“CAN YOU REALLY CREATE WEALTH OUT OF THIN
AIR?” YES, YOU CAN!
A traveler in ancient Greece was reputed to have asked a man by the
roadside for directions to a distant point. The man by the roadside was the
great philosopher Socrates. It is said that he pointed and gravely told the man
to just make every step go in that direction. A giant success is no more than
the culmination of many smaller successes.
Someone was asked how to eat an elephant. “You do it a bite at a time,” was
the reply. So it is with accumulating wealth out of thin air in real estate. You do
it a step at a time.
The problem today is that many people want to acquire wealth by pushing
buttons. There are very few, if any, legal ways that you can become
millionaire overnight. But the road to becoming a millionaire in real estate is
not difficult if you are willing to do it step by step.
To give you some idea of how dramatically your wealth can increase starting
with nothing, look at the Appreciation Accumulation Table in Figure 2-1. It is
based on a presumption that the property you purchased with no money
down will increase in value at a rate of just 5% per year. Let’s look at how you
might convert this table to an actual game plan.
Assume you have a goal to acquire a million dollars net worth in ten years. (If
ten years sounds too long for you, ask yourself if you can achieve a million
dollar net worth in ten years by ignoring real estate and continuing in your
present job.) Looking at the Appreciation Accumulation Table in Figure 2-1
and reading down the tenth year column, you see that it is possible to reach
your goal by acquiring $300,000 to $350,000 worth of property each year for
the next ten years. You will also see that your goal can be reached two years
sooner by buying approximately $500,000 worth of property yearly.
If you have a more or less ambitious goal, you can use the table to adjust
your annual purchases accordingly. Be prepared, though, as you spend
more and more time as an investor and as you become more and more
successful, to make your goals more ambitious. Success breeds more
success and this benevolent spiral can make you very rich.
Now you see that creating wealth out of thin air is absolutely possible and, in
the meantime, the benefits are enormous! Take time to review Figure 2-1 and
dare to think big!