Book review
The Book on Rental Property Investing
I stumbled upon this book becuase I was extremely interested in getting into real estate. Growing up in a Chinese immigrant family, I have always thought and learned through watching that real estate and owning something physical is a sign of wealth. I'd hear my parents say my uncle has x number of houses. Or this person bought a mansion worth x amount of money. And so I thought now that I am making my own money, this is a good opportunity to invest in real estate.
This book gives some really good basic tools to learn the fundamentals of real estate. However, my motto is always doing is better than reading when it comes to learning. Although I know what to do, does not mean I will do it.
This book has also allowed me explore asking my friends about real estate. I have one friend who's dad is a real estate agent and runs his own firm. Asking around, I've learned that real estate's returns aren't actually as good as just putting everything in the S&P 500. At best you'd get the same amount of return but with a lot more effort. Thus making it effectively a second job. This was interesting to me and made me explore further. This also made me realize that a lot of people's wealth although they only own one house, is all in their stock portfolio and equity. Real estaate can be a vehicle of investment that is more stable as you grow older and you want to diversify into something stable that is also tangible but as a young person where time is most important, real estate might not be as efficient.