I am currently worth €82794.83 (this is 12.36% of my first goal of €670K).
I am currently worth €82060.37 (this is 12.25% of my first goal of €670K).
A lot of people ask me what I will do with my free time when I retire. “Early retirement?! You will feel so god damn bored!”
What these people don’t know is that one of the things I love the most in life is to grab my laptop and hit a nice caffee, drink a nice (preferably Italian) espresso and take care of my blog or crawl on high quality forums like Quora (btw, follow me here, as I tend to deliver very high quality answers when I am inspired), or simply read a nice book. I usually love to do this and watch people coming in and out the caffee, all with a nice chill out music in the background. I really love coffee and I really love to chill out. 🙂
Hi guys,
In terms of finances, April has been a great month so far, as opposed to March, which was a really bad month. Here’s an heads up:
As I said, RP#2 was in the works, and I finally have good news: I bought a building. Yes, a building. It has 3 rental units (three floors) and two of them are already rented out. I will use leverage as the two rented units will pay for the (20 years) mortgage. That means that the third unit will bring considerable cash flow (something between €200 and €250 a month) and will position me to buy more real estate.
I love this deal, and I will try to replicate it. Instead of condos / apartments, I will be looking for 2-4 unit buildings from now on. These are great for a variety of reasons. First, the price is not significantly higher than 1 condo. In essence, I get 3 condos for the price of 1. Second, I save a lot with maintenance and property management fees. Third, I dilute the risk: with 3-4 units I never end up in a binary situation.
From here on, I will only look for this type of deals. In particular, I hope to find buildings that get the mortgage covered when two units are rented (and the others bring cash flow). I will close the deal next month. Will keep you posted!
I am currently worth €79429.64 (this is 11.86% of my first goal of €670K).
A lot of people ask this question in forums for real estate investing. Usually, they already have one cash funded property and they’re thinking about going and get credit for the following properties, but are afraid the strategy fails. Sometimes, they already have credit funded properties and wonder if their credit is too large. However, what is not trivial to see is that all these investors suffer from the same problem: fear. In theory, we only buy rental properties where the demand for them is high. So if we do believe we’ll have tenants, what would on earth stop us from buying all credit, other than not qualifying for more?
Long story short, all cash funded properties are incredible tools, and so, it does make sense to buy some properties all cash. Why? Two main reasons: first you increase your income, which enables you to qualify for more credit in the long run. Second, you can borrow against these properties.
I tried to solve the question of the post, and here’s what I came up with:
I was asked the other day what methods I use to find properties, and why it takes so long. “If your plan is to have 12 properties, why does it take you so much to find new ones?”
Well, I live in Germany and my RE is to be bought in Portugal. This limits my opportunities to actively look for new properties, but this is not what consumes the most time. It is actually the rules that I use to buy new properties. Remember, saving 20% now on a 40K property (8K) will have a tremendous impact in even 5 years from now. I am not just trying to get rich by doing smart financial decisions, I am on a hurry to retire! This means that I need to be extremely savvy and get the best of the best deals! I am also a goal setter, so I have a lot of goals to meet. Let us discuss what I do to buy new properties.
Studying the market is not an overnight job, but this is done and I know exactly what I am looking for. If you’re considering going into real estate, study and re-study your market (I will post something about this in the near future – stay tuned there is a lot to come up in March). So if I know my market, what else do I need? Here is what you need:
Based in Latvia, Twino is a recent P2P lending platform that seems to be a great alternative to popular P2P platforms that are only available to US citizens. Twino is, to the best of my knowledge, open to everyone. Twino is particularly interesting to me because, according to them, they will buy out loans from investors (principal amount and interest for the investment period) if they become 30 or more days overdue: see here (“All about investments” -> “Does TWINO guarantee the repayment of investment?”). To the best of my knowledge there are not many P2P lending platforms doing this.
I have noted that my philosophy about real estate is very peculiar. While I am eager to invest more and more, I only take a step ahead when I see that the deal complies with all my rules. Here are they: