one of the things I hate the most about being a small-time real estate investor
is having to collect your rent in cash collecting your rent cash is in my
opinion horrible stay tuned until the end of the video to find out why welcome
back to the channel guys my name is Bruce Wang
in today's video I'm gonna go over my real estate investment property you guys
know me more for my Robin Hood investment challenges where I buy sell
buy and sell stocks and collect dividends but if you guys didn't know I
am also a real estate investor in 2017 I opened up a real estate property
management company in 2018 that's when I purchased my first real estate
investment property I bought a duplex about a few miles away from where I work
and live so it's in a convenient location and it's very easy for me to go
back and forth just in case I need to get something done really quickly and if
there was a bigger problem I can easily manage contractors fixing
up the place so currently in my portfolio I only have one real estate
property and I am managing a few other ones I managed this commercial building
where I have a small studio space I have a few other residential properties that
have to take care of I honestly believe that doing real estate is probably the
second best way to become wealthy the first way is to start your own business
and the second way is to invest in real estate and if you can do both that is
that that would be amazing that will fast-track you on to becoming
rich so currently I'm not so comfortable showing you guys the front of my
building so I'll show you everything that I can let's start with the back the
backyard where everybody likes to party and whatnot so this is a really big lot
I think it's about 3500 square foot for the whole entire lot so this is the back
yard you can see that there is a shed in the back where my tenants they can keep
their slow they can keep their shovels and also their lawnmowers I made sure to
let them know that I gave them a cheaper rent if they do
take care of the lawn and do their own shoveling so they do get a discount
there here's another angle you can see it's it's really is really big and over
here is the entrance to the basement at the time of these pictures no one has
moved into this apartment yet but both the units are currently occupied and
each living space is about 1,000 square feet you can see that all the appliances
are brand new all the cabinets are brand-new this is fully renovated I
won't have any issues when it comes to appliances and like little things to fix
here and there so you can see this is all brand new I made sure I did not get
granite countertops I don't think granite countertops are a
good investment if you're gonna do a if you're gonna do an investment property
where are you gonna be renting out your space the bathroom is kind of small but
it is a full bathroom both units are two bedrooms one bathroom here is one of the
bedrooms you can see that there is a decent size closet and I think this is
the angle from the other master bedroom this is the bigger this bedroom is a lot
bigger than the other one this is a photo of the family room or living room
I don't think I think you can't call it a family room any more because some
people because some some people don't have families so I think he's just
called a living room this big window so there's a lot of natural light here's
another angle for towards the hallway all hardwood floor throughout and tiles
and both units are identical the first unit this is the upper unit and the
first unit has a basement door so that's the only difference between those units
so there are a lot of great reasons why you should invest in real estate the
number one reason why I invested in real estate is because I needed the cash flow
the cash flow provides me a very stable income every month it's coming in every
now and then my tenants will pay their rent late but that's not really an issue
and if you buy your property the correct way normally your rent will be a lot
higher than your expenses some of the expenses people don't normally know when
it comes to real estate is property tax yes that you have to pay sewage
maintenance vacancy all that is factored into your expenses and then you subtract
that from your rents and what is left over is your cash flow and I use that
cash flow to pay some bills I use that cash flow to invest and and so on and so
on every month I collect a very stable
income every now and then there are vacancies which means the unit's won't
be occupied or the tenant will pay their lint their rent late or the tenants
don't pay at all and all that means is sometimes you need to work a little bit
harder to fill in those vacant units or communicate with your tenants so that
they don't pay late and also if they are not paying at all that's the that's the
worst case scenario and that's when you have to evict your tenant but other than
that this is a very stable income and a great way to set yourself up for the
future so it's it's been about half a years now since I've owned this property
and it took me about two more months to fill in those empty units and there like
I said there hasn't been that many problems other than maintenance issues
and late rents but that brings me to the point of the next advantage so advantage
number two of owning real estate is that I am my own boss so what that means is I
don't typically work a normal 9:00 to 5:00 whenever there is a gigantic
whenever there are issues I settled that right away so that does take me or like
a few hours a day I don't have a boss that I have to report to I am my own
boss and I am always reporting to myself so it gets a little bit crazy up in here
because there's just so much to you every now and then having the freedom to
not answer to anybody is is a great luxury and I love the
ability to be accountable I love the responsibility back in the
days maybe when I was in my teens or early 20s I would I would hate to take
responsibility but the older I get the more responsibilities I have and I
really feel that I feel more accomplished when I do have these
responsibilities and I'm able to take care of them it brings me a lot of
confidence for for that reason I got a lot of questions asked about taxes when
it comes to real estate for some I don't know why you guys are already asking me
about taxes but I'll give you a little bit of
and the third reason why I love investing in real estate is because of
the tax benefits that you get from owning your own property rental income
isn't taxed the same way as waged income earners there are a lot of advantage
when it comes to how to account for these rental incomes and that leads us
to write offs there are a lot of things that you can write off when you come
when it comes to real estate such as property tax maintenance travel cost a
lot a lot of these things you can write off to save money on your taxes at the
end of the year it does get difficult at times because
you have to track all your expenses and there are something and there are a lot
of purchases throughout the year so that's why I got an accountant all I
have to do is you know compile everything and let let the accountant
help me do the work for me and that brings me to the next thing you can do
with real estate and that is to smash that like button if you guys have
enjoyed this video don't forget to give me a like
but seriously one of the main points of this video is why I hate collecting rent
in cash a lot of people might be thinking that Oh cash is king cash you
always want to have cash on you but I don't think that is the right thinking
the main reason why I don't like collecting cash is because there is
obviously a safety issue carrying around a lot of cash on you is a gigantic
safety issue if you were to get robbed everything is gone it's not the same as
if you were hacked on a credit card because credit card companies can pay
you back if you lose your cash there's no way yeah there is almost no way that
you'll be able to get that back another reason why holding cash is so horrible
is because I am a very forgetful person I might misplace this money and it will
just be gone for a while and I won't be able to find it for you know a few days
or a few weeks and sometimes I might not be able to find it at all once I get
cash I make sure I go to the bank deposit it have it in a bank council I'm
able to track it and make sure it just doesn't go anywhere other than when I
need to use it for expenses one thing about real estate investing is that you
don't have to know everything right away real estate is they learn as
you go types of business and that is something that I'm really grateful for
because because honestly you're not gonna know everything I don't know
everything still to this day to this day even though I've been you know working
in real estate for a very long time before this I used to paint walls I used
to you know refinish floors I did a lot of the crappy work and I'm not talking
just about the plumbing issues like if you were if you're gonna go into this
type of business you have to be able to do a lot of learning on your own you
have to be able to figure things out on your own when a bigger issue comes along
you can call a contractor or hire an expert but when you're fur but when
you're first starting out a lot of the things that need to get done you can
honestly do it yourself so this is a brand new series that I'm planning to
introduce to the channel I want to make more videos about real estate investing
and just track my journey from the first year to the second year and so on and so
on if this is something that interests you please let me know in the comments
down below and if you want to learn more about my real estate journey you can
subscribe to the channel and I can make a lot more videos about this recently
I've been looking for another investment properties so actually I've been looking
for a very long time now but I think now is the time that I pulled the trigger on
actually buying something and I want to take you guys through that process with
me so if you want to watch that type of content don't forget to subscribe if you
want more content just like this don't forget to click on these videos here
right next to me but right now I got to go to the bank to deposit this so I
don't get robbed see you later guys I gotta get out of here
right