Bump.
For those who invest in apartment buildings, would you say Matt H's post above is accurate?
If you buy an apartment building you could afford to retire literially overnight. So here's what you do.
Do a home equity line of credit. Add that to whatever savings you have to invest Liquidate all other non essential assets and investments Put all your funds together and start looking for an apartment building to buy. The more units the better. 10% down buys you a building so 100k buys a 1m dollar building any day of the week. But try to stretch your money as far as possible. ie: get a first and a second mortgage and then your down payment all combine to purchase the largest building you possibly can. That way you can retire.
I don't know why more people do this. I know so many people who could do this and retire overnight, but the fear and what they don't know holds them back. But by simply putting your money to work for you, and then getting a huge mortgage which is all good debt working for you, all that money working for you means you don't have to work. All you do is manage the odd issue that arises with the building which might take up 2 or 3 hours a month at very most. I have 1 residential manager that deals with everything in the building. For that he gets a 80% discount on his rent. But I don't have to lift a finger. On average all I do is talk to the guy for about 5 minutes once a month. Plus mailing off perhaps 1 letter a month to pay for a carpet cleaning or some small bill. It's ridiculous how much time it actually takes to maintain the building once you got someone in there running it for you.
That way you have all the free time in the world to travel, stay home, do what you want, spend more time with your family, work on more apartment deals and the list of benefits goes on and on. Then once a month watch as you get a big fat rental deposit go into your account.
For example:
On one 48 unit apartment I have the monthly gross income is $35,000. After all expenses I'm left with $10,000 Liquid spendable cash. Plus I'm making $10,000 per month in asset appreciation, plus I'm making $3000 per month in mortgage pay down, and I haven't factored in tax depreciation. So in total I'm making at least $23,000 per month on that building.
You can go out right now and do this too. Just buy a building using a 1st mortgage, a seller 2nd mortgage and whatever you can put together. Because once you have one you'll no longer have to work if you don't want too.
Think about, this is not rocket science. I didn't even graduate from high school. So what's stopping you from doing it? My brother works in IT which he had to study for years for a degree to get into. And the amount of knowledge, effort and work he has to put into that to make just $70k per year is crazy. Plus taxes must kill the average person who end up paying 1/3rd of that in taxes. With a building in a corporation you only end up paying about 18% on your net profits.
The alternative is that you go on working 40 hours per week plus commute time until you die. Man that does not sound very attractive to me. Unless your job is like giving back rubs to Pamela Anderson then how could you love your job that much? I just don't see it.
And buying a building is easy too. It's gotta be about as easy to do a learning to drive a car. And if you've bought a house well then you already know the process, so what's stopping you.
One last thing...most heart attacks happen on Monday morning between the hours of 6am and 9am. That's the time that the alarm clock goes off to start the week at jobs people absolutely hate going too. But they're literally slaves to their jobs because they don't know any other way of making a living. When infact by simply putting their money to work for them, they wouldn't have to slave away anymore. It's just sad how uneducated about the power of money and leverage most people are.
Anyway good luck to you.
Edited: 06/26/2010 at 03:31AM
