Investing in real estate or the stock market

[itzie]

mOrning, I'm new on this forum and my business partners and I are ready to do some investing. We want to take equity out of our office and property, say, $150,000 and the question being is it better to put it into the stock market thru our investment broker or find real estate. At this time we are new to real estate investments and would have to learn about it before walking down that path. Several of us already use the investment broker for our personal investments and have done reasonably well. What is the advantages and disadvantages of these options. Anybody have any ideas?

 

[Mirage]

Have you spoken with your broker about this? Obviously he would rather have you go through him, but he might have some insight on the real estate side as well.

Are you going to do one or the other, or are you looking to split your money between the two?

Also, what kind of real estate are you looking at investing in, commercial, residential, or undeveloped?

 

[itzie]

Have you spoken with your broker about this? Obviously he would rather have you go through him, but he might have some insight on the real estate side as well.

Are you going to do one or the other, or are you looking to split your money between the two?

Also, what kind of real estate are you looking at investing in, commercial, residential, or undeveloped?

Andrew, I wanted to get an unbiased opinion(s) so I didn't want to ask my broker, yet. I think he'd rather me go thru him with stocks, since he would make money. We would do one or the other vs. both and if we did real estate we would likely do residential as in buying fixer uppers, do some repairs, renting then selling, or just selling.

 

[leopard22]

I don't know where you guys live, but I can give you a real-life example from my part of the globe. We are currently in a red-hot real estate market and people are flipping houses like crazy (buying them, updating/renovating and then selling at a higher price). It seems that if you are into the building trades or have buddies who will do the work cheaply for you, you can make money this way, but if you have to hire local contractors, good luck. For one thing, they are all too busy working for other people doing renovations since the market is so hot and as well, the cost of renovations done by them often eats up any profit you might have made from flipping.

Generally, I think real estate is a good investment, but not necessarily for a quick return on your money. The trick is to find a market to buy into before it becomes red-hot - which is just as tricky as trying to figure out when to buy (or sell) a stock.

If none of you has any real estate experience and you can't put the sweat equity in yourselves, I think it's hard to make tons of money flipping houses unless you really research the area and find one on the verge of taking off - it's still a risk even then.

Just my two cents worth, as a nonprofessional ...