Real Estate

About five years ago, a finance friend of mine mentioned that his much wealthier colleague was buying property on a high elevation in Singapore as a climate change hedge. (This same climate change hedger was also stockpiling gold – not just shares of a gold ETF, but actual gold – and this was well before the pandemic.) I filed that factoid about the Singapore purchase away, but it certainly planted [...]

When we got serious about real estate investing starting in 2013 as a way to propel our FIRE journey, we turned to turnkey real estate companies to accelerate our growth. Scott was working a big corporate job, and my business was in growth mode. We felt maxed out on how many cash-flowing rental properties we could find ourselves, and so turnkey was alluring because turnkey providers do a lot of [...]

The 2020 IMN Single Family Rental (SFR) Virtual Forum was a two-day event that featured 2,000 attendees and 80 speakers in keynotes and breakout sessions. I was only able to attend Day One, since the next day we were en-route to dropping off our youngest at college. There were many sessions to choose from. I elected to listen to: the keynote, which gave a state of the SFR industry;a financing [...]

HELOC, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: Using a HELOC for investment property so you can look like a cash buyer even when you’re financingSmoothing out cash flow when you’re a small business with lumpy earningsHaving money to tap for emergencies in lieu of a rainy day bank account earning negative return after inflation Apologies to Elizabeth Barret Browning for swiping a line from her beautiful [...]

A good friend of mine had a rent-to-own agreement on the house she was living in, but her application for a mortgage was denied so she was unable to meet the purchase deadline. A rent-to-own agreement is what it sounds like – it looks like a typical lease, except at a specified date, the tenant has the right to purchase the property for an already agreed upon price. For my [...]

I recently finished a new personal finance book, Beyond The Basics, by Sammy Azzouz, a financial advisor out of Massachusetts, and one of his investment topics “beyond the basics” is real estate. Azzouz’ premise is that for most investors their basics will be three things: career, because that provides your earning potential;savings rate to ensure there are earnings left over to invest;building a risk-managed paper portfolio that you can stick [...]

Costa Rica FIRE made a guest appearance on the Real Wealth podcast, which focuses on real estate investing. We were excited to be invited onto the show because we look to Real Wealth as a source for real estate news and ideas and even traveled to their income property showcase in Cleveland last summer. (It was a great example of one of our bleisure trips, where we mix business and [...]

We recently received a reader question asking if now is the time to buy real estate in Costa Rica: Do you think that based on everything that is happening right now, it may be a good time to buy? Are there more properties on the market now in light of the pandemic? I know that this is a broad and likely unanswerable question, just wondering your thoughts on the timing.- John [...]

I had written before about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected our FIRE plans, and this was before a continued spike in cases worldwide and Costa Rica closing its borders. Costa Rica indicated the border closings were through April 12, but the pandemic appears far from abating. Estimates for a vaccine are 12-18 months away. Who knows if the border closure will be extended? Even if Costa Rica does reopen [...]