Make Your Move!
You know, I think now is a great time to invest in real estate. And when I say now, I don’t mean 2024 or 2023 or 2025. I don’t mean 2008, 2013. I am saying now, no matter when you’re reading this, no matter what’s going on in the world, is a time to invest in real estate. Now, I might be eating crow by saying that because there could be some cataclysmic event that happens down the road that makes this statement not make any sense. That’s the nature of taking a risk and making investments of any kind.
What I’m talking about is the absolute unmatched power of building wealth through investing in real estate is timeless. It doesn’t matter what year it is, it doesn’t matter what phase of life that you’re in. Investing in real estate probably makes sense to do right now.
The most common excuses that I hear of why people don’t get started is, number one, housing is too expensive. We’re at the top of the market. I’m going to buy property, values are going to go down, and I’m going to lose everything. Or two, interest rates are too high. Why would I want to lock in a long term loan at these ridiculous interest rates? Or number three, and probably the most common, I don’t have enough money to make a down payment on a piece of real estate.
I want to talk about each of those objections and explain why those are limiting beliefs that we have in our own heads that keep us from beginning to build wealth by investing in real estate.
Number one, real estate is too expensive right now. Did you know that adjusted for inflation, the cost to build a new home today is nearly identical to the cost of building a home per square foot in 1950? If you had the opportunity to buy a home in 1950 at 1950s prices, you would absolutely do it, because you know it’s going to multiply multiple times over in value over the course of the last 70 years. So real estate isn’t too expensive when you adjust for inflation and look at historical numbers.
Number two, interest rates are too darn high. Well, interest rates are high right now, but guess what? Interest rates fluctuate. They go up, they go down. And when interest rates are in a down cycle, which it’s almost inevitable that rates will cycle down at some point, you can refinance the concept of getting in when interest rates are low, I think is a mistake as an investor, because if interest rates are low, that’s going to probably push demand up for buying real estate, which is going to mean prices are higher. So a better time to buy real estate is when interest rates are actually higher, because that tamps down, typically tamps down demand for purchasing real estate, which means you might be able to get a better price.
Number three, I don’t have enough money. Well, that might actually be true. I had a good friend check me on something recently. She asked me to do something, and I said, I can’t do that. And she sat back for a second, and then she said, Brian, if I gave you a briefcase full of a million dollars, do you think you could pull this off? The answer was, of course I could figure out a way to do it if there’s a briefcase full of a million bucks. And then she said, if you do this, Brian, there is a briefcase full of a million bucks. This is an investment in your future. So I ask you, if there was a briefcase full of a million bucks ready to be handed over to you, if you could figure out a way to scrape together a down payment on a piece of real estate that you wanted to buy, could you do it?
