Have you heard this statement before? “I made a lot of money on this property – I bought this house for $200,000 and I sold it for $300,000”. Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and heard a story similar to this? Does $100,000 sound like a good return on investment? It depends on many factors. The example in this article will initially focus on real estate used solely as an investment, but your principle residence will also be examined this way if you are trying to figure how much money you have made living in your house.
How long did it actually take this person to make this money?
If you bought a house for $200,000 and sold it for one year later, versus 20 years later, this makes a big difference. Why? When looking at investment returns, you have to look at how long it took for you to achieve the return. This is true because when looking at other investments, time as well as the return itself will be the common yardsticks for comparison. If the price increase of happened in one year, this is a 50% return in one year. Other investments might average 1% for cash, 2% for bonds, and 5% for stocks for that same time frame. If you made this $100,000 in 20 years, this would mean 50% spread over 20 years. If you do a simple linear calculation, that is 2.5% each year. Now, the bonds and stocks are pretty attractive compared to this real estate Selling a home in Marana AZ investment. This is important because most people hold on to real estate for a long time and forget how long it took them to achieve the return that they received.
The numbers presented are usually only about the buy and sell price
Did you notice that the only numbers mentioned in this example are the buy and sell prices? For most goods, these are the only prices that matter when examining if you made money or not. With real estate, this is not true. Why? Real estate has to be maintained, which is not the case for stocks, bonds, cash or any other paper based or contract based investment. Why does this matter? If you have ever lived in a house, you know that there are utilities to pay, renovations to make, repairs to perform and taxes to pay. If you were to buy a GIC at a bank, and the bank said to you: “you will receive $100 in interest each month. However, to keep the GIC you need to pay $20 a month for a maintenance fee.” Wouldn’t this mean you would only make $80 per month, and not $100 per month? This same thinking applies to real estate. If you buy a house as an investment, and you have to pay utilities, taxes, renovation costs, mortgage interest, and repairs as well as costs to buy and sell the real estate, shouldn’t these be accounted for in your return? If you are renting the property, the rent collected would also add to your return. If you are trying to rent a property, but it is vacant for 6 months, that 6 month period is not part of your return.
If for example, work had to be done to get the house ready to rent, wouldn’t this cost be part of the return as well? This is money that you have to spend, and it is only being used on this investment property. If it cost you $5000 for paint, landscaping and minor repairs, this would come off of your investment return.
If the roof had to be fixed during that 5 year period, and you paid another for that repair, the whole amount would be deducted from your return. People may argue that the roof will last another 25 years, which is true – but you only receive the benefit of these repairs if you keep the house! If you sell the house, you may receive the benefit of keeping the house well maintained in a higher selling price, but it will also depend on how hot the real estate market is, what the local neighbourhood is like and other factors which are beyond your control and will come into play only at the time that you are making the sale. This means now that you have an additional $10,000 deducted from your return.
What About the Effort in Managing the Real Estate Property?
Consider the time you are spending on your house. If you are a landlord, you will have to inspect your house, make sure your tenants are paying you on time, look for tenants and do minor repairs. If you don’t like doing these things, this is considered work and it will cost you in terms of time you could be doing something else. How to account for this? Tabulate how long it takes you to manage the real estate investment, and multiply how many hours you spend by how much money you are making at work – this would represent a substitute for what else you could be doing since you are already working in that job. If you spend 5 hours per month maintaining the house, and you make $20 per hour at your day job, this is an additional per month in costs. This translates into per year in your time. Note that with paper based investments like stocks and bonds, there may also be time required to read the news, follow how the stock market is doing and research for timing and alternative investments. An underlying factor here is whether managing real estate feels like a job or a hobby. If it feels like a job, the time should be treated like a job. It the time spent is enjoyable and feels like a hobby, you will get benefits that cannot be quantified and it will likely not bother you to spend time taking care of the property.