Hey, Sherman Ragland, the Realinvestor, and one of the questions I get asked a lot is, "Hey Sherman, why real estate?" Well, come with me and let me show you exactly why real estate. Let me show it to you, let's go. So maybe you're thinking about, hey, should I stop renting and get my own home? Or maybe you have your own home and you're thinking about turning your first home into rental. Or maybe you did the 21 day challenge with us and you've learned how to make quick cash, quick cash off of wholesale and bird dogging, and so you're thinking, hey, maybe now's the time to sort of move on up from generating quick cash, bird dog and wholesaling, into fixing and flipping. And you're thinking about, hey, maybe now's a good time to fix and flip my first house. Or you've done the fix or flip thing and maybe you've started acquiring rental properties using the BRRRR strategy. Maybe even you've gotten your hands on some really great properties you've turned into assisted living facilities. Or you're thinking, hey, why not get myself a little place in the city that I could do an Airbnb and rent it out for, I don't know, $1000 a night? Or maybe you like the idea of having 12 or more complete total strangers coming to live together for the sole purpose of putting $10,000 a month or more in your pocket. What could be better than that? Or maybe you're a business owner who started a business in your own home but it outgrew the house and now you're renting space from somebody. Maybe you got three, four, five, 20 employees, whatever, and you're sitting there every month going, man, the second biggest line item, first biggest line item is payroll, but second biggest line item is rent. Why am I spending so much money on rent? Maybe it's time for me to go find and buy my own place. Do you know that when you buy your own place as a business owner, typically you're gonna spend 1/2 as much? That's right, 1/2 as much for the mortgage payment than you're gonna spend for rent. And most importantly, the equity that you build up in your property is yours to keep. Or maybe what it's really about for you is the toys. There's nothing in the world like having access to your own private jet or two. So let's talk about, why real estate? And as far as I'm concerned, there's seven really solid reasons why real estate, for you, why real estate now. So let's go through them real quick. First five are really easy. Number one, real estate is what I would call the I.D.E.A.L. investment. I-D-E-A-L. And the first one or the first thing is I, which stands for income. Unlike things like Bitcon , Bitcon, unlike things like Bitcoin or the stock market or certain other kinds of investments, real estate actually pays you income. And even if the real estate is the house that you own or the place where you run your business, understand this, you're gonna be paying rent to somebody. And chances are when you run the calculations, the amount of money you pay for your mortgage plus taxes is less. People are oftentimes shocked to find this out. The amount of money that you pay for your mortgage payment and your taxes is often times less than what you spend for rent. So at a minimum, if you own your own property, again, whether you're talking about your own home ownership or you're talking about owning the facility where you run your business, just simply take what you would've been spending in rent and deduct what it is that you're paying for your mortgage payment. And you'll find out that you've got extra money in your pocket, call that income. And of course, when you decide to leave or if you buy it as an investment property, you have income, oftentimes on a monthly basis. So the first good reason for real estate is I, income. The second is D, depreciation, or oftentimes called tax shelter. And I've had my tax accountant other people say that real estate is the last great tax shelter out there. So D stands for depreciation. What does that mean? If you buy a house for $300,000, every year, you get to depreciate some of that piece of property. And it's 14.7 years for a single family and 20-something years for a commercial. But the bottom line is this. You get to shelter the income that you make from your properties and other things, depending upon your tax status, because the fact that you own real estate, depreciation, D. The next one is E, which is my personal favorite. It's called equity buildup. Now, I'm gonna be very, totally honest with you. I've always found it hard to save. I know they said that you're supposed to put aside 10% of every paycheck. I always found it to be very difficult. I know, shame on me, but one of the things that's really great about real estate is when you buy real estate, and again, I don't care whether you're talking about commercial property or single family houses or condos, whatever, when you buy real estate, you typically buy with what's called an amortizing mortgage. Now, hang in there with me for a second. Amortizing. The central part of the word amortizing is the word mort, which means death. Okay, so what does that mean? It means that the loan kills itself or the loan pays itself off. So if you get a 30 year amortizing mortgage, at the end of 30 years, you don't owe anything. So you've not only paid back what you borrowed, but you also paid the interest, which means if you buy a $300,000 house and it doesn't go up in value, it doesn't go up in value a nickel, at the end of 30 years, you won't owe the bank anything. So now you own an asset that's worth 300,000. Now, we know the truth of the matter is it's probably gonna be worth more than that. But as far as equity buildup or what I like to call forced savings, by actually having a mortgage payment, an amortizing mortgage, not an interest only, not one with a balloon, but an amortizing mortgage, you're literally saving money every time you make your monthly payment. And it doesn't matter whether you make the payment or your tenant makes the payment, all right? So that's the E, equity buildup. A, I-D-E-A-L. A stands for appreciation. And as we know, real estate tends to go up in value. Now, I'm not one of those guys that says real estate always goes up in value because that's not a true statement, but real estate tends to go up in value. And even when real estate values dip like they did in 2008, 2009, 2010 across the country, they typically go back up. In fact, in most places in the country that saw any kind of a bubble or price depreciation back in 2008, 2009, 2010, those values are all the way back up and then some, all right? So A stands for appreciation. And then of course the last L is leverage, meaning on a piece of real estate, whether it's your own residence, whether it's you buying your business using an SBA 504 loan or 7 or 7 loan, or you buying a piece of investment property, typically you can borrow anywhere from 70% to 100% of the purchase price. And in some cases, if you're a first time home buyer and you're on a limited income, sometimes you can borrow 100%, 100% of the purchase price of the property, but I digress. But the bottom line is this, if you think about any other investment, if you wanted to go out and buy, oh, I don't know, 10,000 shares, I don't even know if they're called shares, but 10,000 Bitcoin or pieces of Bitcoin, how much of that could you borrow from the bank? Yeah, we know the answer to that, none. If you wanted to go out and buy stocks, you wanted to buy Apple, how much could you borrow from your mortgage, excuse me, mortgage broker, from your stock broker? None, but when you go to buy a house, you go to buy an investment property, you typically borrow 70, 80, 90% of the purchase price. So you get leveraged. So again, the first five reasons to do real estate is because real estate is I.D.E.A.L. I-D-E-A-L, I.D.E.A.L., meaning you get income, you get depreciation, you get appreciation, you get equity buildup. I kinda got that out of order, right? Income, depreciation, equity, buildup, appreciation, and of course leverage. Now, what's the sixth magic secret of real estate? Well, it's not much of a secret at all. Bottom line is this, those things that I just talked about, you only get if you actually own it. So those of you who are running around wholesaling and bird dogging and you're real estate agents, understand, I've been a real estate agent so I'm not bashing on real estate agents. So I've been a real estate agent since I was 23 years old and I didn't get this gray hair without some work going into it. But basically as a real estate agent, as a wholesaler, as a bird dogger, you don't own real estate. You're just providing real estate as a service. And you're getting paid and getting paid very, very well. But the things I just talked about, I-D-E-A-L, I.D.E.A.L., those only happen when you own real estate. So secret number six is you need to own real estate, not just talk about it, not just think about it, but actually own it. And then the last seventh piece, the seventh secret is this. If you are totally serious about becoming a successful real estate investor and you're struggling to get your first deal done, I'm gonna make you a very special offer. I have something called the 21 day challenge. And the 21 day challenge is my flagship 21 Days of Real Estate Riches course, which takes exactly, as you guessed, 21 days. But I'm bundling it with private coaching, mentoring, excuse me, I'm bundling with small group private coaching, mentoring. So you're gonna be participating with other people, but small group private coaching for 21 days. That's right, you get the course and you get me. And the course is 100% online. By the way, check out the five star ratings, the five star Trustpilot ratings that we have from an independent rating agency, Trustpilot. And as you can see, it's one of the best, if not the best real estate courses out there, but I'm basically offering it along with private coaching, mentoring with me two times a week. So if you're totally serious about real estate, real estate investing, if you wanna participate, you wanna be an owner of real estate, you wanna learn how you can actually make real estate work for you, I encourage you to go ahead and click the button below, there's a link somewhere down there below, and sign up for our 21 day challenge. What do you got to lose? 21 days coaching, mentoring with me. So I hope this has been helpful. This is Sherman Ragland, the Realinvestor. Thanks for watching "10 Minute Real Estate." Please click like, share and subscribe, and look forward to seeing it in a future episode. But most importantly, sign up for the 21 day challenge. Do it, do it now. Take care, bye.