Is there Greener Grass to Real Estate Investing?

This may come as a surprise to you but trust me when I tell you the grass is not always greener on the other side.

What kind of oddball do you think I am here making this type of statement as a real estate investing lesson?

Well, for me this lesson was one of those rather costly, hard learned lessons that I’m sharing with you. This is one of the most basic fundamentals when it comes to investing in real estate that far too many people overlook when on the lookout for their first property or gaining more properties. They believe they’d be better off investing in an area other than their own backyard.

They see all the stories of where someone picked up a property cheap and they think, “I wish I could, I would have if I were in an area like that, blah, blah, blah.” Or they think of the area that has seen double-digit appreciation rates and think “if I was only in an area like that.” The fact is whether you’re in a red-hot market or a slowing market, there’s a way for you to make money investing in real estate. It starts by just realizing that you’ve got opportunity in your own backyard to make this a successful business.

Here’s why:

When you’re thinking of investing in real estate, you’re looking for sellers that have some underlying situation that’s causing them to want to sell. Usually, these sellers have a problem of some sort that’s causing some undue pressure. We call these ‘Motivated Sellers’ and if you’re not attracting motivated seller then you’re wasting your time.

And there’s not an area in the country without motivated sellers!

The problem with thinking the grass is greener in another market keeps you from looking in your own backyard for the next profitable deal.

Even though, this sounds basic, it’s easy to fall into this line of thinking. At one point, I was convinced that I could work another market that was nearly 4 hours from where I lived. I’ve got to confess that this was a costly lesson.

While you can make money in another market, I was stepping over dollars in my own backyard to pick up dimes in a completely different market. See I tried building my business wide instead of building it deep in my own market. Lesson Learned.

See, I want you to focus on your own market, instead of making the mistake of spreading yourself too thin. Once I realized this lesson, I refocused my business and started building it like a business instead of a mom and pop shop. See, so many people are opportunist and just look for wherever they could make a potential buck. Just realize you know more about what’s going on in your own backyard than anywhere else. Also, it’s imperative that you work to build key relationships with people in your business. This was a major problem when attempting to do deals in too many markets - you’ve got to find new contractors, new realtors, new closing agents, and new investors to flip to. It’s like basically starting from scratch in every aspect.

So, the key lesson is to stick to your own backyard and master the system before you even think of looking outside your area.

About the Author

Derek Pierce is a full time real estate investor and business owner, who, now reveals how he went from corporate slave to Real Estate Success in with his Free E- Coaching Program. To sign up for the Free Program, go to http://www.thereisecrets.com

Real Estate Investing By The Numbers: Part 1

In our recent Mastermind Group training session, our key topic of discussion was how to invest by the numbers. The longer that I spend investing in real estate and also evaluating projects around the county, the more and more I am astounded at the lack of knowledge from “so called” professionals. For most individual real estate investments, the level of analysis is not terribly difficult?. You find yourself doing the same thing over and over again. In this article, I will try and share this simplistic view and how you can know more than 95% of the “professionals” in this market.

What You Need To Know? For any investment, there really is 4 things you need to know and guess what, NOBODY gives them to you in a normal sales presentation. Let’s break down each one and how it is obtained:

1)Purchase Equity ? This is one of the simplest to obtain but is easily abused by sales people. What you want to know is what is your purchase price, relative to the actual STREET PRICE; i.e., the price a real individual in the area would pay to own your property. How do you get it? Appraisals, talking with agents in the area, running test ads in newspapers, etc.

2)Annual Appreciation (%) ? Now the witch craft begins?.. This requires a CRYSTAL BALL to look into the future. Because of this, appreciation is an OPINION that you should form on your own?. An “Experts” OPINION is still an opinion and you should treat it as such. To make an opinion, you had to consider things like job growth, lack of similar product, future demand, etc. Bottom line is that you would like to come up with a % number and this takes a little practice but after looking at a few areas, you can pretty easily form an opinion. PLEASE NOTE: If we “project” appreciation rates in an area, we are violating securities laws so we don’t do this. We share all the information about an area and why we like it and then have to leave it up to the individual to form their own opinion. However, when we have decided to introduce a property, we have formed our own OPINION and we like what we see.

3)Annual Cashflow ? Over time, you will either be making or losing money on this investment. It may turn out that small amounts of negative cashflow make sense if the annual appreciation and purchase equity are strong. The components that you have to gather for annual cashflow are

?Gross Annual Income; ?Management Expenses; ?Taxes, Insurance, HOA; ?Interest Expenses; and ?Maintenance Estimates

Fortunately, most of the expenses can be estimated pretty closely. For gross annual income, realize that again, NOBODY can predict the future. So, you can gather market rents data that you believe are comparable, apply any safety factor that you like, and then use that for ESTIMATES.

4)Special Tax Situations ? This is typically an unusual situation for individual investors but applies in areas such as the Go Zone where bonus depreciation can be used.

How Do You Use This Information Suppose you could see EXACTLY what was going to happen into the future?.. Of course, we know this is unrealistic however it still does not hurt to try based on our assumptions.

Suppose you looked into the future and you saw that in 5 years, your net gain on a property was going to be a little over $87,000 with a $21,000 dollar total investment and a little bit of your time. If you KNEW that was GOING to happen, what would you do? Would you purchase the property? Would you pass on the property? Why?

Realize, that for a $21,000 investment, this equates to making 33.9% on your money, year after year after year. That is not too shabby. Let’s apply the “rule of 72″ here which states that you can calculate how long (approximately) it will take to double your money with a certain return %. You take 72% / 33.9% = 2.1 Years to double your money. Is this something that is good?

The answer of course depends on a few factors but let’s put it into perspective. Suppose you invested $100,000 at a steady 33.9% rate of return. In 15 years, then you have now turned that $100,000 into $7.9 Million. Got your attention yet if you KNEW this was going to happen? Of course, if we have to take on all kinds of risks to get that return, then that may, or may not be such a good idea. If, however, it is low risk, now you have the makings of a good investment.

My argument now is that IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE FUTURE, and you saw this kind of performance, you would be excited. Right? Well, why not pretend we can look into the future and CALCULATE what the future looks like using our 4 KEY parameters above. If we like the “future” answers, and we believe our assumptions, and we believe the risk to be low, isn’t that a prudent approach?

For many non-investors, they believe that real estate investors take on tons of risk and are gun slingers?? Quite contraire, monsieur, that is exactly what we DON’T do. Good investors simply look at all the FACTS, make some estimates of key parameters, estimate future performance, and then play “what if” games to what happens if things don’t work out exactly as thought.

Is there Greener Grass to Real Estate Investing?

This may come as a surprise to you but trust me when I tell you the grass is not always greener on the other side.

What kind of oddball do you think I am here making this type of statement as a real estate investing lesson?

Well, for me this lesson was one of those rather costly, hard learned lessons that I’m sharing with you. This is one of the most basic fundamentals when it comes to investing in real estate that far too many people overlook when on the lookout for their first property or gaining more properties. They believe they’d be better off investing in an area other than their own backyard.

They see all the stories of where someone picked up a property cheap and they think, “I wish I could, I would have if I were in an area like that, blah, blah, blah.” Or they think of the area that has seen double-digit appreciation rates and think “if I was only in an area like that.” The fact is whether you’re in a red-hot market or a slowing market, there’s a way for you to make money investing in real estate. It starts by just realizing that you’ve got opportunity in your own backyard to make this a successful business.

Here’s why:

When you’re thinking of investing in real estate, you’re looking for sellers that have some underlying situation that’s causing them to want to sell. Usually, these sellers have a problem of some sort that’s causing some undue pressure. We call these ‘Motivated Sellers’ and if you’re not attracting motivated seller then you’re wasting your time.

And there’s not an area in the country without motivated sellers!

The problem with thinking the grass is greener in another market keeps you from looking in your own backyard for the next profitable deal.

Even though, this sounds basic, it’s easy to fall into this line of thinking. At one point, I was convinced that I could work another market that was nearly 4 hours from where I lived. I’ve got to confess that this was a costly lesson.

While you can make money in another market, I was stepping over dollars in my own backyard to pick up dimes in a completely different market. See I tried building my business wide instead of building it deep in my own market. Lesson Learned.

See, I want you to focus on your own market, instead of making the mistake of spreading yourself too thin. Once I realized this lesson, I refocused my business and started building it like a business instead of a mom and pop shop. See, so many people are opportunist and just look for wherever they could make a potential buck. Just realize you know more about what’s going on in your own backyard than anywhere else. Also, it’s imperative that you work to build key relationships with people in your business. This was a major problem when attempting to do deals in too many markets - you’ve got to find new contractors, new realtors, new closing agents, and new investors to flip to. It’s like basically starting from scratch in every aspect.

So, the key lesson is to stick to your own backyard and master the system before you even think of looking outside your area.

About the Author

Derek Pierce is a full time real estate investor and business owner, who, now reveals how he went from corporate slave to Real Estate Success in with his Free E- Coaching Program. To sign up for the Free Program, go to http://www.thereisecrets.com

Real Estate Investing By The Numbers: Part 1

In our recent Mastermind Group training session, our key topic of discussion was how to invest by the numbers. The longer that I spend investing in real estate and also evaluating projects around the county, the more and more I am astounded at the lack of knowledge from “so called” professionals. For most individual real estate investments, the level of analysis is not terribly difficult?. You find yourself doing the same thing over and over again. In this article, I will try and share this simplistic view and how you can know more than 95% of the “professionals” in this market.

What You Need To Know? For any investment, there really is 4 things you need to know and guess what, NOBODY gives them to you in a normal sales presentation. Let’s break down each one and how it is obtained:

1)Purchase Equity ? This is one of the simplest to obtain but is easily abused by sales people. What you want to know is what is your purchase price, relative to the actual STREET PRICE; i.e., the price a real individual in the area would pay to own your property. How do you get it? Appraisals, talking with agents in the area, running test ads in newspapers, etc.

2)Annual Appreciation (%) ? Now the witch craft begins?.. This requires a CRYSTAL BALL to look into the future. Because of this, appreciation is an OPINION that you should form on your own?. An “Experts” OPINION is still an opinion and you should treat it as such. To make an opinion, you had to consider things like job growth, lack of similar product, future demand, etc. Bottom line is that you would like to come up with a % number and this takes a little practice but after looking at a few areas, you can pretty easily form an opinion. PLEASE NOTE: If we “project” appreciation rates in an area, we are violating securities laws so we don’t do this. We share all the information about an area and why we like it and then have to leave it up to the individual to form their own opinion. However, when we have decided to introduce a property, we have formed our own OPINION and we like what we see.

3)Annual Cashflow ? Over time, you will either be making or losing money on this investment. It may turn out that small amounts of negative cashflow make sense if the annual appreciation and purchase equity are strong. The components that you have to gather for annual cashflow are

?Gross Annual Income; ?Management Expenses; ?Taxes, Insurance, HOA; ?Interest Expenses; and ?Maintenance Estimates

Fortunately, most of the expenses can be estimated pretty closely. For gross annual income, realize that again, NOBODY can predict the future. So, you can gather market rents data that you believe are comparable, apply any safety factor that you like, and then use that for ESTIMATES.

4)Special Tax Situations ? This is typically an unusual situation for individual investors but applies in areas such as the Go Zone where bonus depreciation can be used.

How Do You Use This Information Suppose you could see EXACTLY what was going to happen into the future?.. Of course, we know this is unrealistic however it still does not hurt to try based on our assumptions.

Suppose you looked into the future and you saw that in 5 years, your net gain on a property was going to be a little over $87,000 with a $21,000 dollar total investment and a little bit of your time. If you KNEW that was GOING to happen, what would you do? Would you purchase the property? Would you pass on the property? Why?

Realize, that for a $21,000 investment, this equates to making 33.9% on your money, year after year after year. That is not too shabby. Let’s apply the “rule of 72″ here which states that you can calculate how long (approximately) it will take to double your money with a certain return %. You take 72% / 33.9% = 2.1 Years to double your money. Is this something that is good?

The answer of course depends on a few factors but let’s put it into perspective. Suppose you invested $100,000 at a steady 33.9% rate of return. In 15 years, then you have now turned that $100,000 into $7.9 Million. Got your attention yet if you KNEW this was going to happen? Of course, if we have to take on all kinds of risks to get that return, then that may, or may not be such a good idea. If, however, it is low risk, now you have the makings of a good investment.

My argument now is that IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE FUTURE, and you saw this kind of performance, you would be excited. Right? Well, why not pretend we can look into the future and CALCULATE what the future looks like using our 4 KEY parameters above. If we like the “future” answers, and we believe our assumptions, and we believe the risk to be low, isn’t that a prudent approach?

For many non-investors, they believe that real estate investors take on tons of risk and are gun slingers?? Quite contraire, monsieur, that is exactly what we DON’T do. Good investors simply look at all the FACTS, make some estimates of key parameters, estimate future performance, and then play “what if” games to what happens if things don’t work out exactly as thought.

Real Estate Investing By The Numbers: Part 1

In our recent Mastermind Group training session, our key topic of discussion was how to invest by the numbers. The longer that I spend investing in real estate and also evaluating projects around the county, the more and more I am astounded at the lack of knowledge from “so called” professionals. For most individual real estate investments, the level of analysis is not terribly difficult?. You find yourself doing the same thing over and over again. In this article, I will try and share this simplistic view and how you can know more than 95% of the “professionals” in this market.

What You Need To Know? For any investment, there really is 4 things you need to know and guess what, NOBODY gives them to you in a normal sales presentation. Let’s break down each one and how it is obtained:

1)Purchase Equity ? This is one of the simplest to obtain but is easily abused by sales people. What you want to know is what is your purchase price, relative to the actual STREET PRICE; i.e., the price a real individual in the area would pay to own your property. How do you get it? Appraisals, talking with agents in the area, running test ads in newspapers, etc.

2)Annual Appreciation (%) ? Now the witch craft begins?.. This requires a CRYSTAL BALL to look into the future. Because of this, appreciation is an OPINION that you should form on your own?. An “Experts” OPINION is still an opinion and you should treat it as such. To make an opinion, you had to consider things like job growth, lack of similar product, future demand, etc. Bottom line is that you would like to come up with a % number and this takes a little practice but after looking at a few areas, you can pretty easily form an opinion. PLEASE NOTE: If we “project” appreciation rates in an area, we are violating securities laws so we don’t do this. We share all the information about an area and why we like it and then have to leave it up to the individual to form their own opinion. However, when we have decided to introduce a property, we have formed our own OPINION and we like what we see.

3)Annual Cashflow ? Over time, you will either be making or losing money on this investment. It may turn out that small amounts of negative cashflow make sense if the annual appreciation and purchase equity are strong. The components that you have to gather for annual cashflow are

?Gross Annual Income; ?Management Expenses; ?Taxes, Insurance, HOA; ?Interest Expenses; and ?Maintenance Estimates

Fortunately, most of the expenses can be estimated pretty closely. For gross annual income, realize that again, NOBODY can predict the future. So, you can gather market rents data that you believe are comparable, apply any safety factor that you like, and then use that for ESTIMATES.

4)Special Tax Situations ? This is typically an unusual situation for individual investors but applies in areas such as the Go Zone where bonus depreciation can be used.

How Do You Use This Information Suppose you could see EXACTLY what was going to happen into the future?.. Of course, we know this is unrealistic however it still does not hurt to try based on our assumptions.

Suppose you looked into the future and you saw that in 5 years, your net gain on a property was going to be a little over $87,000 with a $21,000 dollar total investment and a little bit of your time. If you KNEW that was GOING to happen, what would you do? Would you purchase the property? Would you pass on the property? Why?

Realize, that for a $21,000 investment, this equates to making 33.9% on your money, year after year after year. That is not too shabby. Let’s apply the “rule of 72″ here which states that you can calculate how long (approximately) it will take to double your money with a certain return %. You take 72% / 33.9% = 2.1 Years to double your money. Is this something that is good?

The answer of course depends on a few factors but let’s put it into perspective. Suppose you invested $100,000 at a steady 33.9% rate of return. In 15 years, then you have now turned that $100,000 into $7.9 Million. Got your attention yet if you KNEW this was going to happen? Of course, if we have to take on all kinds of risks to get that return, then that may, or may not be such a good idea. If, however, it is low risk, now you have the makings of a good investment.

My argument now is that IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE FUTURE, and you saw this kind of performance, you would be excited. Right? Well, why not pretend we can look into the future and CALCULATE what the future looks like using our 4 KEY parameters above. If we like the “future” answers, and we believe our assumptions, and we believe the risk to be low, isn’t that a prudent approach?

For many non-investors, they believe that real estate investors take on tons of risk and are gun slingers?? Quite contraire, monsieur, that is exactly what we DON’T do. Good investors simply look at all the FACTS, make some estimates of key parameters, estimate future performance, and then play “what if” games to what happens if things don’t work out exactly as thought.

Beginning Real Estate Investing? Your First Decision Is a No Brainer - Should I Buy Or Rent?

Your first real estate decision is a no brainer! Truth is, you’ll live for free by buying instead of renting. Just the facts please. OK, here’s the facts and figures:

If you buy a home and live in it for 5 years you will have lived for free. Your mortgage payments, related closing costs, insurance and property taxes will be returned to you through tax savings and profits after you sell the property. Here’s how it works: (to make it easy we’ll use a $100,000 property even though this figure might seem very low for a home where you live, there are still many places where this is a realistic figure)

Price $100,000
Down Payment - 5,000

Mortgage $95,000
Interest Rate x 10%

1st Year Interest $9.500
Property Tax +1,000

1st Year Expenses $10,500
Income Tax Bracket x 33%

1st Year Tax Savings $3,465
Appreciation @6% + $6,000

Tax Savings and Appreciation $9,465

Your Interest for the first year was $9,500 and your property tax bill was $1,000, which together total $10,500, but your investment return from tax savings and appreciation was $9,465. If instead you were paying $600 a month for rent you would lose $7,200 a year or $36,000 in 5 years because renters don’t get any tax deductions nor can they take advantage on any of the property appreciation. These benefits go to the owner.

You as owner would have paid $760 a month for a total of $45,000 in mortgage payments during those 5 years. Add to that another $5,000 for property tax and your total would be $50,600 or $10,120 a year. These numbers are higher than the renter paid… but wait!

As the owner you would have saved an additional $3,465 a year in tax savings from tax deductible interest and property taxes. Also, your appreciation on the property is a conservative $6,000 (@6%) many cities have higher appreciation rates.

So you spent $10,120 a year and got back $9,465 in cash and equity. Realistically you only spent $655 a year or $3,275 to live in a place for 5 years.

But don’t forget, part of your mortgage payment went toward paying off about $4,000 of your principle of that 5 year period, which is more than the $3,275 you spent out of your pocket.

Would you rather be the owner of that home or the renter?

Is there Greener Grass to Real Estate Investing?

This may come as a surprise to you but trust me when I tell you the grass is not always greener on the other side.

What kind of oddball do you think I am here making this type of statement as a real estate investing lesson?

Well, for me this lesson was one of those rather costly, hard learned lessons that I’m sharing with you. This is one of the most basic fundamentals when it comes to investing in real estate that far too many people overlook when on the lookout for their first property or gaining more properties. They believe they’d be better off investing in an area other than their own backyard.

They see all the stories of where someone picked up a property cheap and they think, “I wish I could, I would have if I were in an area like that, blah, blah, blah.” Or they think of the area that has seen double-digit appreciation rates and think “if I was only in an area like that.” The fact is whether you’re in a red-hot market or a slowing market, there’s a way for you to make money investing in real estate. It starts by just realizing that you’ve got opportunity in your own backyard to make this a successful business.

Here’s why:

When you’re thinking of investing in real estate, you’re looking for sellers that have some underlying situation that’s causing them to want to sell. Usually, these sellers have a problem of some sort that’s causing some undue pressure. We call these ‘Motivated Sellers’ and if you’re not attracting motivated seller then you’re wasting your time.

And there’s not an area in the country without motivated sellers!

The problem with thinking the grass is greener in another market keeps you from looking in your own backyard for the next profitable deal.

Even though, this sounds basic, it’s easy to fall into this line of thinking. At one point, I was convinced that I could work another market that was nearly 4 hours from where I lived. I’ve got to confess that this was a costly lesson.

While you can make money in another market, I was stepping over dollars in my own backyard to pick up dimes in a completely different market. See I tried building my business wide instead of building it deep in my own market. Lesson Learned.

See, I want you to focus on your own market, instead of making the mistake of spreading yourself too thin. Once I realized this lesson, I refocused my business and started building it like a business instead of a mom and pop shop. See, so many people are opportunist and just look for wherever they could make a potential buck. Just realize you know more about what’s going on in your own backyard than anywhere else. Also, it’s imperative that you work to build key relationships with people in your business. This was a major problem when attempting to do deals in too many markets - you’ve got to find new contractors, new realtors, new closing agents, and new investors to flip to. It’s like basically starting from scratch in every aspect.

So, the key lesson is to stick to your own backyard and master the system before you even think of looking outside your area.

About the Author

Derek Pierce is a full time real estate investor and business owner, who, now reveals how he went from corporate slave to Real Estate Success in with his Free E- Coaching Program. To sign up for the Free Program, go to http://www.thereisecrets.com

Real Estate Investing By The Numbers: Part 1

In our recent Mastermind Group training session, our key topic of discussion was how to invest by the numbers. The longer that I spend investing in real estate and also evaluating projects around the county, the more and more I am astounded at the lack of knowledge from “so called” professionals. For most individual real estate investments, the level of analysis is not terribly difficult?. You find yourself doing the same thing over and over again. In this article, I will try and share this simplistic view and how you can know more than 95% of the “professionals” in this market.

What You Need To Know? For any investment, there really is 4 things you need to know and guess what, NOBODY gives them to you in a normal sales presentation. Let’s break down each one and how it is obtained:

1)Purchase Equity ? This is one of the simplest to obtain but is easily abused by sales people. What you want to know is what is your purchase price, relative to the actual STREET PRICE; i.e., the price a real individual in the area would pay to own your property. How do you get it? Appraisals, talking with agents in the area, running test ads in newspapers, etc.

2)Annual Appreciation (%) ? Now the witch craft begins?.. This requires a CRYSTAL BALL to look into the future. Because of this, appreciation is an OPINION that you should form on your own?. An “Experts” OPINION is still an opinion and you should treat it as such. To make an opinion, you had to consider things like job growth, lack of similar product, future demand, etc. Bottom line is that you would like to come up with a % number and this takes a little practice but after looking at a few areas, you can pretty easily form an opinion. PLEASE NOTE: If we “project” appreciation rates in an area, we are violating securities laws so we don’t do this. We share all the information about an area and why we like it and then have to leave it up to the individual to form their own opinion. However, when we have decided to introduce a property, we have formed our own OPINION and we like what we see.

3)Annual Cashflow ? Over time, you will either be making or losing money on this investment. It may turn out that small amounts of negative cashflow make sense if the annual appreciation and purchase equity are strong. The components that you have to gather for annual cashflow are

?Gross Annual Income; ?Management Expenses; ?Taxes, Insurance, HOA; ?Interest Expenses; and ?Maintenance Estimates

Fortunately, most of the expenses can be estimated pretty closely. For gross annual income, realize that again, NOBODY can predict the future. So, you can gather market rents data that you believe are comparable, apply any safety factor that you like, and then use that for ESTIMATES.

4)Special Tax Situations ? This is typically an unusual situation for individual investors but applies in areas such as the Go Zone where bonus depreciation can be used.

How Do You Use This Information Suppose you could see EXACTLY what was going to happen into the future?.. Of course, we know this is unrealistic however it still does not hurt to try based on our assumptions.

Suppose you looked into the future and you saw that in 5 years, your net gain on a property was going to be a little over $87,000 with a $21,000 dollar total investment and a little bit of your time. If you KNEW that was GOING to happen, what would you do? Would you purchase the property? Would you pass on the property? Why?

Realize, that for a $21,000 investment, this equates to making 33.9% on your money, year after year after year. That is not too shabby. Let’s apply the “rule of 72″ here which states that you can calculate how long (approximately) it will take to double your money with a certain return %. You take 72% / 33.9% = 2.1 Years to double your money. Is this something that is good?

The answer of course depends on a few factors but let’s put it into perspective. Suppose you invested $100,000 at a steady 33.9% rate of return. In 15 years, then you have now turned that $100,000 into $7.9 Million. Got your attention yet if you KNEW this was going to happen? Of course, if we have to take on all kinds of risks to get that return, then that may, or may not be such a good idea. If, however, it is low risk, now you have the makings of a good investment.

My argument now is that IF YOU COULD SEE INTO THE FUTURE, and you saw this kind of performance, you would be excited. Right? Well, why not pretend we can look into the future and CALCULATE what the future looks like using our 4 KEY parameters above. If we like the “future” answers, and we believe our assumptions, and we believe the risk to be low, isn’t that a prudent approach?

For many non-investors, they believe that real estate investors take on tons of risk and are gun slingers?? Quite contraire, monsieur, that is exactly what we DON’T do. Good investors simply look at all the FACTS, make some estimates of key parameters, estimate future performance, and then play “what if” games to what happens if things don’t work out exactly as thought.