In my investing career, I have made many real estate investments of varying sizes, types, and with a wide range of returns.I’ve touched on them here and there, but have not written a comprehensive post covering all of them until now.
Note that I won’t be talking about the properties we’ve purchased to live in (covered here, here, and here) or land we purchased to possibly build on (covered here). Some of those became rental properties and flips, but were not necessarily intended to be investments.
I’ll be detailing my various passive real estate investments, ones that don’t require any effort from me other than a bit of due diligence on the front end and a bit of extra paperwork to pass along to my CPA.
My first investment in passive real estate was made in July of 2013 when I bought shares of Vanguard’s Real Estate Index Fund (VGSLX), a collection of publicly traded REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts).
The volatile nature of REITs combined with the availability of numerous additional ways to invest passively in real estate as a result of the JOBS Act passing and me becoming an accredited investor led me to seek out other real estate investments.
I started small with a few investments in January of 2018. Wanting to diversify across both deal types (debt, equity, eREIT), and across different investment platforms, I made about a half-dozen investments in the first part of 2018.
As I continued to become more familiar with my investment options and the platforms offering them, I broadened my scope to include larger investments in crowdfunded syndications and real estate funds.