Friday, April 20, 2012

Two Million Burning a Hole In My Pocket

Here's what I said to a wanna-bee, 20-something, with $2M dollars to invest in commercial real estate...
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Dear $2Millionaire,

"You've got great goals and a plan, but for the love of gawd, leave that money where it is!!!!!!

You need to act as if you had about .20c in your pocket, not $2M.

Any investor you talk with that had a wad of money in the bank when he started will tell you about his disasters and losses.  Why?

Because having that much money in the bank (or available) is the instant-rice recipe for making the most short-sighted, ignorant, stress-relieving, prideful, cocky, stupid moves e.v.e.r.  !!!

That much money sitting in the bank is so easily mishandled, it's like holding a lit stick of dynamite in a room with the gas turned on... Something's gonna blow like Mt. Vesuvius, before anything good ever happens.

At 25... honestly, and without insulting your character and intelligence, you need to SLOW down.  You've made a wise decision consulting this forum... Just saying.  But...

$2M is like having an Olympic-sized pool of opportunity waiting for you to dive into.  It gets your juices going.  The problem is you don't have any diving experience, much less know how to swim, much less hold your breath, or even do a lap without drowning.

So, what's the answer?

Start with a wading pool. (OK, this is an analogy, not an instruction to go buy a kiddie pool...)

Fill the wading pool with some water, and splash a little, and learn how to fall face first into the wading pool without injuring yourself.  Then move to the Doughboy pool and learn how to hold your breath underwater until you're confident you won't drown by accident.  Then learn to maintain your buoyancy by dog paddling. 

Then move to the bigger in-ground pool with a diving board.  Learn to do cannon balls off the diving board.  Then move to jumping head first and coming up alive (If you fail at this point, you've got other problems, besides bad depth perception).

Then practice holding your breath at the bottom of the pool until you're confident you won't drown by accident.  Then learn to swim underwater from pool end to pool end without coming up for air.  Then practice laps and learn to breathe.

After all that, you'll have learned how to hold your breath, do laps and dive with ease (and all without a brain injury).  Then you'll be prepared to dive into the deep end of your Olympic-sized pool and begin training for the big leagues.

Short of that, and you'll find yourself jumping headfirst into the Olympic-sized pool, only to discover there's no water, and instantly become a financial quadriplegic. 

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Meantime, anyone with $2M+ is going to be almost compelled to accept what they believe are short-cuts around the practical experiences they need to make profitable decisions.  Decisions based on reality and experience, not on hunches and/or bad advice from others who don't have anyone's best interests at stake, except their own. 

With this much money, many larger, stupid mistakes can be camouflaged.  But if the mistake is large enough the camouflage instantly fades, and the losses become grossly obvious, and one is left with a bulls-eye on his forehead and a message on his back that says, "I Lost $2M And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt"

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It will take some discipline to overcome the temptation to take the fire hydrant hose you've got in your hands and not just spray water all willy-nilly on shiny objects in the guise of "investing."

So, I would suggest that you go buy a four-plex with 20% down with conventional financing, and make that work first.  Of course you want a bargain.  After that purchase, think about what you've learned by buying at the wrong price despite the agent's advice; in the wrong neighborhood, with the wrong demographics, with a wrong management approach, with wrong tenants, and finally with the wrong financing ...all after three of your tenants bail on you and do $15,000 worth of damage to your investment just because.

Then accept the losses, and start over with your more sophisticated understanding of reality.  Go buy an actual deal-of-a-four-plex, raise the rents, increase it's value, understand how to create wealth out of thin air, and then rinse and repeat, until it's second nature. 

Then move up the food chain using the exact principals and experience you garnered with the smaller properties by scaling up to multifamily projects, commercial buildings, and finally to development of shopping centers, golf courses and ...the sky's the limit.

Then, you'll find yourself with several hundred million in savings, and that old $2M you left in the bank will seem like chump change.

Meantime, if you start with baby steps, you'll likely avoid blowing $2M on pipe dreams that professional snake oil salesman will tell you is the steal of the century.   

So, don't dive head first into the Olympic-sized pool without first learning to splash in the wading pool.  And then when you're ready to dive in, you'll know to check that there's actually water in the pool. 
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BTW, "The [rea] Donald" crashed and burned with millions to start with.  His answer to why, was that he took his eye off the ball.  Well, if a situation can arise with someone with this much experience, and this many millions to "camouflage" his smaller mistakes, than it can happen to anyone with way less millions and way less experience.  Again, just saying.

TheDonaldJr, you have in your hand either a bomb, or the tools to begin strip mining for Gold.  It depends on how you walk with it.  Either way, you need to take baby steps and start very, very small.  You've got YEARS to scale up, and turn that $2M into $7B "TheDonaldJr. dollars." 

I'm pulling for you and wish you extreme success!!!  beer beer beer 

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