The Pros and Cons of Investing in Real Estate
Investments are a smart way to expand your wealth, as the returns on long-term investments can be substantial. However, when considering how to invest your money, it’s important to take into account various options. While investing in the stock market is common and relatively safe, it may be a better choice in some cases to invest in real estate instead. Buying land as an investment is fundamentally different from investing in stocks, and as such, before you make a decision, it’s best to consider how these differences are likely to impact your returns.
According to Andres Pira, the CEO of Blue Horizons Developments, there are many advantages to investing in real estate. When buying property instead of stocks, you have more control over your profits. Investing in the stock market requires buying stocks when they are low and selling them when they are high, and it can be difficult or sometimes impossible to predict how the stock market will behave. Real estate, on the other hand, is more fixed, as variables like size, location, and features remain in the buyer’s control. Additionally, when selling real estate, you have the power to negotiate your price depending on who you’re selling to, which you cannot do with stocks.
Another advantage of real estate investments is found in their consistency. If you’re a landlord, you can expect a consistent cash flow in the form of regular monthly payments from your tenants. Generally, as time goes on, the cost of rent increases to match inflation, meaning that if you’re a landlord, you can expect monthly payments to increase with time. While the stock market offers the potential for an unexpectedly high payout, it carries with it a risk of losing a substantial amount of money, given the difficulty of predicting economic changes.
Investing in real estate is also unique in the sense that it enables certain tax advantages. For instance, real estate owners can take advantage of a depreciation expense, which allows them to save money on their taxes significantly and use those savings to reinvest, pay back loans, and more. Real estate can be a tricky market to invest in, however, and investors need to be careful about the property they choose to buy by putting substantial time and effort into research and other due diligence.
There are also a number of disadvantages to real estate investments. For one, property is very expensive; while you can invest in the stock market with a relatively small amount of money and still expect moderate returns on your investment in due time, properties that are worth investing in require a substantial down payment and other upfront costs such as improvements and repairs, as well as ongoing payments like property taxes, insurance, and more.
And while investing in the stock market can be as easy as signing up for an app, real estate investments take a substantial amount of your time, particularly if you’re new to the business, as there is a lot to learn when managing real estate investments, during which time mistakes can be very costly.
If you want to invest in real estate, you can be expected to be in it for the long haul, as the best way to invest in real estate involves taking advantage of a long-term strategy for maximizing profits. And while being a landlord seems to be an easy way to generate passive income, tenants can cause any number of problems, and sometimes even sue their landlords over disagreements about their living situation. To make matters worse, the law in many jurisdictions tends to favor tenants over landlords, as a tenant’s right to a suitable living environment is weighted against a landlord’s right to make money off their investment. For these reasons and more, it is essential to exercise good judgment and care when expanding your investment portfolio to include real estate, but managing properties successfully can be very profitable.
Tyler Olhorst is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. You can reach him at inquiries@thenationaldigest.com.