Building Your Real Estate Portfolio

If you are serious about being in the game of real estate, then it may be time to begin to build the foundation that will grow your wealth; portfolio building.

There are a lot of ways to make money in real estate. You can buy and renovate properties for flipping. You can wholesale properties to end buyers. You can earn fees by referring properties to investors. You can get a license and sell real estate or manage other people's real estate for a fee.

But the only way to build what I call "residual income" is to build an income producing portfolio. This means that you have to develop an income stream that comes from having tenants paying rent in properties that you own.

I encourage everyone who wants to have real estate as a part of their investment portfolio to consider adding rental income properties. Even the top stars who develop portfolios to grow their wealth will place a portion of it in real estate. Over 90% of the people who are wealth in this country have placed a portion of their money into real estate.

Lets look at what such a portfolio can look like;

1) Single family homes - I have had as many as 195 homes under management. If you do the numbers right you can actually cash flow nicely. The challenge is making sure the income coming in does not get eaten up with mortgage payments and repairs. The good thing about having single family homes is you can pass a lot of the maintenance over to the tenant. You can also create lease to own and seller financed deals to have a steady inflow of money coming in.

2) Apartment buildings - these are my personal favorite for a number of reasons. First, you only have one location to go to for repairs, rent collections, etc. You can have an onsite maintenance man to handle minor repairs and get a few contractors to make sure you keep your building in tip top shape. When you have a vacancy in an apartment building you still have other units paying rent so your negative cash flow is not as bad as when you have a vacant single family home. It is also much harder to vandalize an apartment complex than it is a single family home.

3) Office buildings / shopping complexes - great money makers as well. This is an entirely different animal to manage and I would suggest you get professional help unless you have experience in this one.

Buy you some real estate. Soon!