The Purpose of Investing in Real Estate Should be to Create Passive Income

When investing in real estate there are many different avenues to choose from. When deciding which avenue is best for you, it’s important to consider the difference between passive-income generating avenues and earned or working-income generating avenues. In fact, in my opinion, understanding the difference between passive income and working income is one of the most important things to consider when investing in real estate.

Working Income vrs. Passive Income:

Working Income: Working Income is buying a house, fixing it, and then selling it for a profit. Or building a house then selling it for a profit. Or my favorite is buying a house, holding it (hoping it will appreciate in value, while losing money every month), then selling it.

Passive Income: The best way to understand passive income is to play Robert Kiyosaki’s board game, “Cash Flow 101.” To win (get out of the rat race), you have to get your monthly passive income to exceed your monthly expenses. It’s a real eye-opener. In his game, the quickest way to achieve this is purchasing cash flowing rental properties. Passive income is income that is earned without you doing the work to earn it. Rental income is a great avenue for passive income.

Here are a few reasons why investing in rental properties are an attractive avenue for investing in real estate:

Lower Taxes: Passive income is one of the lowest taxed forms of income, especially rental income. Uncle Sam likes that you’re providing affordable housing and is willing to cut you some slack on the taxes. When you buy, fix, and sell a property, that income is taxed as capital gains and you’re going to pay Uncle Sam 25-40%. Also, owning rental properties is a business, allowing you to write off operating expenses of your business.

Depreciation: This is a benefit often overlooked. Owning rental property provides a non-cash write off over the useful life of the property. Depreciation is defined as the loss in value of the property over time due to wear and tear, physical deterioration and age. Residential income property is depreciated over a 27.5 year period using straight line depreciation (or in other words, depreciated by equal amounts each year over its useful life). While your accountant will do the math, the point is, it’s a non-cash expense lowering you overall tax liability.

Time: Perhaps the best benefit of investing in turn-key rental properties is that it creates time. Remember, passive income creates time, working income takes time. The problem with working income, not only in real estate but in any business, is you have to keep working to make money. The whole reason why any of us get into real estate is for the life-style it can provide. To me, real estate is a means to and end. It doesn’t define who I am. But if done right, it provides time and money to be, do, and have everything I want in life. That’s what this is all about. While a measly $200/mo cash flow on a single family rental property doesn’t sound as sexy as flipping a house and making a quick $15,000, you have to look at the bigger picture.

For example; if you acquire 20 turn-key properties from Equity Services, LLC, each providing $200/mo cash flow, that would be $4,000/mo passive income. That money comes in while you’re eating, sleeping or surfing on the beach (we have a lot of Hawaiian investors)! Now there is some work you’ll have to do, unless you get someone else to do it. Someone has to walk to the mailbox to collect your checks! I get my kids to do it. (There’s more to it than that but you get the point). If 20 properties seems too hard to achieve, remember the old saying; “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!” Well, how do you acquire 20 rental properties? One house at a time! We have one client, Mitch, who is buying his first rental property from Equity Services, LLC. His goal is 500 units in 3 years. Wow! He’s definitely caught the vision of passive income.

Equity Services, LLC = Turn Key

When we’re asked what it is we do, we often state that we sell “turn-key rental properties.” In fact, if you look at our company logo, you’ll see a house with a key. So what does turn-key mean? It means, we have a system in place to handle everything from acquiring the properties, to managing the renovations, to providing the tenants and everything in between. While there are many benefits to using Equity Services, LLC such as our houses are priced right, they have equity, etc., the real value we add is by saving you the time and energy to acquire solid cash-flowing properties. We have a strong relationship with the banks and purchase distressed properties at a discount. We renovate the properties to our high standards (we have rehabbed over 100 properties since 2007). The property manager handles filling the units and managing the tenants. As Timothy Ferriss states in his book, The 4 Hour Workweek, “Our goal isn’t to create a business that is as large as possible but rather a business that bothers us as little as possible.” We have developed a proven system that saves our investors their valuable time. Every now and then we run into the “do-it yourself” investors. We had one investor who gathered information from us, flew down to Michigan, and bought a house. He quickly found out that it wasn’t as easy as he thought, especially long distance. If anything, it helped him appreciate what we do.

Before you run out and quit your “working income” J.O.B., consider this; Keep your job but focus on building your passive-income empire. Use you earned income to invest in more passive income. Then as Robert Kiyosaki teaches in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad, once your passive income surpasses your expenses, you’re financially free. And remember, “profit is only profitable to the extent that you can use it. For that you need time.” (T. Ferriss, The 4 Hour Workweek)