RG 149 – The Art vs Science of Being a Successful Real Estate Investor in 2019 with Doug Marshall
This is the second time Doug has appeared on the podcast, to listen to his first show please go back to episode 123.
Doug has over 30 years commercial real estate experience in financing and investing, This has been in apartments and commercial assets, Doug is also an author with a new book called Mastering the Art of Commercial Real Estate Investing: How to Successfully Build Wealth and Grow Passive Income from Your Rental Properties. Doug has most experience in financing deals as he spent his first 24 years in the industry as a real estate professional but working in the corporate world on the hamster wheel. In 2003 Doug started Marshall Commercial Funding and started to make proper money where now his passive income surpasses his personal expenses and he could retire comfortably.
Doug’s book is written from the perspective of his clients as a compilation of wisdom learnt through investment journeys. One of the main things that you can learn from the book is that people who are successful in real estate aren’t just crunching numbers, they have a firm grasp of the numbers but largely work on intuition and gut feeling. The biggest limiting factor to people starting in real estate is fear. Doug says there are two kinds of fear; the fear of failure and the fear of the unknown and the best way to conquer the fear of failure is to reset your mind from a win/lose dichotomy to a win/learn view. There are two decisions that need to be made when becoming a passive investor; who am I going to invest with (sponsor, friend, mentor) and the decision to change how you view failure. To become an active investor, you need to make a few more decisions; who do I want on my advisory team what knowledge gaps need to be filled and who can fill them. Don’t get bogged down by analysis paralysis, pick a set of things to look for in every property and then make the rest of the decision based on intuition.
Doug also explains some details of the impact of the financial system on real estate. Interest rates are up by a full point in 2018 whereas CAP rates have no adjusted as significantly, this is quite a disconnect and interest rates should cause CAP rates to rise as well. Historically the biggest buyer of US Treasury bond was China however they’re not buying as many anymore, so the government is trying to encourage people to buy more in the US by increasing the return on the bonds. However, stocks are going well so people don’t want to put their money into bonds. Looking into the future if interest rates go up at the same rate for 2019 is would put a pause on the real estate market because no one would want to buy.
Top tips
- Most important habit – Listening to books on Audible while commuting
- Most influential person – First 3 bosses in his first career
- Most important tool – Scan Span scanner
- Tip for book writing – just start
Contact – marshallcf.com
