[mattbrewsbytes]

I didn't read that book but watched a seminar via YT from the author. It talked about real estate investment and I found it eye opening from how/where profits came about. The example I remember (I have no idea if these are feasible numbers, just pulling numbers out of thin air for an example) goes something like this:

1. Buy 50 unit apartment complex for $10mln. Get investors to pay $4mln, loans for $6mln. Cash flow is $600k/year from avg of $1000/mo.

2. Slowly invest in the property, refurbish units by maybe adding in-unit laundry for example. Keep property well maintained.

3. After some time (3 years?), get property re-assessed and now its worth $15mln. Refinance the property to $15mln, pay off $4mln to investors, take $1mln from loan for renovation recovery/profit, tax free, pay off previous loan.

The eye opening part for me was that the goal is to not build and sit on the equity like a residential house but use the equity and increased property value to refinance and the extra money from the loan becomes essentially tax free profit. There is risk that something like a large employer leaves town/lays off people and now you have less renters and property value might decline and things like that. He had a real estate developer discuss how they would do this and do it well by researching areas, property values, etc. This also gives some insight into one element of why rents might be skyrocketing recently - loan rates are higher so developers/investors doing this re-assess/re-fi pattern have higher costs.

So what was portrayed in the YT video did not seem fabricated, he had an actual real estate developer talk through this process.

[vishnugupta]

For sure, it's legit. However, it's a full time job requiring a specific set of skill, training, knowledge and non-trivial upfront capital. It's not something one is looking for when they ask for financial advice, more so when they are living pay check to pay check.

[atlgator]

You can do a cash out refinance of residential property too. Use that tax-free cash toward another house, and so on. It's called the "BRRR method."