How many are Real Estate investors/landlords?

[calmloki]

Really have no idea what percentage of the early retirement crowd are invested in real estate other than their home - so here's an attempt at a poll. Feel free to check as many of the options as apply and if you gotta then fill us in on why your choices are the best in the whole wide world - for you. This is a chance for us real estate junkies who don't know where to put our investment in Firecalc to see that there are a few property mavens out there.

 

[njhowie]

If you are a landlord, are all your tenants continuing to pay in full or have any of them stopped paying and essentially squatting on your dime at this time? Are you experiencing any cash flow issues as a result of tenants not paying and inability to evict them due to moratoriums in place?

 

[Another Reader]

If you are a landlord, are all your tenants continuing to pay in full or have any of them stopped paying and essentially squatting on your dime at this time? Are you experiencing any cash flow issues as a result of tenants not paying and inability to evict them due to moratoriums in place?

So far, only one tenant has had problems. He lost his job and had to move back with family. We allowed him to break his lease and did not charge July rent. In return, he left the place spotless. The rest have paid. We have one move out in August at the end of a lease and another tenant that is buying a home. The rental market is hot, although finding qualified applicants is a chore. Lots of applicants submitting unemployment check stubs as proof of income. Umm..nope!

In Arizona, the eviction moratorium has been extended through October. I haven't heard that a lot of people are taking advantage of it. I think they realize it would be impossible to rent again if they ultimately are evicted.

 

[pb4uski]

Our only real property are our principal residence and our winter condo in Florida.

My dad was a prodigious real estate investor until he retired, at which point he began selling off his properties until all that was left was a single tenant commercial property. My 89 yo Mom still owns it but I have naged it for her for the last 15 years since Dad passed.

In response to njhowie's question, our single tenant is current on their rent and I expect that they will continue to be.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

28 yr landlord. One duplex and one rental home. One eviction lifetime.

At my high point I had 4 properties and 7 tenants.

Every cent paid up. I'm one of the landlords that has had it good.

I wish I would have bought more back in the day.

 

[calmloki]

We now only have apartments, mostly one bedroom. We've had some move-outs, but they've refilled pretty promptly after we repaint and such. Mostly the 3-day delays before painters go in and (Covid 19)showing/contract awkwardness. One person didn't manage to pay by the end of June and is now making noises about eviction moratorium. Not bad at all really for 37 units. We opted not to do our normal annual rent raises this year, other than bumping up the new rents on vacancies we fill.

 

[Letj]

Really have no idea what percentage of the early retirement crowd are invested in real estate other than their home - so here's an attempt at a poll. Feel free to check as many of the options as apply and if you gotta then fill us in on why your choices are the best in the whole wide world - for you. This is a chance for us real estate junkies who don't know where to put our investment in Firecalc to see that there are a few property mavens out there.

I own quite a bit single family rentals which represents about 50% of my net worth. It’s provided enough income to allow me to retire early and to accelerate my net worth but it is a lot of work.

 

[COcheesehead]

Own a commercial building. No cash flow issues.

 

[bearkeley]

We are down to 4 SFHs, a vacation rental on the beach in Florida and 3 DSTs. Thankfully, all our tenants are paying on time. There is a chance that our snowbirds may cancel for the winter, but that would work out well for our winter travel plans. Goal would be to do a 1031 on all except the condo into DSTs.

 

[CaliKid]

We are 60/40 real estate/stocks. Mostly single family homes.

I have a plan to slowly convert from real estate to reits/dsts/investments.

 

[Cobra9777]

One SFH rental and some REIT ETFs... 15% of the portfolio. Tenant is current on rent and still working as usual. We had two rental homes a few years ago, but one was an hour away and had more maintenance issues.

We plan to downsize our main home at some point, which will transfer $200-300K into the investment portfolio. So at the moment, that money is invested in real estate as well. So the effective allocation to real estate is much higher than 15%.

 

[W2R]

Nope, not me. I don't have any real estate other than my Dream Home. Nothing against it, but just never did that.

 

[RenoJay]

My real estate investments are via private “hard money” loans. At the time of the lockdowns 2 of my 17 borrowers requested forbearance. With one I negotiated partial payments for three months and now he’s back to full pay with the missing payments added to the balance. For the other, I offered zero payments for a few months (she was running a motel in an area shut down to tourists) and told her I’d add the $500 legal fee (for the lawyer to write the forbearance doc) to the end of her loan. Surprisingly she didn’t want to pay $500 down the road and managed to come up with funds to stay current on her loan every month. The bigger issue is that five of my loans unexpectedly paid me off in the past few months so I’m scrambling to find replacement investments.

 

[Walt34]

When we moved from the DC area to WV we briefly discussed renting the DC house. For about two minutes. DW's brother had a rental townhouse in Frederick, MD that was a disaster for him. Well, I suppose he broke even but he had some horror tenants and after hearing about those I'd never even think about owning rental property.

Just before moving out, his last tenant stopped up the upstairs drains and turned on the water. He found out about it when the guy next door called him to tell him about the water running out the front door.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

Is anyone raising rents? I believe I will leave one tenant alone, raise one 1.5% and raise another 3.5% on 1/1/21. Normal rent increases where I live are 9-10%.

 

[6miths]

Vacation home has appreciated greatly but not kidding myself that I wouldn't have done better putting money in the market, taking a few weeks in Europe a year, and skipping the second home. But who knew the market would be crazy and many priceless memories and a great place for the family.

 

[Toocold]

Our SFH rentals pay for our normal living expenses, so we don't need to touch our other investments. No issues on payment. There have been several churns but they were rented within a week. Majority are managed by a property management company.

We own O as part of our dividend portfolio. No other REITs that I can think of.

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

During my career, we owned Multi-Family-Residences at each duty station [Tri-plex, Five-plex, another Tri-plex, and a Four-plex].

Then after I retired, we took a break from it for 10 years.

Now we have a mixed-use commercial/residential property. Two store fronts, one office space and eleven residences.

 

[Offgrid Organic Farmer]

... have any of them stopped paying and essentially squatting on your dime at this time? Are you experiencing any cash flow issues as a result of tenants not paying and inability to evict them due to moratoriums in place?

Once, in 1991 we had a tenant that stopped paying rent and we evicted them. In 30 years that was the only eviction we have ever done.

 

[street]

I own a ranch for my enjoyment and for an investment. I got a good deal at the time and is a very unique piece of property. I would hate to even put it on the market for 7 or 8 times more, what I paid for it, because I would be afraid it would sell.

I have bought land through the years and sold. The last piece I had I sold for 15 times more then I bought it for. I never bought any property that had a building on it.

Real estate never was a game changer in my retirement decision. I did make enough money on the one sale, to live on the profit the rest of my life, without touching investments, if I want to.

 

[Onward]

I checked several of the boxes, though none of them are what got me to FIRE.

Good ol' index mutual funds and ETFs did that.

 

[kevdude]

If you are a landlord, are all your tenants continuing to pay in full or have any of them stopped paying and essentially squatting on your dime at this time? Are you experiencing any cash flow issues as a result of tenants not paying and inability to evict them due to moratoriums in place?

We have 20 tenants (residential) and all have paid to date, so no cash flow issues. We feel very fortunate as this is our primary source of income.

 

[kevdude]

We are down to 4 SFHs, a vacation rental on the beach in Florida and 3 DSTs. Thankfully, all our tenants are paying on time. There is a chance that our snowbirds may cancel for the winter, but that would work out well for our winter travel plans. Goal would be to do a 1031 on all except the condo into DSTs.

berkeley - what types of properties are you invested in and what types of returns are you getting? I'm thinking about going this route in the near future.

 

[ut2sua]

We have 4 SFHs. No payment issues so far. I am glad we made the tough decision to buy the 1st rental years ago. Negative cash flow at the time and lots of work starting out. We later learned to delegate all the work to a property management company. We effectively spend close to zero time dealing with rental issues now which is great. DW refuses to get out of the rental business. It a great way to further diversify our porfolio, but it confuses the heck out of me when I tried to evaluate my own portfolio for retirement purpose because my asset allocation has different vocabulary than a typical stock/bond/cash porfolio. My porfolio is stock/bond/RE/cash and the RE changes all the other numbers. Right now, net income is only 2.5% of RE value, but I will assume appreciation will be another 2.5% (not guarantee of course) for a net return of 5%. Below the average return of ~10% for stock, but I am fine with that.

 

[NgineER]

We have three duplexes, one triplex and one triplex under renovation. All in all we have 10 units for rent, all paying in full and all tenants are employed. We have had three turnovers since Covid-19 started to make noise in March. We are not implementing any rent increases this year to existing tenants. New leases have seen rent increases.