For those of you that have made little or negative returns on your mutual funds and stocks, this statement might sound familiar. Bill Gross is a founder and managing director of PIMCO, They manage over $1.7trillion of securities. His latest Investment Outlook paper had some very strong statements.
He says the historic 6.6% return on the stock market is more of a ponzi scheme. And we shouldn’t expect the stock market to keep up with the real cost of living. WOW!… strong words, but coming from someone who manages more money than several countries GDP, we should pay some attention.
So if stocks and mutual funds aren’t cutting it and aren’t going to cut in the future, where do we turn? There was no clear answer given in Mr. Gross’ article. But maybe it’s time to look elsewhere… There is one investment that has proven to stand the test of time. Real Estate. Real estate doesn’t have to appreciate in value to generate a positive return…but of course, it usually does. How’s that you say? Well, let’s take a close, but simplified look.
If you bought a property for $300k and put a $60k or $70k down payment, rented the house out, and paid your mortgage off in 20 or 25 years (by the way, the average time to pay a mortgage in Canada is between 12 and 17 years), you would own a tangible asset worth $300k. And let’s not forget the rental income that just keeps being generated each and every month, year after year…. We can use any number for this but a realistic rent on a $300k property would be in the $1300 to $1600/mth range. But remember, rents go up with inflation… so we should also expect rents to increase with cost of living. And if they don’t increase, then inflation isn’t an issue…
Yes, the first 5 years or so, may not see a positive cashflow.. maybe even a negative one… but any loss could be written off against your income… and eventually, you would be in a positive position as your mortgage balance decreases.
Real estate investments scare most of us. We don’t understand what’s involved. We imagine the worst… the possible tenant from hell, that doesn’t pay for 6 months or destroys your property….or buying the money pit and having major repair bills, or mortgage rates going up making our payments unaffordable. But in reality, if you are careful with your property selection, put the time in to manage and watch your property, and are careful with tenant selection, you will be with the majority of investors that see their investment perform well… you will build equity in your property as the mortgage gets paid over time. And hopefully, the value of your property will only go up…
Maybe it’s time to invest in something we can see, touch and take care of…. instead of a piece of paper like stocks shares or mutual funds. There’s a growing number of Canadians that are fed up with the stock market and mutual funds… fed up with paying 2% management expense ratios or 6% deferred sales charges only to come out with a negative return…. How may of us have been forced into mutual funds or stocks because we’ve been told to invest into RRSPs to reduce our taxes and invest for retirement? Has that formula really worked for anyone? If you want to look at something different but certainly not new, then take a look at real estate… you may be pleasantly surprised.
If you need help with understanding mortgages and how financing an investment property works, please feel free to contact me. I’m always happy to help.
Steve Garganis
Fixed mortgage rates went up this week on the wholesale market. Only about a 0.10% increase… We are still way below 3.00% for 5 yr fixed rates. Hey, that’s pretty good! (watch for the media to blow it out of proportion soon.. they seem to love feeding on negativity).
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