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Everyone I know that's wealthy owns lots of real estate. That's the difference between stocks and properties, at least property is real. Why do drug dealers,

Everyone I know that's wealthy owns lots of real estate. That's the difference between stocks and properties, at least property is real. Why do drug dealers, foreign nationals, and the ultra wealthy park their money in big city properties? Tangible value.

usaar333 8y ago
What's your threshold for wealthy? I know plenty of younger millionaires (via tech) who don't have real estate other than perhaps REITs.
- justherefortart 8y ago
  Depends on the area. Wealthy in SF/LA/NYC is very different than wealthy in KC/OKC/DFW. Mostly it's how far your dollar goes (can you live off your investments alone).
Bartweiss 8y ago
The article does mention this as a special case, though. Owning property is a perfectly good way to store value, because property crashes don't always track market crashes and because property values recover even from heavy declines. Notably, all the people you're listing got wealthy, then bought property to diversity their investments. It's a very different situation than buying property in hopes of gaining wealth.
- justherefortart 8y ago
  Most all of them bought houses leveraged and with inflation and 10-20% down, being paid off by renters, they have millions in property. My neighbor lives in Europe most the year, just comes back a few times to check on houses. Has 2 homes in Europe too. That money was built by judiciously buying and maintaining the properties over ~4 decades while trying to minimize costs. This was as a self funded real estate agent. Not someone born with money. There's a healthy mix of people I've known that have built almost all their net worth in real estate. In fact, most my programming friends that bought after the .com bust in SF and the great recession in 2008-2010 have more than doubled their single home investments.
enraged_camel 8y ago
>>Why do drug dealers, foreign nationals, and the ultra wealthy park their money in big city properties? Tangible value. The real answer: because real estate is an extremely convenient money laundering tool.

usaar333 8y ago

What's your threshold for wealthy? I know plenty of younger millionaires (via tech) who don't have real estate other than perhaps REITs.

justherefortart 8y ago
Depends on the area. Wealthy in SF/LA/NYC is very different than wealthy in KC/OKC/DFW. Mostly it's how far your dollar goes (can you live off your investments alone).

Bartweiss 8y ago

The article does mention this as a special case, though. Owning property is a perfectly good way to store value, because property crashes don't always track market crashes and because property values recover even from heavy declines. Notably, all the people you're listing got wealthy, then bought property to diversity their investments. It's a very different situation than buying property in hopes of gaining wealth.

justherefortart 8y ago
Most all of them bought houses leveraged and with inflation and 10-20% down, being paid off by renters, they have millions in property. My neighbor lives in Europe most the year, just comes back a few times to check on houses. Has 2 homes in Europe too. That money was built by judiciously buying and maintaining the properties over ~4 decades while trying to minimize costs. This was as a self funded real estate agent. Not someone born with money. There's a healthy mix of people I've known that have built almost all their net worth in real estate. In fact, most my programming friends that bought after the .com bust in SF and the great recession in 2008-2010 have more than doubled their single home investments.

enraged_camel 8y ago

>>Why do drug dealers, foreign nationals, and the ultra wealthy park their money in big city properties? Tangible value. The real answer: because real estate is an extremely convenient money laundering tool.