There are four ways to make money in real estate.  Cash flow, taxes, mortgage principle paydown, and appreciation.

Three of these four are often misunderstood in how effective they are.  Appreciation is one of those, and I’m focusing on that today.

Before I bash appreciation too much, here’s what the leverage lovers want me to explain first.

If you buy a house for $100,000 cash, and that house goes up by 4% in a year, the house is now worth $104,000 and you’ve made 4% on your money.  Not amazing.

However, if you buy a house with $20,000 down on a $100,000 house and it goes up 4% in a year, it is now worth $104,000.  You’ve made $4,000 on a $20,000 investment.  You’ve made 20% on your $20,000 investment. The mortgage magnifies the benefits of the appreciation.

That’s a benefit of appreciation with a mortgage.

Of course, if you mortgage a property and it goes down in value, remember, you still owe that monthly amount to the bank no matter how low the price of the house goes.  If the market crashes, you still got to pay that mortgage back at whatever price you originally borrowed for.

This was the big problem with the last real estate crash.  It’s called being upside down on a mortgage.

Borrower beware!

Here is something I hear people say a lot about appreciation that makes me cringe.

It goes something like this:

“Well, I know I’m not making any cash flow on this house, maybe even losing some money, but that’s ok, because I’m in this for the appreciation.”

WHOA!!!!

This attitude is especially common in high cost of living (HCOL) cities.  Why?

It’s really hard to get good cash flow in a HCOL city.  The price to rent ratios are way off.  There is also this belief that these cities are great for appreciation, and you can’t go wrong buying because they will go up enough in value to make it worth it, even without the cash flow.

I’m here to tell you, this is not always the case.

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“So you want to payoff your mortgage faster?”

I wish I had read this before paying off my mortgage!

Some banks or other financial institutions offer a mortgage accelerator program.  It’s usually some type of program that helps you payoff your mortgage faster.  The deal is, they charge you for this.  It could be anywhere from a few hundred bucks to several thousands dollars.

Do not use these programs.  They are a total rip-off.  You can use any of the methods below to payoff your mortgage faster without spending a penny.

Paying off your mortgage faster is something most homeowners consider at some point.  There are practical and psychological reasons for doing so.  We’ll hit the pros and cons after discussing the 5 top strategies to payoff your mortgage fast.

Make sure that your loan doesn’t have a prepayment penalty built in.  They are uncommon, but out there.  Be sure you understand how much it will cost and if it makes sense to pay this fee.

By the way, when you get a loan, make sure there isn’t a prepayment penalty!

In my case, I bought a townhouse in 2003 in Alexandria, Virginia for $280,000.  I put 10% down, financed 10% of the loan at a 7% interest rate, and then rest was a mortgage at 5.5% on a 30-year fixed rate loan.

While reading Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book one day, I saw the section in there where he suggests paying off your mortgage after paying off debt and funding retirement accounts.

I thought, wow! That’s a crazy idea!

But the idea of paying if off intrigued me.  I liked the idea of having no debt!

I threw everything I could at that loan over the next six years and paid it off.

And I LOVE the feeling of it being gone.

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I will give you my 5 secrets to finding the perfect rental property management company.

Maybe you think you can manage the property yourself?

Perhaps.

But if you use my tips to find an outstanding management company, they’ll save you more money than the fee you’re paying them.

Think about that.  You’ll do less work, but save more money.

The perfect rental property management company earns their management fee and more. They do things better than you could if you did it yourself.

They have more experience:

• Finding tenants
• Dealing with dead-beat tenants
• Collecting late rent
• Doing evictions
• Finding fair prices and getting discounts from contractors
• Knowing what repairs are necessary (and unnecessary) for rentals
• Knowing which locations are best for rentals
• Pricing rentals
• And much, much more…

To reiterate, these companies end up being worth far more than their fees just through their contacts, expertise, and understanding of the rental market.

Again, this is only true if you find the right management company.  There are also plenty of bad ones that will cost more money and be as much work as doing it yourself.

That’s where following these tips come in!

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Chad Carson of www.coachcarson.com did a profile piece of me on his website.

Chad has become a friend, and he is one of the best real estate bloggers out there.  He’s got something like 90 properties in a small college town.  He has reached financial independence, and is currently living in Ecuador with his wife and kids.

Read his piece on me at his website.

I’m in D.C. for some leadership training.  I’m glad my organization gives us two weeks to focus on leadership before we take on a supervisory job.  It’s a great time for personal reflection.

In this training, we do stuff like take personality tests, find out what our leadership style is, and discuss how to deal with common personnel challenges.

We also examine what our values are.

I was surprised how different my core values were from many of my military peers.  The typical military member has values that center around the following things:

• Honor
• Loyalty
• Duty
• Integrity
• Trust
• Teamwork

All the things above are clearly important, but they weren’t values that drove me.  They don’t define who I am.

Our deepest values often manifest themselves during significant events in our lives.  I mapped out the significant events in my life and was surprised at what trait stood out.

I believe the trait that is most important to me has been key to my successes in life.

It’s clearly been the key to my success in real estate.

Let me share two significant events with you.

YOU’LL NEVER RUN AGAIN

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