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Is the Risk Priced In Rental Properties’ Amazing Returns? Part 1

February 12, 2018

risk priced in rental property

I found a twenty dollar bill on the ground this week in Golden Gate Park.

Guess what I did?

I PICKED IT UP!

I didn’t assume it was too good to be true – that it wasn’t real otherwise one of the homeless people would have picked it up already.

I didn’t assume it had feces on it rendering it way less appealing than a normal $20 bill.

And I certainly didn’t fixate on the downside of bending over to pick it up, hurting my back to the tune of a $5k hospital bill and an irreparable life-long injury.

Yet these are the kinds of excuses you hear from people about investing in rental properties.

Extremely smart people state that the risk is priced in to rental property returns and explore no further.

What’s at Stake

This isn’t a matter of finding $20. This is your financial well being, whatever that means to you – retiring early, paying for your kids college, exotic vacations, you name it.

We will thoroughly dig into numbers in Part 2, but I believe you can expect over a 25% yearly return on low cost rental properties.

Humans don’t have great intuition when it comes to exponentials. You’ve probably heard the “how thick is a piece of paper folded in half 100 times?”

Investment returns are exponential as well. So instead of intuition, let’s visualize what is at stake.

Let’s compare investing $100k in the stock market with a generous 10% yearly return vs 25%, over 20 years.

10% vs 25%

That’s a huge difference! $673k vs $8.7M.

If there is one time to not be intellectually lazy, this is it. So let’s take a closer look.

Is the Risk Priced In Rental Property Returns?

When someone says the risk is priced in, they are stating that the reason the returns are greater is because it is balanced out by the risk of losing money.

Imagine a roulette wheel with 36 numbers and no zero. Betting on red, black, even, or odd pays 2 to 1. Betting on a single number pays 36 to 1.

roulette wheel

Of course betting a single number has much greater returns, let’s bet there!

Not so fast bucko – it comes with more risk. You will lose so often that it balances out – your expected rate of return is exactly the same as betting red.

Back to rental properties. If you state the risk is priced in without calculating anything, you are stating a belief in the efficient-market hypothesis.

What is the Efficient-Market Hypothesis?

Without getting too technical, it states that all information is priced in relative to risk in an efficient market.

The $20 bill intro ran through some comedic extrapolations of the efficient-market hypothesis.

In other words if I see something that is too good to be true (free $20) in an efficient market (out there in public), there is either information I’m missing that others know (feces) or risk I’m not accounting for correctly (hurt back).

You could state that I had an information advantage – I saw the $20 bill. The whole market didn’t have access to that information, just me.

In other words, believers in the efficient-market hypothesis think it is possible to generate higher returns accounting for risk, but you need some sort of advantage.

I challenge you to not be mentally lazy and just assume the risk is perfectly priced in to rental property returns. Here are some of the advantages that let you generate greater returns.

Advantage 1 – Your Effort

It is a pain in the butt purchasing real estate.

You don’t just go on E*TRADE and a few clicks later have your $20k invested.

No no no – it takes at least a month involving piles of paperwork and lawyers. However, if the Real estate loan is sanctioned at the earliest or the respective party has the required funds with them, the process could be relatively simpler. Also, the good news is it has been done many times and is fairly mechanical after you have done it once.

But the really good news is that this keeps people out. Their laziness is your gain.

Advantage 2 – Government Encouragement

A tax code and other policies are basically a set of incentives designed to encourage certain actions from the populace.

The US government encourages individuals to own rental properties by handing out free money. It’s up to you to take advantage of it.

There is obvious tax stuff like deductions on real expenses like interest payments and fake expenses like depreciation.

Even better – a whole government agency is set up to provide cheap leverage to investors. Leverage is how you can achieve such incredible returns. (And it can be safe. Not trying to time a market like Miami, rather going for slow and steady boring cities with jobs like Memphis. See: The Thing Most Investors Don’t Understand About Leverage)

Usually only banks and big corporations have access to investment leverage like this. This is the one area an Average Joe can do it. Wahoo!

It is way affordable too. The interest rate on a credit card is around 20%. If you get a personal loan or a small business loan, I doubt you can find under 10%. And you’d have a max of 5 years to pay that back.

On a rental property it is only 5% and you have 30 years to pay it back. Isn’t that absurd in comparison?

Advantage 3 – It Isn’t an Efficient Market

The US real estate market is pretty decent at sharing information. There are things like the MLS and clear ownership through deeds.

But it isn’t perfect.

The main disruption to the efficiency is foreclosures. If someone can’t pay their bills, they get kicked out of the home and suddenly the bank owns the property. The bank doesn’t want to own a rental property (see #5 for why), so they get rid of it as fast as possible at a discount.

Other disruptions are properties that require a lot of work, which limits the willing buyers and drops the price even more than the repairs will cost. Or people who for whatever reason don’t want to go through the long 60+ day regular process of selling a home and want to unload it for cash now. This is easy to do if you use companies like Elite Home Solutions who can Sell Your House Fast in Raleigh, NC, although there are many places that offer this service in other areas across the country. Other methods are to flip homes to speed up this selling process.

There are people more than willing to take advantage of this. They put in the work to discover the deals, do the repairs, and flip it to someone like me.

Thanks to the inefficiencies in the market, everyone is happy!

Advantage 4 – Patience is Rewarded

The time frame of most investments is incredibly short.

i want it now

The stock market is all about quarterly earnings. The long-term investment firms of VC and private equity are max 7 years.

In order to get the best value for your investment, it is definitely recommended that you get in touch with a professional like Lincoln Frost who has the utmost experience when it comes to private equity.

Why is it important? Well, you are building wealth to retire decades from now.

Is that an advantage? Perhaps, especially if it keeps others away.

The expected return after 1 year of a rental property is likely negative, considering the closing costs and tenant placement expenses. It just isn’t a good option to exit the investment after 1 year.

After 5 years? Maybe. But that might be more of a crap shoot on market timing and the transaction costs are still a significant chunk of the profits.

You really have to be in it for the long-haul and willing to ride out the whole cycle.

I bet you can – aren’t you investing in a 401k or IRA that you can’t touch until you are 59.5?

Advantage 5 – It’s Small Bananas

If you remember only one advantage, this is the one.

Sophisticated investors take advantage of market inefficiencies and use them to their advantage.

The return vs effort on single family home investments is great for your personal portfolio, but insignificant for a large fund with millions of dollars.

It takes too much effort that makes it impossible to invest their entire fund in rental properties. And even if they can get a 30% return on just 1% of their portfolio, that still isn’t worth their effort.

A big shot portfolio manager won’t spend his time picking up pennies, even if it is free money.

It just doesn’t scale.

Perhaps it was a little disingenuous of me to show a chart earlier climbing 25% per year all the way to $8M. When you have over say $500k invested, the simple single family home strategy will have to change. The potential returns are lowered when leverage is reduced.

What a great problem to look forward to!

Don’t Take My Word For It, Calculate

I hope this article makes you reconsider your assumption that the risk is priced in rental properties’ amazing returns.

We looked at 5 potential advantages that you have, even if it is an efficient market.

But we didn’t put numbers to it. How much of the return is simply the priced risk? How much of it is market inefficiencies?

In Part 2 I am going to run some numbers to try to answer that question.

Yet it won’t matter one smidgen if you don’t first believe:

  1. The stakes are important enough for you to spend brainpower on this
  2. There are theoretically advantages you have even without any real estate experience

So let’s discuss – leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Image: winnifredxoxo
Image: eatsmilesleep

Filed Under: Mindset, The Approach

Learning from Landlords of the Poor

December 17, 2017

Learning from Landlords of the Poor

Information is dangerous.

Unless you know what to do with it that is.

Just look at Anakin Skywalker. He learned the power of The Force and was a straight A student. But he took that information and drew the wrong conclusion from it. Make a few bad decisions and before you know it, you are Darth Vader.

I guess Star Wars is on my mind…

I’m reading Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City which tells the stories of the poorest tenants in Milwaukee. But is also interestingly tells the story of the landlords – who are these people and how does it work being a landlord of the poor?

Let’s make sure we use this information for good.

You Don’t Have to Landlord!

This is the number one thing I want to shout out to people.

Investing in rental properties does not mean you have to be a landlord – separate those in your mind!

So so sooooo many people delay or decide not to invest in rental properties because they don’t want to deal with tenants. YOU DON’T HAVE TO – YOU CAN PAY SOMEONE ELSE TO DO IT FOR YOU! For instance, Abode Manchester letting agents can take up all the tasks required to deal with tenants. From making the tenancy legal to carrying out regular rent reviews, they can help landlords to minimize voids that can cost you money.

If more people understood that, they would take action and benefit from the incredible returns in rental property investing. Presently, there has been a rise in the demand for rental properties. For instance, many people are known to search for houses for rent northern beaches on the Internet to find properties that can be leased. That is why this could be a good time for landlords to benefit from the investments in rental properties.

Moreover, when you learn more about being a landlord, don’t put yourself in the landlord’s shoes and think “I don’t want to do that”.

Use it as information about the role of professional landlords. Appreciate how difficult it is dealing with tenants and how there are big differences between good and bad landlords.

Many Different Price Points Are Possible

The book Evicted is about C class properties. The worst of the worst.

These would be the ones you purchase for $40k move-in-ready and rent for $550 a month. Great ratios, more issues.

The book goes to show that you can make money that way.

do what I want

Cartman has the correct response to this info: “wha-eva – I’ll do what I want!”

That’s not the only way to get a return. The properties I discuss are quite different: B- minimum, $80k+ that rent for $850+ a month.

The number one way to reduce tenant issues? Buy properties that attract better tenants. The typical tenant in the C class property makes $20-30k a year and relies a lot on government programs. They jump from odd job to odd job and putting food on the table each week is far from a given. (The book even goes into more C- “slum-lording” territory where the only income of $10-15k a year comes from the government.)

The typical tenant in the B- class property makes $40k a year and has a much more steady job. Not incredible career opportunities nor a ton of job security, but certainly employable.

Which one do you want to rent to?

Some Lessons from the Book

Give an inch and they’ll take a mile.

If every day is a struggle, you are willing to cut some people down to feed your kids. That’s the cold hard truth. Rent is by far their biggest expense so often their landlord becomes yet another victim in the struggle.

If a landlord allows a partial payment once, it will happen regularly. If the tenant is planning on moving out, good luck collecting any more rent. They know the only option the landlord has is evicting them, which they are going to move anyways and takes time. Free rent for a while But by far my largest learning from the book is how ineffective communication is between the landlord and tenant. Wow it is bad. Zero hope of phone or any type of digital communication. The landlord has to go in person often to collect rent, pounding on the door until they finally open. No proactive communication about an issue. An incredible number of the issues are minor and could be solved pretty painlessly. But it sure doesn’t happen.

Maybe the tenant is waiting for a broken window to be fixed and doesn’t pay the rent waiting for it to be fixed first. Issues like this can make renting a house difficult. If the tenants find themselves desperate for a window, they might be able to take matters into their own hands by contacting a replacement windows austin company, or one more local to the rented property. However, tenants need to be careful as this could lead to eviction. Ensure the contract is checked before beginning any work on the property. Then the landlord will contact broken window replacement specialists to help deal with the property issue.

Maybe they pay for something or do some work on the property and decide to deduct it from the rent. The landlord doesn’t see it that way and thinks they are paying short.

Communicate, communicate, communicate.

Interesting Read, but Draw the Right Conclusions

You can learn from the landlords of the poor, but make sure you learn the right things.

Don’t turn into Darth Vader…

Filed Under: Mindset, The Approach

I’m $252k in Debt and Don’t Plan on Paying it Off

November 8, 2017

You always hear about people trying to get out of debt. They don’t want to be in debt, and to be honest it’s not something a lot of people want either. Which is why many of you will probably be happy to learn about debt resolution here (this can help you if you are in a bit of a pickle).

But then there’s me and I’m not trying to get out of debt.

I’m trying to get IN debt.

But I’m talking about good debt. Debt that earns me money, not crush me under a pile of increasing payments I can never hope to make. However, this isn’t always the case for everyone. They lookup how consolidating your debt is needed, and take the best advice they can get from the professionals.

I’m talking about mortgage debt on cash flow rental properties.

The Best Debt in the World

Before writing this article I traveled the world examining all kinds of loans and debt, including the payment terms and interest rates.

But I do know what we have in the United States housing industry is absurdly good and you can’t get it in other industries or countries.

Here is a pile of money, just be sure to pay it back in 30 years ok?

Well a 30 year loan must come with a crazy interest rate right? No, it is incredibly low due to a ton of confidence in continued demand for housing and the US dollar, great price discovery, and government handouts. I can even find help from other services, like those seen on Dustin Dimisa’s Facebook page for instance.

Luckily we don’t have to understand exactly why, we just have to jump on a great deal when we see it.

I’m Not Going to Pay it Off

Here’s the important twist – I’m not going to pay it off! If I had to pay it off, I surely would be looking towards something like crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe for answers on how to get out of debt as it seems people have effectively used the platform for this purpose in the past.

Don’t misread that though. Payments will be made, but not by me, and not with the intention of paying off the loan as soon as possible.

You see, the property is rented out and generates a positive cash flow. The tenant pays me around $1000 a month and I give $600 of it to the bank. The payment is technically from me, but I’m just passing along the tenant’s money.

Unlike your credit card, it is actually a good idea to pay the minimum every month. Any extra money gets reinvested elsewhere, taking full advantage of the cheap leverage.

Heck, I don’t even plan on paying it off within 30 years. While I’m still young and working, I’m going to refinance my equity into more properties.

most investors don't understand leveragelet's double down

My Debt in 2017: $134k to $252k

One of my greatest accomplishments in 2017 was going from $134k in debt to $252k.

It didn’t take too much work, just 2 actions: a cash out refinance and purchasing a new property.

How I Locked Up My Third Rental Property Investment

I now have mortgage balances of $97k, $82k, and $71k.

I collect rent payments each month of $1000, $1020, and $1100.

I make monthly mortgage payments of $760, $560, and $598.

$3120 comes in, $1918 goes out. The rest covers other expenses like property management, repairs, and expected vacancy. Anything left over I get to keep!

Isn’t All That Debt Risky?

What number determines the risk of a loan – the principle left to be paid or the monthly payment amount?

Let’s say someone gave you a $1M loan over 100 years at 3%. What is the scary part, that you have to pay off $1M over the course of 100 years? Or that your payments are $2632 a month?

Taken to that extreme, it is obvious that the monthly payment is what matters. If you can consistently make the payment, paying down the principle over many decades will easily happen.

So the question of risk for me – can I make $1918 in mortgage payments if s hits the fan?

Yes. I should have rent money coming in. I have several months of cash reserves in case all properties go vacant at the same time. I have a job that allows me to save additional money. I have other assets I could sell in the worst case scenario to continue making payments.

Why Do it Though?

If I can stay in the game for decades, I’ll make a killing on leveraged appreciation even if it is just at the rate of inflation.

I put down 20% of the money for a rental property, I get 100% of the appreciation benefit. Call it 3% a year.

Since it is leveraged 5x, I get a 15% return on appreciation alone! Then you add in the other benefits of the tenant paying down the principle, small amounts of cash flow, and tax benefits.

That’s why I believe you can earn 20-25% a year on a sub-$1M portfolio while limiting risk. It takes a little effort, but is well worth it!

How Much Good Debt Do You Want?

Don’t think of the principle balance though. Think of it as the monthly payment.

The payment is a function of the length and rate of the loan. As we saw, both of those are unbelievably in your favor for a rental property mortgage.

What if the debt came packaged with an investment that produces cash flow? Do you think cash reserves, other income and assets would make monthly payments safe?

Do you think there is such a thing as good debt?

Filed Under: Mindset

Why I’m Kicking Myself Over Bitcoin – Recognizing Unbalanced Upside

October 23, 2017

Is there a lesson that you are forced to learn over and over in life?

There is for me. I can identify it when I see someone else going through it, but for some reason when it is me, I have no idea.

I’m talking unbalanced upside. A situation where the downside is capped and the upside, while maybe a small likelihood, is limitless. A small percentage times infinity is still infinity.

Infinity is good, you want infinity. So let’s examine a couple situations where this has come to mind recently for me: Bitcoin and dating.

Add Value, Capture the Benefit

The typical lens through which I like to view business and investments: add value and capture the benefit.

You can’t assume just because you add value, someone is going to pay you for it. You have to ensure you capture the benefit too, often by agreeing to it in the first place.

“I will do X for you, and you will pay me $Y.” That’s how a standard job works as well as running your own business. You don’t just show up at an employer and start doing stuff, hoping that will pay you at the end of the day. That would be silly.

Ideally investments follow the same add value, capture benefit line of reasoning. “I will loan you $X, and you will pay me back $Y in Z days.” More variables at play here, but fundamentally your investment of time or money should add value to the person, company, or situation.

This way of viewing investments is logical, but not really how the world works.

You buy an index fund that purchases shares in many different companies. Let’s look at just one of those companies, Boeing. Since you invested in Boeing, you are giving them money to make new planes and they’ll give you back more money later? No. Not even close.

Boeing does sometimes bring new shares to the market to raise money for making planes. However now the shares are just traded around and they offer a small dividend to shareholders. So you prop up their market cap in exchange for a couple percentage points a year in dividends and a gamble on where the share price is going next.

There is also the lens of supply and demand. Maybe that is a more accurate way to view the stock market?

Supply is easy to understand and predict. Demand? Forecasting the hype for something? Is that what “investing” boils down to? That sounds more like gambling.

As you can see, I generally like to keep things simple and not get caught up in forecasting hype when investing.

Bitcoin “Investing”

The section above is basically an excuse. That’s the default way I view the world, but shouldn’t be the only way.

I’m plugged in to the tech world and have a Computer Science background. Reading articles on websites like aboutbitcoin.io was fascinating to me and often linked up nicely with my Computer Science background. I first started hearing about Bitcoin back in 2012, way before most of the world had ever heard of the word cryptocurrency.

It was kicking around $10 to $15 back then. For months on end, not exactly a rocketship, there was plenty of time to think it through. If only I used websites similar to bitcoin.com.au at the time?

But I never seriously considered putting any money into it. It was just a cool idea that I checked the price of every once in a while.

Here is what I should have noticed back in 2012 and early 2013 – the upside was nearly unlimited.

We aren’t talking about a potential 20% return if things go well. We are talking a decent chance of a 10x return. A small chance of a 100x return. Orders of magnitude. This is why so many people are currently investing in bitcoin traders similar to bitcoin loophole check out this bitcoin loophole scam review if you’re interested in learning more.

Why? The hype was minimal, essentially limited to techies back then, and it had all the components of being buzzworthy once the word got out.

If I sat down at the end of 2012 and I was forced to guess the likelihood of a 10x return within 5 years, I might have said 20%. 100x return maybe 1%.

Decently low, but let’s do the math.

20% times 10x + 1% times 100x + 79% times 0x (let’s say the rest the time Bitcoin goes away and is worth nothing). Expected value was tripling my money in 5 years.

Note: Turns out those hypothetical end of 2012 estimates were low too. Since then Bitcoin is up closer to 400x!

With something so risky (79% chance of losing money) it would not be a good idea to put a significant chunk of money into it. Good chance you lose it all, even if the expected value is a 3x return.

But you can put 5-10% of your portfolio into riskier investments. Cap your downside while opening yourself up to the sweet upside.

For me in 2012 I could have put $1k into Bitcoin and maybe $100 a month for a while. $2k in Bitcoin at even $50 each is 40 Bitcoin… which is worth well over $200k right now! Imagine being able to gamble with 200 hundred thousand dollars worth of bitcoin, funfair Wrote an analysis between Fun token and Bitcoin regarding their bitcoin casino, considering the world of cryptocurrency is evolving at an incredibly fast rate with everyone trying to jump in on the bandwagon it was only right cryptocurrency casinos were created.

So even though I don’t consider it investing, I should have realized the unbalanced upside made it worth doing with a small chunk of my resources.

Dating – Recognizing Unbalanced Upside in Others

It seems so obvious when I’m not the one directly involved. Here is an example that has nothing to do with money, but everything to do with unbalanced upside.

I have a single friend who wants to fall in love and get married one day. But man is it brutal going on first dates and making small talk. Even worse is the process of getting to the first date, filtering through Tinder morons trying too hard to be clever.

Most Fridays, exhausted from a long work week and with the incredible amount of good television these days, my friend stays home on the couch. Much better than another disaster first date.

What is the one activity that will bring the most happiness over many decades? Finding the one person you want to spend your life with. Speaking from experience, it is totally awesome.

My friend realizes it too. Yet the continued effort in dating is too much to muster.

From my vantage point, it is easy to identify this as a situation with limited short-term downside and infinite long-term upside. Even if it is just a 1% chance of a positive first-date, that should be enough.

Once identified, it should be easy to consistently devote a percentage of resources to the cause. You don’t have to push all in, as we saw with Bitcoin, simply week in and week out devote 5% to 10% of your effort to it.

Consistency, capped downside, unbalanced upside.

Are There More Situations With Unbalanced Upside?

What are the other possibilities for a capped downside with an unbalanced upside?

Seriously, I want to hear from you. As I mentioned, I am bad at identifying these things in the moment and think it is easier for an outside observer.

What other situations am I missing?

Photo: Anton Lindstrom

Filed Under: Mindset

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