title did not imply that.
When we click on the topic and read it we see that a successful investor tells his story of making downpayment of 51 Doors with a massive (500k+ dollars) help from his business partner. Still it's an inspiring story but a more accurate newsletter title would be "From FedEx job to making downpayments for 51 doors with my partner who provided most of the money". Less impressive but more accurate. The original author told the story as is and did not sugarcoat it.
Maybe clickbaits are inseparable parts of Newsletter business, I'm not an expert on it. But I don't feel completely comfortable about "encouraging" people in "buying" (meaning making the downpayment for) many, many units in short amount of time. That would almost always mean a huge leverage, debt. Many people are on the other side of -the- debate, which is leverage vs owning the properties debt-free.
If another financial crisis happens sooner or later, I suspect that for the case of many people "from 0 to 50 properties" stories will look less impressive than "from 0 to 1 fully-owned property" stories. Clickbaity titles overlook the risks associated with accumulating debt, thus might be misleading for newbie investors. Every website owner would love to get more clicks but I don't know if it is worth taking the risk of misleading people.
Thanks,