Robert Leonard  01:09

For those in the audience who aren’t familiar with you, give us an overview of your background and how you got into real estate.

Ben Leybovich  01:17

I’m a violinist by training, and I was diagnosed with a condition when I was in college. The doctors said I’d probably want to do something else because it was an autoimmune condition that impacted physiology.   Playing the violin uses fine motor skills, but I can’t do that. So I needed to find another way. I had to figure out what to do with life, first of all; and secondly, figure out what to do with money. And so, I started studying and eventually arrived at real estate.

In that sense, my story may be a little bit different because most of us just want to quit our job because we don’t want to be underneath somebody, answering to somebody. We want to make more money or what have you. That’s all good. All of that is very legitimate, very cool. I had a necessity though. It was less of a desire and more of a necessity. I had to figure out some ways to do that didn’t require me to show up necessarily and punching the clock, at least not in the traditional sense of work, so that’s how I ended up in real estate.

Robert Leonard  02:19

Why specifically real estate though? There are a lot of different ways that you could invest, right? You could invest in the stock market or you could start a business. You could do things like that. So why real estate?

Ben Leybovich  02:30

Well, it’s very simple. To start a business, you have to be smart. To invest in stocks, you need money. What can I tell you? I was a violinist not quite graduating from college. It was one of the best schools in the nation, but still. So that right there is a good question, and that’s exactly the answer. In real estate, you have other people’s money, leverage, creative finance, and the inefficient market characteristics of an inefficient market. You have all those things working for real state that are not as easy or plentiful to come by, or easy to execute, in other markets. Yes, you can have leverage in stocks. You can do all that stuff, but it’s harder. Real estate just lends itself to being creative, starting with nothing, and doing and making something.

Robert Leonard  03:21

What did the early days of your portfolio look like?

Ben Leybovich  03:25

Nowadays, I buy apartment complexes, so 100 units and up. But in the early days, I started like everybody else with single-family. I figured out that for me it didn’t work so well. I went on to small multifamilies, like duplexes, fourplexes, sixplexes, and tenplexes. I stayed in that for about a decade, picking up intellectual worth and moved on from there.

Robert Leonard  03:50

And so, I want to start our conversation today by talking briefly about the strategy of house hacking, and then I want to go into some of the other strategies that you’ve implemented and recommend for new investors. Let’s start with: What is luxury house hacking?

Ben Leybovich  04:03

The concept of house hacking is age-old, but the beautiful thing about real estate is that it doesn’t just solve one problem. It has the capacity to solve many financially related problems. House hacking for me and luxury house hacking was a function of, “Hey, I’m relocating my family from Ohio to Phoenix, Arizona. Why? Because I’m tired of snow. I’m tired of sleet. I’m tired of my fingers falling off from scraping windows at 11 PM after work in the wintertime.”

I was done with that. The kids were growing up. They needed opportunities. We didn’t have those opportunities in the little town that I was living in. So we moved to Phoenix, but we didn’t move to squeeze ourselves. We sold the house in Ohio. We knew we would want a better house in Phoenix. We knew we would want a bigger house with a pool with travertine, with nice showers, and with all the things we didn’t have in Ohio. We were ready to live it up a little bit, but I didn’t want to pay for it.

And so, conceptually the whole house hacking principle comes into play when you say, “Hey, you can have what you want, as long as you’re not the one paying for it.” And this isn’t just true with housing. This is true with everything. You know, most of your audience probably have read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, right? Robert Kiyosaki’s famous. To coin terms, here’s an asset over here, and here’s a liability over here. If you want liability, great. I’m not gonna fault you for it. Buy an asset so it makes money, then take that money and pay for the liability that you want. Pay for the doodads that you want. This is what a house hack is.

I bought myself a house that pays for itself. It pays for itself by way of having an attached dwelling unit (ADU) or a mother-in-law suite. In Arizona, we call them casita. The only thing luxury about it is the fact that it’s a nice house. I didn’t want the money for the last house to come out of my pocket. As long as it’s coming out of somebody else’s pocket, I’m all good for it. I’m good with a large and nice house.

The concept I want your audience to understand, and this is what you understand as an entrepreneur, is that for anything you want but can’t afford, you just have to figure out how to make somebody else pay for. You can’t afford it because you’re broke, because you’re an entrepreneur. Of course, you’re broke. The majority of us don’t make it. It’s partially probably because we try to pay for everything ourselves.

House hacking works this way, but the intellectual jump you have to make is if you start with Rich Dad, and you say, “Okay, so I have to buy this asset so it pays for my doodad.” The intellectual jump, the next step is “Okay, how can I skip a step? Can I like take this doodad and twist it upside down so it itself becomes its own asset? Can it itself pay for thy self?” Therefore, you don’t have to buy two things. You just need to buy one. Welcome to house hack. Instead of buying a rental house over here, generating cash flow on it, and then throwing that cash flow to pay for a nicer house for my family to live in, I just went ahead and bought a nicer house, to begin with. But I twisted it upside down, so it generates income and pays for itself back and forth. The point is, here’s a doodad. Can you be creative enough to look at that from a different focal point and ask yourself, “How can I take this doodad and twist it upside down, put it on its head, and make it into its own asset, and then I can have it?”

Robert Leonard  07:44

In that specific deal, was that ADU able to pay for the entire property?

Ben Leybovich  07:51

I still live here. I still live in this house, and no it doesn’t. It probably pays about 50-70% on a monthly basis.

Robert Leonard  08:01

So who is this strategy good for it? It sounds like it’s probably good for a lot of people, but who might it not also be good for?

Ben Leybovich  08:08

Well, listen. I have two kids. They’re 10 now. When we moved into this house, they were seven. A lot of people say, “Oh, well. I can’t do it because I have a wife and she’s not going to want to have somebody over here.” And this is true. That’s why I did a luxury house.

I did a house hack where I’m living over here at my house. Now we have a courtyard and have the ADU attached by way of a garage wall so that it doesn’t share a wall with my house. It has its own private entrance. So realistically, when people come in for five days, I don’t even know them. I don’t even know who they are. I don’t see them half of the time. It’s all systematized, more or less, and communication happens via email, and it’s just right there. I don’t have to deal with the leases. I don’t have to deal with the prospect of evicting somebody. I don’t have to deal with collecting rent. They pay with a credit card through Airbnb or Homeaway, and the money just shows up in my account. That’s just fine with me.

But this strategy requires a specific kind of house because was I going to ask my wife to compress her lifestyle? If you’re young, like you, for instance, if you wanted to rent out your bedroom, you could. God bless. If you wanted to rent out your bedroom and have somebody sleeping on the sofa in the living room, you could. If that’s what you want to do, great. But am I going to do that? I have two kids who, at the time, were seven years old. My wife followed me to Arizona and wanted me to buy apartment complexes. She didn’t want to share our house with strangers every three to five nights. So the luxury component in house hack refers to, “Hey, we like the idea, but we’re not willing to compress. Our family’s not willing to compress our lifestyle to accommodate this idea, so can you take this idea of house hacking, and bend it to accommodate us instead?” That’s another concept I want your audience to think about.

Everybody always looks at themselves and say, “Okay, here’s my circumstance. Based on the circumstance, is it financially affordable timewise, or whatever?” The question is wrong. The question should be, “Here’s my circumstance, but here’s what I want to do. But what I want to do requires a different set of circumstances.” So change your circumstance. You’re only alive once. Why wouldn’t you change your circumstance so you can do exactly what you want?

Robert Leonard  10:29

So is there anyone that house hack wouldn’t be good for?

Ben Leybovich  10:33

Am I going to do it for the rest of my life? Probably not because there’s a point when it’s just not important to make money. When you get to that point in life, where the money is unimportant, then you don’t do anything for the expressed purpose of money, be it starting a business or doing house hack or buying apartments or whatever. If you have more than enough to your definition of what enough is, you don’t do it anymore.

So, can it be done with anybody? Yes, my wife sold the house to a couple of retirees. They came to town for a couple of years to help out their daughter who got a divorce. She had kids and they wanted to be close by, so they bought a casita house. They moved into the casita and rented out the whole house, and put property management in place, so they didn’t have to deal with any of that. This was a couple of retirees, so age is not a limiting factor. Time is not a limiting factor because you can outsource everything. I don’t, but you could.

So, who’s it bad for? Exactly what makes it bad? I think it’s just a desire thing. If you don’t want anybody in your house aside for your family, I completely concur with that. I appreciate that. Don’t do it. But aside from that, if you’re going to go out and buy your first rental, why not do this instead? A: You can get a better loan because it’s a primary residence. You can get it with a lower downpayment, better rates, and terms. B: It takes about three times as much money as a regular rental. That’s a function of the velocity of money. The velocity of money is a lot faster, and that produces high returns.

So, as a first investment, a house is absolutely perfect. Maybe it’s not perfect when you’re renting out your bedroom and share a bathroom and a kitchen with some stranger. Maybe that’s not perfect. But the style that I do where we don’t share any spaces, where they’re over there and I’m over here, I don’t see how that’s not perfect for anybody.

Robert Leonard  12:36

That sounds like it really could work for anyone. It sounds like it’s a matter of mindset. Put yourself in a situation you’re okay with. Maybe you don’t have to live in a five-bedroom house and live with four roommates and house hack that way. You could do a luxury house hack, as you said. There’s a way to do it for everyone, it’s just finding the way that works for you.

Ben Leybovich  12:55

Yeah, there’s a way to do it for everyone. But if you stop your thinking right there, and “What is there doesn’t work for me, therefore I can’t do anything about it,” Then you’re done. You’re the antithesis of an entrepreneur. If you’re going to be an entrepreneur, you’ll look at that problem and say, “Okay, I can’t do this, but what can I do to achieve a similar result?”

Robert Leonard  13:17

You mentioned the concept of the velocity of money. That piqued my interest. Let’s dive into a little bit. What do you mean by that?

Ben Leybovich  13:24

Well, it’s faster. When people ask, I described money in the following way. They call it cash flow, with flow being the operative word. Money has to move. In a debt-based economy, money has to move. When debt freezes up, money freezes up, velocity comes to a standstill, and our economy shuts down. That’s what we experienced a few years back with the Lehman Brothers and everything else. That whole fiasco. That was a perfect example of there was no velocity of money. Nobody was borrowing and nobody was lending. Everything just came to a halt.

Money is a river. You are fishermen. You’re kind of like a filter. Imagine lowering a 2 ft. x 2 ft. mesh filter into the river. Depending on how fine your filter is, that’s what it catches. Depending on how careful and how skillfully you can maneuver that filter relative to the flow of money or flow of the river, that’s how much you catch. Making money or anything financial is a function of seeing yourself as a filter, understanding that there’s a velocity that’s happening, and putting yourself in the middle. And that’s where you educate yourself, to find out how more effectively to put yourself in the middle of the fastest stream of money you can, because the faster the stream of money, the more of it settles down into your filter. Hopefully, that imagery helps somebody to kind of conceptualize it.

Instead of getting paid monthly, as you would on a typical rental, here, you’re getting paid 3x to 6x a month depending on your set-up with Airbnb and all those platforms. You’re getting paid a nightly rate, so of course, you’re going to make much money, so you don’t have to generate $1,200.

I’ll give you an example. We have an apartment complex that I’m launching Airbnb on right now. This is the third unit. A typical apartment studio in that complex in Phoenix rents for about $750. They’re generating between $1,800 and $2,000 a month as furnished rentals. Now, I actually rent them out as 30-night stays because that’s what I want to do in my apartment setting, but because the the the pricing is calibrated on a nightly rate, it makes twice to three times as much money. So that’s a good tangible example of the effect of the velocity of money. People come in and need a place. They’re willing to pay a premium. When they leave, the next guy comes in, and he’s also willing to pay a premium. So, when you operate at a faster speed, you’re going to expect to make more money.

Robert Leonard  16:11

So why is the velocity of money specifically so much better with house hacking?

Ben Leybovich  16:15

You could just live in a duplex and rent the other half on a 12-month lease, but why would you if you can get $50 a night and make $1,500 in 30 days by renting it out in Airbnb? It’s up to you. It’s a little more work, yes, because it’s a business. You’re not talking about real estate anymore. You’re really talking about a different kind of business, but it works, so who cares?

Robert Leonard  16:42

Now I want to touch on a topic you wrote about. You wrote that there are about 20 ways to buy a house for $2,000 or less. I know a lot of people listening to the show today are new investors. I always get asked how to start investing with very little or no initial capital. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of material to unpack in those 20 ways, but give us a high overview of how someone can buy a house with $2,000 or less.

Ben Leybovich  17:07

What it basically boils down to is you need money to play in the real estate game, but it doesn’t have to be your own money. So the real question is, “What are the 20 ways in which you can bring outside money into your deal, and structure the deal so that it cost you $2,000 or less?” You can talk about partners, debt, or bridge. You can talk about a lot of things under that umbrella. By the way, that doesn’t really change very much when you get into much larger multi-million dollar assets. Conceptually, things stay very similar. But it all comes down to somebody else who has the money. How do you attract them to what you are doing so you don’t have to use your own money?

Robert Leonard  17:54

What do you think is the most effective but underutilized strategy for somebody to get started in real estate?

Ben Leybovich  18:01

House hacking!

Robert Leonard  18:02

Why do you think it’s so underutilized?

Ben Leybovich  18:04

Because it’s new. Because Robert Kiyosaki didn’t write about it and millions of people didn’t read about it. Because those people who have read about it think of it in the wrong way, but I think it’s the absolute best strategy for the new investor. A: The financing is better. B: The payment portal is better. C: The management is better. You’ve got somebody that you won’t have to evict. Why? Because it’s not a lease. They’re coming in for five days. It’s a service agreement. If you don’t like them, you won’t have to let them in ever again. So, are their snafus? Yeah, I haven’t had any, but I’m sure there are. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years, and it’s just pleasant.

Now, there are caveats to that. There are ways to do house hacking that are going to attract less problematic circumstances, and more problematic circumstances if you do it wrong. But that’s a whole new topic.

Robert Leonard  18:59

Let’s talk about your portfolio today. You mentioned you made that big offer today, but what does the rest of your portfolio look like? And why did you decide to leave the small multifamily space and start to scale into much larger apartment syndication?

Ben Leybovich  19:12

Well, what my portfolio looks like is I own apartment complexes. I own them with partners. I don’t wholly own them. I syndicate them, but my partner and I, we are the sponsors and we manage them. I also have a portfolio from the olden days that shows I still own a few units on my own.

Why did I go here? I think the intellectual worth is mostly why. Imagine you’re a guy getting up in the morning, with your hair still all over the place. You wake up first thing in the morning and go to the bathroom. You wash your hands and splash your face. Your eyes are bloodshot and you can’t even see. You see three of you in the mirror. As you look in the mirror, you suddenly realize “That dude is not the same dude he was yesterday.” It’s like that cop was full and you can’t stomach being that guy one more day. “I know too much, and can do so much more than the guy that was me yesterday did. So I don’t know exactly where to go now, but I can’t go back and do the same thing again as I did yesterday.” It’s that feeling or perspective on yourself that causes us to experiment and to jump in the rink and try.

For me, it was an unnatural illusion of intellectual worth that pushed me there. I just couldn’t be the guy that bought another fourplex or tenplex anymore. I just couldn’t do it. I saw myself differently at one point.

Robert Leonard  20:45

So you woke up one morning and realized, “I can’t buy these anymore. I need to go bigger.” What caused that?

Ben Leybovich  20:51

I felt that I had discovered everything I needed and learned everything that could be learned about how to play at one level. I could continue perpetuating that and would have done very fine. I could have bought more units. I could have continued to do the same old thing. But that’s not what life is about. You’re supposed to learn and get smarter, to get more efficient, more effective, and more intuitive even. That was it. I lose interest in stuff when I don’t feel I can learn anything more.

Robert Leonard  21:25

So how did you exactly make that jump from a fourplex or tenplex to much larger deals? What did that look like? How did you find partners? How did you experiment or learn that side of the business?

Ben Leybovich  21:39

It took five years. I don’t want to paint a picture of it being instant, like, boom, I snap my fingers, and I’m there. It took five years or so of me to study this. And still, I knew very little when I started. But it took a long time of developing intellectual worth, and then you just try and make offers, and experience the wonderful sensation of being under contract and having to come up with $3 million without having an idea where it’s going to come from. But believe in yourself and believe in your relationships, and go for it and do it.

Robert Leonard  22:14

Did you build relationships when you were buying the smaller deals, like those fourplexes and sixplexes, that you’re leveraging today to buy your larger deals?

Ben Leybovich  22:23

It was that, but I also write a lot. Over the last decade, I’ve written a lot. I’ve written on Bigger Pockets. I met a lot of people there. I’ve published books. I’ve sold courses online for dealing with real estate. I have several students. So it was a natural transition. I wasn’t necessarily planning on it working out this way. I didn’t say to myself, “Hey, maybe I’ll create a course and sell it to a bunch of students. Then a few of those students might want to invest in deals.” That wasn’t even within the realm of my thinking at that point.

Robert Leonard  22:58

If someone is a newer investor and has done a few deals on their own, and are looking to start raising outside capital from other investors, do you think it’s worthwhile for them to start putting content out on the internet? Whether it be articles, blog posts, or even posting on social media consistently?

Ben Leybovich  23:13

Yes. Does it help? Absolutely! You’re building your resume, so to speak. You’re building your network, and the best way to do it is to deliver value. Don’t do it for your needs, do it if you truly want to deliver value to your audience. If you really want to deliver value and do it, and your audience agrees with you, it’ll come back to you one way, in one shape or form or the other. You don’t know how or when or what but it will. But you also have to pay it forward.

Robert Leonard  23:49

Whether it was at the beginning or where you are now, what has been the biggest mistake that you’ve made in your real estate career? and what would you do differently if you could do it over?

Ben Leybovich  23:57

I would have started sooner. I probably would have gone bigger sooner. That would have probably happened if you move the entire timeframe up. I wish I would’ve started a few years earlier.

Robert Leonard  24:11

For those listening that are just getting started, maybe they should start going bigger sooner?

Ben Leybovich  24:15

No, you can only go bigger when you’re ready to go bigger. That moment of looking at yourself in the mirror and realizing you’re not the little guy anymore, that you’re the big guy, you just can’t write that check yet if you haven’t made it yet. But in your own mind, you know when you are already the big guy, at least bigger than you were yesterday. That’s a natural process. Now for some people, it might take three days, for other people it may take 15 years. However long it takes, it’s a process you can’t rush.

Robert Leonard  24:47

Awesome! Ben, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Where can the audience go to connect with you and learn from all the resources that you’ve put out there?

Ben Leybovich  24:55

www.justaskbenwhy.com. There are a lot of resources there.

Robert Leonard  25:04

All right, I’ll be sure to put links to the various different things that we’ve talked about throughout the conversation in the show notes, as well as the website that was just mentioned. You guys can go connect with Ben there.

Ben, thanks so much!

Ben Leybovich  25:16

My pleasure. Thank you!

Robert Leonard  25:17

Before we wrap up the show today, I want to answer two questions that I’ve been getting pretty frequently from people in our Facebook group, which is our community of everyone that likes to listen to the show and wants to connect with other like-minded investors.

The first question is about how I calculate returns on investment properties. I’ve talked about how, when I’m really looking for deals, I’m analyzing upwards of 10 to 20 deals a day. People are asking me how I’m able to do that, and still, get other things done. The way I’m able to do that is because I use rules of thumb when I’m calculating the returns from my rental properties.

When you’re calculating the numbers on a potential rental property, there are four big variables that you must estimate. Those four variables are the vacancy rate, capex, repair and maintenance, and property management. These numbers are going to vary from market to market, but there are some general rules of thumb that I’ve developed from investing in various markets across the United States. As you get more familiar with analyzing rental property deals, you’ll also learn the general rules of thumb for your markets that you’re investing in. By using rules of thumb, you can save a lot of time by eliminating deals that aren’t even close to your investing criteria.

When I was starting to analyze deals, I would spend 25-30 minutes on analyzing one deal. Now, I’ve gotten that analysis time down significantly, but also, I’m not wasting time on deals that don’t make sense to me. I used to do a full analysis from beginning to end, only to get to the end and realize the numbers aren’t even close. And so, I figured there had to be a rule of thumb or something I could use to eliminate that property right from the beginning.

The first thing I do is look at the 1% rule. And that says that the monthly gross rent, which is just the total monthly rents, you’re going to get in for that property, needs to be equal to at least 1% of the total purchase price. If you’re going to be purchasing a property for $100,000, you would like to look for a property that rents for at least $1,000 a month. Now, this is not a hard and fast rule. Just because a property meets this rule on the surface doesn’t mean I’m going to buy it. Again, it helps me eliminate those properties that aren’t even close.

If there’s a property that’s at 0.25% or even 0.5%, I know that that’s probably not going to be a good deal, so I don’t even waste my time looking at those. I only look at properties that are close to or at least exceed, the 1% rule.

To take it even a step further, I’ve developed two sets of rules of thumb for those four variables that I just mentioned. I run those numbers through my model very quickly. It only takes me about five minutes because I have an Excel spreadsheet created. I just plug these numbers into that, and it tells me whether this property is even close or not to what I require for my return numbers.

If I use these rules of thumb and the numbers aren’t even close, again, I just eliminate that. I don’t waste any more time on it, and I go to the next property. But, if, using these rules of thumb, the numbers are pretty close, then I can go in, and get the actual numbers. I do more research on that specific neighborhood and that specific city, that specific type of property in that location, and find out exactly what those numbers are going to be. I can call property managers or real estate agents. I can really get the actual numbers that it’s going to be, and find out, specifically, what I can expect that deal to be in terms of returns. I really like to use the rules of thumb to eliminate any deals that aren’t even close to meeting my criteria. They allow me to save a lot of time and analyze upwards of 10 to 30 deals a day without wasting a ton of time.

To quickly go through these rules of thumb, as I said, I have two sets. One is conservative, and one is aggressive. For the conservative set, I set vacancy to 12%, capex to 5%, repair and maintenance 10%, and property management at 11%. For the aggressive set, I use 5% for vacancy, 2.5% for capex, 5% for repair and maintenance, and 8% for property management. Keep in mind that these are going to vary based on your market, the purchase price of the property, the classification of the neighborhood.

A Class B neighborhood property is generally going to have less vacancy than a Class C or C-minus property. So, these numbers are going to get adjusted depending on the specific property that you’re buying and where it’s located. But again, these just give you a general rule of thumb to quickly go through the deal and find out if it’s even close and worth diving into more.

I know I just spoke through those numbers quickly, but I have a post about this on Instagram. I also posted about it in our Facebook group, so if you’re interested in connecting with other like-minded investors, be sure to go over and join our Facebook group. You can find it by searching Real Estate and Millennial Investing in the Facebook search bar. Just look for the show’s graphic, and you can request to join the group. Also, as I said, on Instagram, you can follow me and connect with me. My username is @therobertleonard. I posted about this. I talked about it more in detail. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a DM or comment on the post. I’d be happy to explain this a little bit more, and I hope it helps you guys cut down your analysis time and help you find more deals.

The second question I want to answer on today’s show was one that I found very interesting. When I was asked it, it was asked on a Facebook Live that I did in our Facebook group. It got me to stop and think for a second because I thought that the person asking the question actually had a very good point. It was not something I’ve really thought about too, too much. And so, I wanted to address it briefly here on the show. I’ll answer the question here so that if anybody else listening to the podcast today that didn’t make it to the Facebook Live that we had, you can also hear my response. Hopefully, it will help them as well. So, the question was “What do I do if I’m not passionate about investing, but I still want to be an investor because I think it’s best for my financial future?”

That kind of caught me off guard for a second. It really made me think because, for the last 10 years, I’ve been super passionate about investing both in the stock market and in real estate. It’s just something that is innate in me that I really enjoy. I love studying it. Anytime it comes to watching TV shows or reading books, I always want to pick up an investing or business book. It’s just something I enjoy personally. So I hadn’t really given much thought to the people out there that don’t feel the same way that I do, the people that aren’t passionate about it. Yet, I talk about this not only because I’m passionate about it, but also because it’s something that people need to do regardless of whether you’re passionate about it or not.

Ultimately, the goal is to build our net worth and build our wealth so that we’re able to spend more time doing the things we love with the ones we love. For me, it was just a really interesting perspective that I hadn’t really considered just given where I’m coming from. And so, if you’re not passionate about it, don’t spend your time doing it. All of these things that we talked about are very important, and they’ll help you lead to a successful financial future and help you build wealth, but that doesn’t mean you have to do the specific things we talked about in order to reach those goals.

What I mean by that is, oftentimes, we talk about being active investors here. I talk about how I purchase rental properties myself, and then I manage them or have a property manager to manage them for me. But they’re physical assets that I’ve actually acquired myself, and I’m actively participating in owning them. That does take time for me, but it’s something I enjoy because I’m passionate about it.

For those people who aren’t, that doesn’t mean I don’t think you should invest in real estate. I do think you should be invested in real estate, but you don’t have to be the one actively purchasing those deals. You don’t have to be the one actively sourcing those deals from realtor.com or Zillow, and actually finding them, analyzing the deals, and doing all of the work that goes into buying these properties. Thankfully, today, there are resources available, like Fundrise, and a bunch of other crowdfunding platforms that you could use to invest in real estate. And you don’t have to do anything except invest.

So it’s important for you to understand the topics, and to understand what’s going on and how you should be investing, but you don’t necessarily have to spend all the time doing the types of things that we often talk about here on the show. If you’re not passionate about it, allocate some of your money towards real estate, whether it be through crowdfunding or purchasing REITs in the stock market. That’s another conversation that we’ll have a full episode about.

There are different ways that you can get exposure to real estate. You can invest in REITs or, through crowdfunding, get your exposure to real estate very passively without having to spend very much time on them, and then continue on with doing things you’re more passionate about. Rather than learning the specifics on how to find property managers or find real estate agents or analyze real estate deals, you can just learn the basics. Invest through those different mediums that take less of your time. You might not get as good of a return, but you’ll get some exposure to real estate still. And then you can go on and do all the different things that you’re more passionate about.

So it’s similar to the stock market. If you’re not interested in analyzing individual companies, then you don’t have to do that. You can just buy an ETF, consistently purchase that over time, consistently contribute to that, and you will do very well over the long term. The same goes for real estate. If you’re not passionate about it, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s not going to lead to a happy life for you. Get some exposure to real estate through various ways. You could do syndication, REITs, or crowdfunding. We talked about various ways you could do that here on the show. And then spend your time doing other things that really make you happy. Do all the other things that you’re passionate about in life.

Robert Leonard  35:12

Alright, guys. That’s all I had for this week’s episode of Real Estate Investing. I’ll see you again next week!

Outro  35:19

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