4 Ways Property Might Be the Key to Your Financial Future
So you’ve got an entrepreneurial streak, and you want to make wise investments today that will site you up for a life of prosperity, and maybe even comfort, in the future.
There are, of course, many different things you could do in order to secure your future financial position, ranging from using the Wolf of Wall Street as a documentary and how-to guide and playing the stock market aggressively (not strictly recommended to follow the general lifestyles of the characters from that film, however), to establishing yourself as a thought leader in your particular industry, to the point where you’re able to make a good living writing books, releasing video, and speaking at conferences.
One of the classic ways of setting yourself up for a bright financial future, however, is to invest in property. This can take a variety of different forms, and you may need to be on the ball and constantly keep an eye on the property news for your country or local area in order to stay on the ball. Nonetheless, many people have made their fortunes through handling property in different forms.
Here are a few ways in which property might be the key to your financial future.
You could get involved in developing and selling property for a profit
Before his later career changes, Donald Trump was well known for making his fortune in buying and developing property. Certainly, he had a lot of money to throw around at the outset, and various connections and insider knowledge on his side, but other people from far more humble beginnings have, similarly, enjoyed great financial success from developing and selling on property.
In his autobiography, “Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story”, Arnold Schwarzenegger recounts that he actually made his first million during his bodybuilder days, a good while before he had any success as an actor and more generally as a public figure.
As he recalls in the book, he and his friend and training partner Franco Columbu, benefited from an entrepreneurial streak that the other “lazy” bodybuilders in town didn’t have, and so hustled at a variety of different businesses, ranging from a bricklaying business, to selling self-made fitness magazines.
What Arnold attributes his early financial success to, however, was dealing in property. It turns out that The Governator — long before he was, in fact, The Governator — developed a keen eye for buying properties cheap, in areas of town which had a bright future, and then selling them on when the time was right, so much so that he was able to become wealthy doing this, while also winning a string of Mr Olympia competitions, taking acting classes, and planning his various future career highlights.
In other words, with a bit of entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to hustle, a proactive attitude, and a good eye, it’s entirely possible you could make a fair bit of money dealing in property, while still achieving various other great and impressive things during the remainder of your free time.
You could purchase and rent out property for a steady, enduring income stream
Perhaps the easiest way for anyone to begin making money off a second property, is to rent it out and thereby make a tidy monthly income while enjoying the general perks of being a landlord. The more properties you own, and the better able you are to ensure that your tenants are responsible, tidy, and respectable people, the more money you can expect to make a month.
It’s certainly not unheard of for people to end up in a position where they’re able to make a living as full-time landlords, thanks to the fact that they have steadily been working on acquiring, fixing up, and renting out properties, over a series of years.
Of course, being a landlord does, necessarily come with various responsibilities and woes. It’s not a free lunch.
For one thing, you’ll generally need to invest the money in sending repairmen over whenever something goes wrong with the house, and any legal disputes between you and your tenants would inevitably be a real headache.
Still, becoming a landlord is a great way of developing a sustainable monthly income, while not having to dedicate your every waking moment to the maintenance of your property.
You could explore your entrepreneurial side, and buy properties in order to set up a string of businesses
The thing about property, is that — particularly depending on where it’s located — it can serve as a great shell for any number of different business ventures you may want to establish.
While the modern digital economies typically rely on work that is done remotely, or at least, can, in theory, be done from anywhere with a computer and an internet connection, more traditional brick-and-mortar business still play an important role in society.
It may be that you have a particular professional background which allows you to exploit an opening in the market, and set up business in various areas where the competition is scarce or nonexistent. Maybe you have a good degree of experience in martial arts, for example, and have the means to purchase properties which can be turned into gyms or dojos, in areas which feature a good number of young people (an ideal target market, generally speaking), but no martial arts studios.
Or, you could explore a niche which doesn’t require any great degree of past expertise, but which nonetheless is popular with wide segments of society.
Setting up solariums, or tanning salons in busy, urban areas, for example, is a fairly reliable way of ensuring that you always have substantial numbers of people who are interested in using your services.
When all is said and done, the sky’s the limit with the kinds of businesses you could set up. As long as the demand is there, the competition isn’t too steep, and you have a good understanding of how to execute an effective and cost-effective business plan, you could become the owner of a chain.
Owning your own property frees you from a great deal of financial uncertainty
This point doesn’t exactly refer to ways in which owning property can generate wealth for you, directly, but it does address the basic reality that owning your own property frees you from a great deal of financial uncertainty, and empowers you to make more daring entrepreneurial decisions and investments in your life.
If you rent property, you have to always be mindful of covering the rent each month, consider the fact that your landlord might cancel your contract on short notice, and understand that you have to walk a fairly thin line in terms of your overall decision making, or potentially find yourself in the unenviable situation of having to scramble to find somewhere new to live, while moving around all your worldly possessions, and simultaneously trying to keep up with the normal obligations of everyday life, like going to work each morning.
When you own your own property, you are simply in a much more secure position. Unless you fail to make mortgage payments or are set by a serious catastrophe, you are unlikely to find yourself without a roof over your head. You can also take a more long term view of planning for the future, as you know that you’re not going to be obliged to live somewhere else and completely restructure your life in six months to a year.
This, of course, allows you to be more outgoing and daring in your entrepreneurial pursuits, and can, overall, have a tremendously positive effect on your financial life.
You could take a plunge on doing some writing, creating a startup out of our garage, or any number of other things.