What Money to Use for First Investment Property (Buy&Hold)

[John Tobin]

Hello BP community. I was hoping to get some different opinions for getting into real estate investing. Currently I purchase stocks at an 11% employee discount and its a relatively safe stock. It also pays dividends and they get re-invested. The longer I hold the stock, the more the dividends grow and get reinvested with a snowball effect. I contribute on a dollar cost average basis and has become a sort of forced savings account. All my extra cash goes into the company stocks and I don't save any substantial cash.

I'm not really sure on how to calculate the ROI of this type of investing, but the re-invested dividends produce about $300 per month (currently) and the amount increases about $10 per month on average. So in my mind that's like passive cashflow with out any headaches, but it doesn't have the other benefits that real estate has.

Another option would be opening up a HELOC on my primary residence and pay the interest until I can refi and payback the credit. And just use the stocks as a reserve.

Or a third option is transfer my traditional ira into a self directed ira and use that money. But the stock market has been hitting all time highs lately and I'm not sure I can hit those returns in this real estate market.

Any other ideas or different perspectives would be much appreciated.