Trust Yourself: Real Estate Is Still A Good Investment

One of the most common ailments I see with many first time duplex investors is the malady known as analysis paralysis.

Between you and me, that’s just a fancy name for fear.

After all, buying your first investment property is a daunting proposition for most of us. We study, ask questions, listen to podcasts and do endless calculations on our phones, laptops, and scraps of paper.

We skip premium coffees and new clothes in order to save enough for a down payment.

We join Meetup groups, read all of Robert Kiyosaki’s books, play the Cash Flow game, talk with friends and family about the power of investing in real estate…

And then we never pull the trigger…

Sometimes the hardest part of investing in real estate is believing it will work the way we believe it will.

So instead of trusting, we do nothing.

I say “we” because sometimes, I get this way too.

And in my experience, there is only one way to overcome it. If a property meets my well-defined criteria for the one I would like in my portfolio, I simply have to trust everything will work out.

Because I never make money on the ones I don’t buy, or the theories stuck in my head.

If you’re stuck in analysis paralysis, you’re probably like I am in those moments; afraid of losing money or missing something obvious. That fear paralyzes us.

It’s at those times we need to remember that even if a property never goes up in value, as long as it carries itself, in 30 years it will be worth what the market is at that moment; a number which, no matter what, is sure to be much higher than the amount we paid for it.

The difference is the only money we put into it was a single down payment on a lower price.

Our tenants paid for the rest of it.

We can’t say that about our IRAs, our 401ks, or our savings accounts.

That’s something worth believing in.