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Do you want to know why most of the real estate investing advice you hear on the Internet will actually lose you money? I've analyzed thousands of real estate deals. I've bought dozens of properties. Now I'm going to share with you 10 pieces of advice that might sound good on TikTok but are actually holding you back. More importantly, I'm going to share with you why people keep repeating them even though they're wrong. Some of this advice, it actually comes from people who haven't bought a deal in years, but they keep posting because fear and negativity get clicks. I closed the deal last month. And so in this, this video I'm going to break down each piece of bad advice, showing you the actual data and sharing what you should be doing with your portfolio instead. Let's start with the worst one. And this one might surprise you because some of the so called experts constantly repeat this. The number one worst piece of advice that I hear about real estate right now is that it takes too long to reach financial freedom with real estate. Or you may even hear this said as real estate is dead or you can't make real estate work anymore. And I just got to get out front of this and say that this is absolute nonsense. I have done the math. I've actually built financial models. You can go and download them for free on biggerpockets.com resources, go check them out. I have a financial freedom calculator there. And what it shows is that if you save 20% of your disposable income and you invest that consistently in real estate for 8 to 12 years, you can completely replace your income. And that is not doing anything fancy. You can get it out of five years if you're super aggressive with it. But even just buying on market regular stuff right now, that gets a modest cash on cash return. If you do that consistently for 10 to 12 years, you can achieve financial freedom through real estate. So I don't want to hear that it's impossible to achieve financial freedom through real estate. That is complete nonsense. I think what people are really saying here is that real estate is not a get rich quick scheme. And that is true. I 100% agree with that. Because if you are trying to achieve financial freedom in two years or three years or four years, it might not work. It probably won't work through real estate. But that is normal. Real estate investing is a long game and financial freedom is a long game. If you think that you can build enduring wealth, sustainable wealth in two or three years, you can't like even People who made a ton of money in bitcoin that has gone back down. Right. Real estate is slow for a reason. Because it is deliberate, because it is predictable, because it is consistent. That is why real estate is such a great way to achieve financial freedom. Even if it does does take you that seven, eight to 12 years, depending on how aggressive you want to be. So don't tell me that you can't achieve financial freedom through real estate, because you can. I've done it. I've seen plenty of other people do it. And even in this market, it still works. So that's the number one worst advice. The second piece of advice that I absolutely hate is that you cannot scale with residential real estate. You hear this all the time. I'm even going to call out Grant Cardone. He talks about this all the time, how it's a waste of time to invest in residential real estate or that your primary residence isn't an investment and that you have to get to multifamily. That's the only way to scale. And maybe if you're trying to be a billionaire, that could be true. But I think for most people who listen to this podcast, and certainly for me, what I'm trying to do is live a comfortable life with a relatively small portfolio. To me, the ultimate flex is to reach your financial freedom number with as few units as possible. Let's just, you know, speculate here. Think about this. If you bought 10 single family homes, let's make this easy. And you paid them off over the next 10, 15 years, right? Average single family rent in the United States right now is about 2500 bucks, right? So you buy 10 of those, you're getting $250,000 in tax advantaged cash flow. When you think about the tax advantages, that's more than having a $300,000 salary. So don't tell me you can't scale with residential real estate. That's a small example. That is an achievable goal for people who are aggressive about this. It really comes down to your own goal. It really frustrates me when people say there's only one way to grow. You have to get into multifamily. You have to get into senior, you have to get into self storage. Are those good strategies? Yeah, for certain people they are. But that is not the only way to scale in real estate. A lot of my friends who are highly successful, make tons of money, make millions of dollars a year, have done it entirely on residential real estate. The people who are telling you that you can't scale with residential real estate, probably want you to buy something. So I am here to tell you that is bad advice. If you want to just stick with, with boring old residential real estate because it is safer and is more predictable and it still offers great returns, you can and absolutely should do that. All right, so that's bad advice number two. Moving on to number three. This is one I hear a lot, especially over the last couple of years. The piece of advice I hate is negative cash flow is worth it for the right house. Now, I know this is a big debate in real estate. What's more important, cash flow or appreciation? I do not buy properties that do not cash flow. Negative cash flow is the one thing that can force you to sell your property before you want to. That's maybe the worst case scenario that you have as a real estate investor, because even the people who bought in 2007, if they held on and they had cash flow, they were still making money from 2007 to 2015 until their property price rebounded, they were still getting tax benefits, they were still getting cash flow flow. And because they had cash flow, they could pay their bills, they could pay their mortgage. They were never under any immediate stress. And then they got to enjoy those massive gains in property values and appreciation that we got from 2013 to 2023, depending on where you live. I am not saying that cash flow is going to make you wealthy overnight. What I am saying is that is a requirement to make sure that you are not taking on more risk than is necessary. If you go out and buy something just because it's going to appreciate, maybe you will appreciate, maybe it doesn't, but that's a way that you can absolutely get burned. And I hear people pointing to this saying, oh, this market in California or in Texas or in Florida, it's appreciated on average 7%, 8% per year over the last five years. Yeah, that was a unique time. I don't think we're getting to that appreciation, and even if we do, it's still speculation. But personally, I think appreciation is going to be muted for the next couple of years. And that doesn't mean you shouldn't buy real estate, but it does mean you need cash flow to hold on to buy great assets during this time when appreciate is slow. And then when appreciation picks up, which honestly no one knows when it's going to happen. Is it next year, is it three years, is it five years? You're in the game when that appreciation pop happens. And, and that's how you really build wealth. But you need cash flow to get there. Do not speculate unless you're already wealthy. So that's number three. Negative cash flow is not worth it for the right house unless you're super rich.
