8 Reasons A Minneapolis Duplex Is Still A Good Investment

mortgage and down paymentIn today’s turbulent real estate market, it’s easy to dismiss the idea of real estate as a long term investment strategy.

On one level, this makes sense. Prices are down; there’s a threat of more foreclosures on the horizon which may cause prices to tumble further. Vacancy rates are up, causing more landlords to scramble to find quality tenants and, in the competition to do so, rents to go down.

Maybe it’s better to just leave your money in the stock market, right?

Real estate as an investment isn’t just about how much a duplex goes up in value. In fact, appreciation is just one of the eight ways you benefit by owning investment property.

Real estate provides you with:

  • Equity Growth – due to your ability to use leverage, your equity grows much more quickly in real estate than it does in other investments.
  • Principal Paydown – every month a portion of your mortgage payment on the property is paid off by rent collected from tenants. Even if the duplex never goes up in value, and you continue to pay off the mortgage over thirty years, at the end of that time you would have the equivalent of the initial purchase price in equity. Managed properly, the only money you would have into it would be the original downpayment required to obtain the loan.
  • Increasing Annual Income Stream – on average, the amount of rent you collect every year will increase. This revenue will continue to grow in accordance with the cost of living; providing you with spendable income that has adjusted to economic conditions.
  • Leverage – using some of your money as a down payment, banks are, for all intents and purposes, willing to partner with you on a property. If you want to buy a $100,000 duplex, simply put up $25,000, they’ll put up the other $75,000, and pay them back with some interest. Left to your own devices, you’d only be able to buy a $25,000 duplex. But thanks to banks, you can leverage your way into real estate wealth.
  • Early Withdrawal Penalties/Annual Contribution Limits – the positive cash flow your property earns is spendable income. It is not subject to early withdrawal penalties or limits to the amount of money you can save.
  • Depreciation/Tax Shield – every year that you own a duplex, the government allows you to shield some of your income in the form of depreciation.  Essentially, depreciation is the rate at which the government says something gets used up. And because something is, at least theortetically, wearing out, you get a tax break.
  • Appreciation – there will come a time in the not too distant future that property goes up in value again. The duplex my grandparents lived in before World War II is today worth approximately 22 times what it was when they were tenants. Historically, there’s no reason to think a duplex won’t cost even more twenty years from now.
  • 1031 Exchanges/Cash Out Refinances – both of these are methods for you to harvest the money you’ve earned in both appreciation and principal paydown and reinvest it in bigger properties with greater returns; tax free.

Not all of these reasons to invest in real estate are obvious to a new investor. However, they are the very reasons real estate will always be a terrific financial strategy.