There are two different property investing strategies and it all depends on what you are after – cashflow and capital gains. Different investments produce different results. The question is, what results do you want?
The rich have a different attitude towards money – they put their money to work instead of working for them. They don’t let their money sit in a bank account or savings and do not get anything from very little interest.
They invest it and make it work! Money will not grow if not planted.
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Before you think about which strategy to use – ask yourself;
Do you want to ‘Buy Low and Sell High?’ or Do you want a consistent moving income?
Understanding what capital gains mean
This is something very familiar and is what others mostly call ‘flipping houses’. You see this all the time too as it’s a very common practice.
In property investing, when you buy a single-family house and land for $200,000. You make renovations, repairs, and upgrades to the property, and you sell it for $240,000. This is what you call Capital Gains.
The Disadvantage of Capital Gains
It is true that there’s a lot of money to be made through capital gains but understand too that risks are inevitable. It should be included in your projection and you make sure that each investment is stress-tested however bad the economic situation goes.
- Cycle – know that this is something you have to keep repeating over and over again. You buy and flip and sell each time so the income never stops.
- Recession – if the property market gets hit with something like a recession, it can be hard to sell. Worse when the market crashes and reverses like what happened in the housing bubble of 2008, the property prices can go down – they won’t be worth what flippers bought them for.
- Tax implications mean you have to give some of the hard-earned money back to the Government
As long as market prices go up, capital-gains investors win.
But when the markets turn down and prices fall — something nobody can predict — capital-gains investors lose.
Is this something you are prepared for?
What is cashflow
Cashflow is when you purchase an investment and hold on to it. Every month, quarter, or year that investment returns money to you. Cashflow investors, unlike capital gains investors, do not want to sell their investments because they want to keep collecting the regular income of cash flow.
In property investing, cashflow is purchasing a single-family house and, instead of renovating to sell, you rent it out. You get the rent every month and pay the expenses, including the mortgage.
If you bought it at a good price and managed the property well, you will receive a profit or a positive cashflow.
In this case, the property investor is not overly concerned about the market condition. He is only focused on long-term trends.
Another name for this is Passive Income, you are not exchanging hours worked for money spent.
Cashflow vs Capital Gains
The best thing about cash flow is that it’s money flowing into your pocket on a continual basis — whether you’re working or not. You could be doing anything and anywhere in the world while your money is busy working for you.
One big factor is that cashflow investing is based on fundamentals that aren’t as susceptible to market swings like capital-gains investments, which means that even in bad times, money still flows into your pockets.
Additionally, cashflow is what is known as passive income, and is the lowest taxed type of income. This is not always the case with capital gains taxes, which vary depending on the type of asset you’ve invested in and how long you’ve owned that asset. In some cases, taxes can be very high.
This is one of the reasons why Positive Income Properties focuses on selling positive cash flow investment properties – we are more geared toward low-risk investing. We also support our property stocks with rental guarantees of as much as 3 years to secure the cash flow which is a great option for any starter investor.
At the end of the day, a property investor can choose to go with cashflow or capital appreciation strategy – it all boils down to what he/she wants to achieve, what type of property investor he is, and the type of property portfolio he is currently building or already have.
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Gil Elliott is the Managing Director and Founder of Positive Income Properties. Gil has a rich background in business consulting and property investment. All of these he gained in his nearly four decades of experience in the real estate and marketing industries.
