Why Invest in Real Estate

Darcy Marler started his real estate investment company in 2001 as a vehicle for his real estate purchases. An avid student of different investment styles since he was 15, Darcy came to real estate after gradually becoming disillusioned with the traditional ‘stocks, bonds and mutual funds’ investment world. Investing in this world always seemed like gambling or speculating.

No matter how well you did your homework on a particular company or industry and no matter how well managed and positioned a particular company might be, the movement of the stock market was always based on the whims of the masses. As an individual investor you have no control over a particular stock. To make money you have to guess that a particular stock would move in the direction that you wanted. That is tough for even the best and most expensive money managers to do. In fact, only about 1 in 20 professional fund managers actually beat the market indexes.

(https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-way-fewer-actively-managed-funds-beat-the-sp-than-we-thought-2017-04-24)

Real estate, Darcy realized, offered a number of benefits. The first of which was control. You can control what you buy. You can control how much you pay for it. You can control where you buy. You can make improvements to the property and affect its value. You can also control how a property is managed. Who your tenants are. While real estate values can still move down they usually don’t move down that quickly, nor do they have the volatility associated with stocks or mutual funds, nor do they traditionally stay down for very long.

Another big benefit of real estate is that you can make money 3 different ways.
1) You make money when the value of your property increases, either through general market appreciation or improvements that you carry out (sweat equity).
2) You make money each month via positive cash flow from rental income.
3) Finally, each month, as your tenants pay their rent, you make money by paying down the principal portion of the mortgage.

This makes the difference between real estate being an investment and not speculation. Invest your money, don’t speculate. Investing in positive cash flowing properties, that are well managed and that are in areas that are well located will greatly increase your chances for long term growth in your investment portfolio

Since 2001, Darcy has owned 92 properties, consisting of 236 individual units, worth over $44 million. He has owned everything from single family homes, to duplexes and fourplexes and multi-family apartment buildings from 6 to 21 units. He has bought, fixed and flipped; he has developed raw land, changed the zoning, put in the underground services and roadways and then built new homes. He has converted apartment buildings into condos and even changed the use of buildings from one thing to another. He has also bought properties as long term rentals. All the time he was learning, making mistakes and getting better. Darcy also used this time to make contacts and build his team. After 31 years of project management in general and 17 years in real estate specifically, Darcy has the knowledge and the tools to help you achieve your goals and grow your investment portfolio through real estate.