The first million takes the longest to achieve

[street]

It is all about compounding and present value for us as the 1 million becomes cheaper with inflation and "easier" as compounding contributes. Our gains track S&P and it helps to have some big winners (CDNS, NVDA, EQIX, HD, MSFT, AAPL, some of which respresents the "good" members of the Magnificent 7) in the mix. 2021-2022 was a roller coaster, though, and our net worth took some wicked whipsawed swings during that time. We were/are also 85%+ equities.

2012 - first
2015 - second
2017 - third
2019 - fourth
2020 - fifth
2021 - sixth
2021 - lost over 1 million
2021 - gained back 1 million
2023 - seventh-eleventh (2023 was a huge year with 80% gain)

One thing to note, because we live well below our means and my W-2 income more than sustains our lifestyle we basically had zero sales and redemptions during this run and were/are 100% buy and hold so there is a lot of capital gains tied up here so it is not as much as it appears to be.

You racked them up in fast order. Very nice!

 

[kgtest]

1st took 15 yrs. Started saving at 26, hit 1MM last year. Hoping the second 1MM will come in less than 5 yrs. We will see. DCA at least $1,000/week...sometimes more, sometimes less.

 

[mathjak107]

+1, NYC real estate is a thing of beauty.

traditional landlording never interested me . collecting rents and waiting for appreciation isn’t where i go .

for those who understand the market place here dabbling in rent stabilized apartments is a gold mine .

many buildings went thru coop conversion’s in the 1980s .

those tenants who didn’t buy remained stabilized tenants .

those apartments can be purchased for cents on the dollar in most cases with tenants in them .

if they are nice coops then the rents in manhattan tend to be lower on them because the tenants are stabilized .

we bought a package of 9 apartments in the prestigious 200 central park south building for cents on the dollar.

we offered 100k to tenants who would move out so we could sell the coop apartments for 7 figures each.

all apartments were sold off

 

[street]

traditional landlording never interested me . collecting rents and waiting for appreciation isn’t where i go .

for those who understand the market place here dabbling in rent stabilized apartments is a gold mine .

many buildings went thru coop conversion’s in the 1980s .

those tenants who didn’t buy remained stabilized tenants .

those apartments can be purchased for cents on the dollar in most cases with tenants in them .

if they are nice coops then the rents in manhattan tend to be lower on them because the tenants are stabilized .

we bought a package of 9 apartments in the prestigious 200 central park south building for cents on the dollar.

we offered 100k to tenants who would move out so we could sell the coop apartments for 7 figures each.

all apartments were sold off

Interesting!!!
That is good business.

 

[mathjak107]

[/B]
Interesting!!!
That is good business.

it’s kind of a good ole boys club though .

you won’t find these deals advertised..

we had 2 apartments left where the tenants wouldn’t take the buy out offer .

so we wanted to dump the last two which were breakeven rents .

our broker who specializes in these deals called her private list of investors and in one day we had an investor group interested .

we sold both leftovers for 360k , if they could be sold then they would have gotten over 2 million dollars .

so that shows you how much profit is baked in to these deals and that doesn’t include future appreciation while waiting for the tenant to die or leave

 

[Onda]

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not.

 

[Car-Guy]

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not.

+1

 

[mathjak107]

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not.

there is the risk that the tenants won’t move out and you end up stuck with a breakeven investment..

my feeling was that if these tenants who were original tenants pre conversion had the resources to buy they would have .

so now being boomers i figured that once their pay checks stopped they can’t afford to live across the street from central park .

i was right as over the next ten years 7 out of 9 took the offer.

we actually offered the two remaining their apartments half price , no money down and we would hold financing for five years .

they declined the opportunity of a lifetime . they could have bought and sold the next day and doubled their money .

in the mean time now the deal is off the table and an investor group is their new landlord

 

[street]

it’s kind of a good ole boys club though .

you won’t find these deals advertised..

we had 2 apartments left where the tenants wouldn’t take the buy out offer .

so we wanted to dump the last two which were breakeven rents .

our broker who specializes in these deals called her private list of investors and in one day we had an investor group interested .

we sold both leftovers for 360k , if they could be sold then they would have gotten over 2 million dollars .

so that shows you how much profit is baked in to these deals and that doesn’t include future appreciation while waiting for the tenant to die or leave

An opportunist at it's best.
I had a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy an old subdivision that had never developed except for a couple of lots. At the time there was a small thing in the title search that made my attorney to discourage my purchasing that property.
Well it turned out about ten years after that tract of land made 2.5 to 3 million bucks. I know the guy that ended up buying it and took advantage of an opportunity.

I was going to make that tract of land into farm ground to make something on it. It was an irrigation able land. Since it was all plotted it would have cost a fortune to undue that status.

I think about that opportunity often and if I wouldn't have listened to the attorney it would have been a huge money maker. I could have bought it for 24K.

 

[mathjak107]

i always say success is where opportunity, luck and preparation all meet up .

we had sold our house and decided to rent and invest in some kind of passive business and our accountant turned us on to a client who was thinking of selling his breakeven apartments he owned .

we also held a 10% stake in the commercial lease rights in the same building with real estate mogul bernard spitzer .

we got it as a sweetener to the package since rents were break even

before he died spitzer sold the lease rights off to the ashkenazy group , big developers in nyc for 18 million dollars.

this was a life changing investment

 

[street]

i always say success is where opportunity, luck and preparation all meet up .

we had sold our house and decided to rent and invest in some kind of passive business and our accountant turned us on to a client who was thinking of selling his breakeven apartments he owned .

we also held a 10% stake in the commercial lease rights in the same building with real estate mogul bernard spitzer .

we got it as a sweetener to the package since rents were break even

before he died spitzer sold the lease rights off to the ashkenazy group , big developers in nyc for 18 million dollars.

this was a life changing investment

WOW! That is very interesting. I never did any buying of apt. or land with structures attached to it. My buying was bare ground and than I held and improved than sold. I got lucky and yes, I had the opportunity and was brave enough and it always paid off.

 

[mathjak107]

WOW! That is very interesting. I never did any buying of apt. or land with structures attached to it. My buying was bare ground and than I held and improved than sold. I got lucky and yes, I had the opportunity and was brave enough and it always paid off.

nyc is a very unique market place

 

[Onda]

https://a836-acris.nyc.gov/DS/DocumentSearch/BBL

200 central park south is: Block 01030 Lot 0029

Hmm interesting I don't see same name repeating 7 times in sales from 2014 till 2024. One could go further, but I did not bother.

 

[mathjak107]

our LLC was chapman capital holdings .

not all are listed here but there was a total of 9 .

for whatever reason the website realty hop only logged 7 of the 9

the two we dumped show 350k each but actually both went for 350k as a deal . each is worth about 1.1 million if no tenant, so that shows you how steep stabilized stuff trades at

https://www.realtyhop.com/property-records/search/chapman-capital-holdings-llc

here is an article on the lease rights sale we did at 200 central park south

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/20...0-cps-leasehold-from-bernard-spitzer-for-18m/

 

[Onda]

our LLC was chapman capital holdings .

not all are listed here but there was a total of 9 .

for whatever reason the website realty hop only logged 7 of the 9

https://www.realtyhop.com/property-records/search/chapman-capital-holdings-llc

here is an article on the lease rights sale we did at 200 central park south

https://therealdeal.com/new-york/20...0-cps-leasehold-from-bernard-spitzer-for-18m/

OK I just had some fun
I don't think publishing such things here is a good idea.... people can figure out who you are. Deeds can be easily searched.

 

[mathjak107]

not a problem ….

we have been in a few financial publications over the years so the info on us is out there .

i have had my actual name out there a few times .

its funny because when we first got married my wife thought she could use her name or my name if she hyphenated the name .

she didn’t realize she created a brand new name so luckily she never used the hyphenated name

i use my last name and she uses here last name which is actually chapman .

since this was a family venture between her brother in law us and her son , chapman won as the LLC name

 

[mathjak107]

holy crap while i was typing the whole building vibrated a minute ago . we just had a little earthquake in nyc in queens like a tremor

citizen ap says 2.4 but now reported as 4.7 in spots

 

[Cassius King]

Great thread. Thoroughly enjoyed reading it!

For myself, the first $100,000 was the hardest and most challenging. Somewhere on this site there's a thread where my aggravation can be read, lol. I finally hit that mark in February 2013. Thought I had cleared that hurdle and was hot stuff. From there it went like this:

$200k in April 2016
$300k in January 2018
$400k in June 2020
$500k in January 2021
$600k in May 2021
$700k in January 2022
$1m in January 2024

I'll have to fill in my sheet with the $800 and $900k details. There was a lot of back and forth where I hit and went back, etc. This is strictly investments, no home or property in these totals.

 

[pacergal]

Both of us were public govt workers, 6% went in to our pensions, but we had, and still have, no control over it. I started in 1981, hubby in 1986.
They offered a 457b about 10-15 years into work life, it was late in the game. We signed up, at that time, only put 3% in due to financial constraints (first house, 2 kids, etc). As we got older, we upped the %.
Hit a million right at retirement, still working on the second.
Luckily, the pension and SS is more than enough for our yearly budget and we are still "saving" some every month. We rarely take from investments.
Never imagined we would be a millionaire. We feel blessed.

 

[emmaswan]

It is all about compounding and present value for us as the 1 million becomes cheaper with inflation and "easier" as compounding contributes. Our gains track S&P and it helps to have some big winners (CDNS, NVDA, EQIX, HD, MSFT, AAPL, some of which respresents the "good" members of the Magnificent 7) in the mix. 2021-2022 was a roller coaster, though, and our net worth took some wicked whipsawed swings during that time. We were/are also 85%+ equities.

2012 - first
2015 - second
2017 - third
2019 - fourth
2020 - fifth
2021 - sixth
2021 - lost over 1 million
2021 - gained back 1 million
2023 - seventh-eleventh (2023 was a huge year with 80% gain)

One thing to note, because we live well below our means and my W-2 income more than sustains our lifestyle we basically had zero sales and redemptions during this run and were/are 100% buy and hold so there is a lot of capital gains tied up here so it is not as much as it appears to be.

Would you mind sharing how much in contributions you made throughout this timeframe? This is seriously impressive!

 

[CRLLS]

It is all about compounding and present value for us as the 1 million becomes cheaper with inflation and "easier" as compounding contributes. Our gains track S&P and it helps to have some big winners (CDNS, NVDA, EQIX, HD, MSFT, AAPL, some of which respresents the "good" members of the Magnificent 7) in the mix. 2021-2022 was a roller coaster, though, and our net worth took some wicked whipsawed swings during that time. We were/are also 85%+ equities.

2012 - first
2015 - second
2017 - third
2019 - fourth
2020 - fifth
2021 - sixth
2021 - lost over 1 million
2021 - gained back 1 million
2023 - seventh-eleventh (2023 was a huge year with 80% gain)

One thing to note, because we live well below our means and my W-2 income more than sustains our lifestyle we basically had zero sales and redemptions during this run and were/are 100% buy and hold so there is a lot of capital gains tied up here so it is not as much as it appears to be.

Amazing growth. Using the quick rule of 72, that is an average annual 18% from 2012-2015 and average 24% per year over from 2015 thru 2023. Congratulations.

 

[ArmchairMillionaire23]

Was thinking about this since I look and document at the end of each month my portfolio numbers...
Anyone else every took the time to crunch your number to see how long it took to add one more 7-digit number to your portfolio.

Started contributing to a 401(k) at 26. 401(k) switched to Vanguard when I was 30. Then I really started investing. My goal was $1M by the time I was 50. I got there when I was 49. I'm 53 now and it's up to $1.5M. My goal was to retire when I was 54 with $1.5M so as long as the investments keep somewhat stable for the next year, I should be okay.

It would be nice if I was able to grow my earnings to $2M or $3M over time but that would only be icing on the cake as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Koolau]

Yeah, I'm with Gumby. Lots of zigs and zags along the way to the first Mil. Oil shocks of the 70s, inflation, kids, etc., but Megacorp pulled me through with a great stock move in mid 80s (roughly 25 year anniversary.) Since then, Things have picked up speed, but not to the extent some here have indicated. I'm more than satisfied with my stash, but Megacorp has come through again with my most recent Mil here of late (so glad I didn't ditch all the stock.) Will there be any more? Who knows. I have enough, so have stopped thinking too much about it, but YMMV.

 

[Koolau]

This subject got me thinking: I wonder if anyone could rewrite the words to "The First Cut is the Deepest" by Cat Stevens.



First line of the chorus might be "The first Mil is the hardest (toughest, slowest, sweetest, etc.)" My poetic capabilities aren't taking me any farther. Any poets here who want to take a crack at it, be my guest as YMMV.

 

[street]

This subject got me thinking: I wonder if anyone could rewrite the words to "The First Cut is the Deepest" by Cat Stevens.



First line of the chorus might be "The first Mil is the hardest (toughest, slowest, sweetest, etc.)" My poetic capabilities aren't taking me any farther. Any poets here who want to take a crack at it, be my guest as YMMV.

I think some CW artist could make a number one from that verse. Lol

I like that Koolau!