Joseph Moore

One of the things you will learn if you want to make real money in real estate, you're going to be active, not passive.

The passive returns on real estate range in American history, and we actually have the stats going all the way back for hundreds of years, all the way back to Europe in the 1500s.

Academics have studied this extensively.

The historic return on real estate is 4%, 5%, or 6%, depending on the era.

So if you want passive returns, then you can get passive returns.

But if you want outsized returns, it's going to be active.

You're going to make it more valuable.

Well, this has been debated for centuries, by the way.

Like I can go back and find people arguing about rent versus buy at least in the early to mid 20th century.

And you can find kind of hints of a similar debate earlier than that.

Renting is not throwing your money away.

Renting gives you optionality, which people don't always think about.

So if you are especially young and coming up in your career and you're getting really good at what you do,

The best opportunity that may come your way may involve a trip to the other side of the country.

and you're going to want to be able to say yes to that and so renting does give you the ability to up and leave when you need to and also if your dog messes up the carpet you know you're only out the the security deposit but as an investment class real estate can be very powerful for the average person it's actually not great for building the biggest fortunes but it's probably the strongest builder of mid-size and small fortunes in american history

There's this nostalgia that we have, and you see this a lot in political discourse.

I'm not going to pick sides here.

It's on both sides.

We've turned the American home into an investment rather than to a home.

Well, no, no, no.