What would you do with $200,000 cash in today's market?

[John Humphries]

Hey BP
I'm looking to crowd source some ideas for some inspiration.  If you had $200,000 in cash right now, what would you do with it? I know this depends on your current life situation, but let's hear it!
Alternatively, if you want to pick apart my situation and provide me with your two cents feel free to chime in...
My situation:
Owner of primary residence, one rental locally, self-managed, and one joint venture rental out of Province (I'm in Canada). I've got a decent job making ~$60,000 per year, but it's keeping me crazy busy at the moment without much free time or mental capacity for other projects. I'm hoping to dial back my workload in the next 3 years by replacing my income with cash flow, which will free up some time for me to be a more active investor. Earlier this year, I inhereted a house in NC, which was sold for a $200,000 profit.
What I did:
Since my workload is so heavy at the moment, I was looking for more passive investments. I would love to buy more property where I am and self-manage, but my market has gotten a bit too expensive for that to work realistically. Instead, I put $150,000 into two syndication deals. One is an apartment complex in Indianapolis. The hope here is to make a return on current undermarket rents while fixing it up and raising rents over the next 5 years. At that point, depending on market conditions, the managers of the deal will decide whether or not to re-finance and return principle or sell and divy out the profits between investors. In the meantime, investors should receive some return quarterly of around 8-10% on average with hope for 15% or better when the deal is closed. The second syndication is currently raw land in NV that a developer will be building out into a townhouse community and selling individual units over the next 3ish years.  The investment here is for a 15% return paid on the back end with a share of profits from the sales.
The last $50,000 was invested with a note provider. I chose a property in Philadelphia that a turnkey provider needed a loan on and was set up with a note that will pay out 9% per month over a 5 year term.

Anyone have any better ideas?

[Matt Maurice]

When you have $200k cash, how can your local market be "getting too expensive?". I'm sure what that actually means is the cashflow or COC return is lower than what you find ideal, but personally I think folks jump ship from their local market WAY too fast. Syndications can be great & passive, but there are a ton of people doing them these days and I'm inclined to think not all are qualified. Any development deal is inherently risky and should have an appropriate upside to account for the risk.

Now back to the backyard piece... there is no market that you will ever know better than the one you live in. There is no property manager that can do as good a job as a professional self-managed investor. Even if you don't intend to manage it yourself, being local gives you a lot more control over repairs, maintenance and setting cap-ex expectations. Expensive markets tend to get expensiver (ok not a word, but roll with it). A low COC can be incredibly insignificant to the power of appreciation & leverage. All those folks that bought $400k properties 4 years ago that are now worth $500-$600k are taking their appreciation to the bank... to buy more property.