Left Field INvestors Blogs
Unlock financial freedom with M.C. Laubscher as he shares insights into unique investment niches like laundromats, fine whiskey, and strategic metals. Discover alternative wealth strategies for diversification and passive income.
Interest Rates, Inflation, and Economic Trends: Insights from Peter Linneman
Renowned economist Peter Linneman shares insightful perspectives on the current state of the U.S. economy, inflation, the Federal Reserve's actions, and the resilience of the nation's economic prospects, drawing from his decades of experience and academic background.
From Crisis to Creativity: Real Estate Strategies for the Modern Investor with Neal Bawa
Discover real estate strategies from Neal Bawa, the "Mad Scientist of Multifamily," as he shares insights on navigating the post-COVID landscape, addressing the affordability crisis, leveraging data science for investment decisions, and seizing opportunities in the chaos.
Navigating the Real Estate Market: Insights from Brian Burke
Discover valuable insights from real estate expert Brian Burke on navigating the challenges of the current market. Learn strategies for capital preservation, understanding debt structures, and building a resilient portfolio. Gain a deeper understanding of the importance of patience, discipline, and a long-term perspective in real estate investing.
The Evolution of Real Estate Investing: A Conversation with James Eng
James Eng, a seasoned commercial real estate professional, shares valuable insights from his journey as an underwriter to becoming a successful multifamily investor. He discusses debt structures, sponsor evaluation, market cycles, and risk management strategies for passive investors in the multifamily space.
Insights into Real Estate Market Trends and Forecasts with John Chang from Marcus & Millichap
Dive into the latest real estate market trends and forecasts for 2024 with John Chang from Marcus & Millichap. Discover expert analysis, investment opportunities, and valuable advice for passive investors looking to thrive in today's dynamic market.
Navigating Economic Resets: Insights from Investment Veteran, Russell Gray
Discover valuable insights on navigating economic resets, focusing on cash flow, and the importance of self-education for passive investors in this captivating episode of the Passive Investing from Left Field podcast featuring financial strategist and Real Estate Guys Radio Show co-host, Russell Gray.
Mastering Creative Real Estate with Chris Prefontaine
Discover innovative "creative real estate" strategies with real estate veteran Chris Prefontaine in this insightful podcast episode. Learn how to build wealth through low-cost, passive income streams without banks or excessive personal capital. Join the Left Field Investors community for exclusive resources to advance your real estate investing education.
Integrating Life Insurance into Your Passive Investment Strategy
Aimed at passive investors, this post will guide readers on how to effectively incorporate life insurance into their investment portfolios for better financial outcomes.
Essential Due Diligence Questions for Passive Real Estate Investors
This blog outlines 50 essential questions passive investors should ask syndication sponsors to conduct thorough due diligence, ensuring investments align with their risk tolerance. It covers general, deal-level, legal, and team-related inquiries to help investors make informed decisions.
Navigating Syndications: Evan Polaski on Investor Relations and Recession-Resilient Assets
Discover the crucial role of investor relations in real estate syndication with Evan Polaski from Axia Partners. Learn the tough questions to ask, the importance of aligning investment goals, and how to conduct thorough due diligence. Gain insights into Axia's focus on recession-resilient asset classes and practical advice for passive investors navigating the complex world of real estate syndication.
Exploring Branded Hotels as an Asset Class with Matt Faircloth
Discover the key insights and practical advice from seasoned real estate investor Matt Faircloth on navigating today's challenging market. Learn about the importance of transparency, cash flow, and a conservative approach to deal underwriting in this eye-opening episode of Passive Investing from Left Field. Faircloth shares his experience and wisdom on adapting investment strategies, prioritizing liquidity, and building lasting wealth through real estate.
Spotlight Episode: Risk Mitigation Strategies: Insights from Ryan Stieg
Hear LFI co-founder Ryan Stieg transparently discuss a referral deal that failed despite initial positives. He explains leverage risks, operations assessments, communication standards, diversification strategies and ongoing vigilance required when selecting reliable real estate sponsors. Gain insights on precautions for passive investors to avoid losses.
Impact Investing in Workforce Housing with DLP’s Rich Delgado
Go in-depth on affordable housing investments and community impact strategies with DLP Capital's Rich Delgado. Discover how DLP enriches workforce housing through long tenures and sustainability while diversifying into the lucrative RV resort market. Get Rich's outlook on navigating 2024's uncertainties and evaluation tips for passive investors.
Real Estate Investing: Crafting a Passive Income Strategy for Retirement
This article will delve into creating a tailored passive income strategy through real estate, focusing on long-term growth and sustainability for retirement.
Building Holistic Wealth with Dave Wolcott – Strategies Beyond the 401(k)
Join Passive Investing from Left Field host, Jim Pfeifer, in an insightful discussion with Dave Wolcott, real estate veteran and Founder of Pantheon Investments. Dave shares his multifaceted, wealth-building framework, encompassing mindset, relationships, infrastructure, and strategic asset allocation. Gain unconventional perspectives on achieving financial freedom through rethinking retirement accounts, implementing infinite banking, and responsibly utilizing debt. This episode will open your eyes to creative concepts for accelerating passive income.
The Investor’s Guide to Understanding Life Insurance Investment Strategies
Navigate the complexities of life insurance investment strategies and learn how they can supercharge your returns in the world of passive investing.
Accelerating Retirement: Real Estate vs. Stocks and Bonds
This blog will compare the potential of real estate investments with traditional stocks and bonds in terms of retirement planning. It will highlight how real estate can offer higher returns and a quicker path to financial freedom.
From High Salary to Higher Stakes: Agostino Pintus On Real Estate Entrepreneurship
Hear the journey of Agostino Pintus as he left a lucrative tech career behind to pursue real estate investing and syndication. Learn his advice on vetting partners, adaptive reuse strategies, outlook for 2024, and more.
Balancing Risk and Reward in Passive Real Estate Investing
This post aims to educate readers on managing risks while maximizing rewards in passive real estate investing. It will cover risk assessment, diversification strategies, and the importance of staying informed about market trends.
Inside Industrial Real Estate: Joel Friedland’s No-Debt Investing Wisdom
Get some of the top insights and key takeaways from 40-year industry veteran, Joel Friedland's recent appearance on Passive Investing from Left Field. Learn why he does all-cash/no-debt deals, his approach to tenant selection, investor communications, and advice for evaluating industrial operators.
Mastering Private Equity with Chihiro Kurokawa
This episode of Passive Investing from Left Field offers an insightful discussion with Chihiro Kurokawa of ZT Corporate. He shares his experience transitioning from a solo real estate syndicator to an institutional private equity firm. Chihiro stresses the importance of audited financials, opportunistic strategies in down markets, and thorough due diligence when assessing complex investments across different asset classes.
Revolutionizing Your Portfolio: Life Insurance as an Investment Tool
Uncover how life insurance can be more than just a safety net – learn how it can actively boost your investment portfolio and enhance passive income.
The Role of Passive Income in Achieving Financial Independence
This article will explore the concept of passive income as a cornerstone of financial independence. It will feature insights from financial experts, discussing how passive income, especially from real estate, can lead to a more flexible and fulfilling lifestyle.
Strategies for Thriving in Affordable and Workforce Housing Investments with Ron Lockhart
Investor Ron Lockhart shares how his company acquires distressed rowhomes for rehab in East Coast cities, renting them affordably after renovations. With in-house teams for construction and property management, they operate nimbly to capitalize on value-add opportunities. Their real estate fund leverages this approach to produce excellent annual returns for investors.
CTA, FinCEN, BOI – Why Entity Owners Need to Know These Abbreviations in 2024 to Avoid Big Penalties
The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) was established by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) as part of the 2020 Anti-Money Laundering Act. If you have an LLC, which many of us do for our real estate investing, then these new guidelines pertain to you. But it is not limited to just LLCs created for […]
Maximizing Your Earnings: Advanced Passive Investing Strategies in Real Estate
Targeted at individuals already familiar with real estate investing, this post delves into advanced strategies for optimizing returns. Topics include diversification, leveraging property management services, and exploring less conventional property types.
The Investor’s Guide to Equity with Paul Moore
Get the top insights on preferred equity investing from Paul Moore’s recent appearance on Passive Investing from Left Field. Learn how preferred equity works, risks, and opportunities.
5 Steps to Start Earning Passive Income Through Real Estate
Real estate investing can provide consistent passive income, giving you financial freedom. This blog outlines 5 steps to get you started. You’ll learn about the types of real estate investments, benefits of syndications, and where you can find more resources to continue learning.With the proper knowledge, strategy and discipline, real estate can generate passive income and long-term wealth.
Investing in Mobile Home Park Syndications – Tips From an Operator
I have been an active investor in mobile home parks (MHP) for the last five years having bought, operated, and infilled eleven mobile home parks consisting of 700 lots. People often ask me, “Why do you invest in mobile home parks?” Here are my Top 5 reasons: 1. Sticky resident base – While the average […]
How to Avoid Investment Scams: Lessons Learned
*This was part of a monthly update the blog’s author, Denis Shapiro, provided for his income fund investors. Due to ongoing court matters, he tried to avoid mentioning any names, but he did provide an SEC link to the actual charges. Before we get into the most recent SEC investigation that has made significant waves […]
Do Warren Buffett and Mark Cuban Really Believe That Diversification Is for Lazy Investors?
Mark Cuban: “Diversification is for Idiots.” Important note: If the headline is changed, and drops the Cuban quote, I am including it in a box here for the article lead. But if the quote is preserved in the article, we can delete it here… “Diversification is for idiots.” – Mark Cuban “Diversification is protection against […]
Apply the Who Not How Principle to Succeed in Real Estate Syndication Investing
I love when I come home from a long day at work and see that my lawn has been freshly manicured. When I used to do the mowing, I would have to mentally schedule time after work or on the weekends. Of course, I would also have to watch the weather forecast and adjust my […]
A Beginner’s Guide to Passively Investing in Syndications: Thoughts From a Rookie Investor to Get Into your First Deal
It’s hard to believe that just one year ago passive syndication investing was a foreign world to me. Twelve months back, I was nose-deep in a course on active real estate investing, researching markets, contacting various agents, lenders, and contractors, analyzing deal after deal, and wondering how I would ever find a cash-flowing rental property […]
Preferred Returns: The Difference of a Single Letter
Clarifying Return ON Capital vs. Return OF Capital In most passiveinvestments, the sponsor commits to paying the investors a specified percentage of their investment per year before the sponsor can start to collect performance fees. As such, these payments are referred to as “preferred returns” and the payment relative to the investor’s capital is the “preferred […]
Money, Power, and Responsibility: 6 tips to avoid passive investor pitfalls in a commercial real estate syndication
You have evaluated the deal metrics of a prospective commercial real estate syndication and you like the deal. What’s next? Ask the sponsor for the offering documents. The “offering documents” are the instruments that create a legally enforceable contract among the sponsor, the investors, and the business entity (the issuer) that is issuing a passive ownership stake […]
How This Midwest City Can Help You Achieve Better Returns
Indianapolis, Indiana, metro is home to over two million people. It features a growing corporate base, highly educated workforce, world-class sporting events, high-end cultural attractions, as well as a consistently growing list of shopping, dining, and entertainment options. Residents benefit from an above-average quality of work-life balance, as reflected by consistently high national rankings and […]
My Journey to a Becoming a Full-Time Passive Investor
Prior to discovering real estate syndications, like many, my idea of passive investing was mutual funds and looking at my statement a few times per year. For most of my professional career, I was a business owner in the IT industry. Working 80-hour weeks left no time for anything other than setting up a monthly […]
The Easy Way to Reduce the Interest Rate on Your Life Insurance Policy Loan
Many real estate investors are aware that high-cash value, or overfunded, life insurance policies are designed to maximize the cash value instead of the death benefit. The cash value growth is typically 5+% tax-free and can have uninterrupted compounding even if policy owners access the cash. It is an ideal place for investors to store […]
Cryptocurrency Investing: A Primer for Non-Crypto People
Disclaimer: Nothing in this post is financial or investment advice in any respect. Technical accuracy has intentionally been sacrificed for the sake of simplicity and relatability. One of the biggest news stories over the past few years has been the rise of cryptocurrency and its impact on the economy, technology, and, frankly, all of humanity. […]
13 Lessons Learned From 13 years of Private Syndication Investing
If you talk with me about real estate, you will soon find out that I ama huge fan of passively investing in private syndications. However, my initial investments into syndications didnot go well. You may wonder why I trusted any syndicators after thoseexperiences. After witnessing my net worth plummet after each stock market crash in2000-01 […]
Why Real Estate Investors Need to Pay Attention to Inflation, the Economy, and Yield Curves
About a year ago, I wrote a blog post titled “The Inflation-Deflation Debate and What It Means for Real Estate Investors.” One of the questions I raised at that time was whether or not consumer price inflation would rise and force the Federal Reserve’s hand in raising interest rates and tightening liquidity. More importantly, if […]
The “Lazy 1031” – A Powerful Tax Strategy That Puts Passive Real Estate Investors in the Driver’s Seat
A few years ago, I sold all of my multifamily properties as well as a few of my single-family turnkey properties. As I was getting ready to sell, I contacted Nate Busch, my CPA, and asked him how I could avoid the capital gains taxes on these assets. The market had done very well – […]
9 Lessons From ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ to Help You Become a Better Left Field Investor
I recently re-read Rich Dad Poor Dad, one of the top-selling personal finance books of all time and probably the one book that most real estate investors have credited with kickstarting their journey. Ironically, most of the book doesn’t discuss how to make money in real estate. However, most devotees do acknowledge that this book […]
Five Questions to Ask When Evaluating a “Value-Add” As A Limited Partner
As a limited partner, you’ve heard the term “value-add” a few times by now. It’s probably the most overused term in multifamily investing today. If a property was built prior to 2020, there’s a good chance that the sponsor will label it as a value-add. But is it really though? That term references the incoming […]
What is Passive Investing?
Do you enjoy making money? For yourself? For your family? For philanthropic organizations? Do you understand risk? Are you intrigued by real estate? Enjoy learning, especially from others of like-mind? Do you long to ditch your W-2 or crave options to do what you want/when you want? In other words, are you searching for financial […]
3 Best Ways You Can Achieve Time Freedom
“Time is money.” – Benjamin Franklin “Time is MORE valuable than money. You can get more money, but you can’t get MORE time.” – Jim Rohn Most of us don’t go to school to make time, we go to make money, right? In dental school and residency, I can’t ever recall saying, “I can’t wait […]
How Has Inflation Impacted Multifamily Real Estate?
“Inflation is taxation without representation” – Milton Friedman “Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.” – Ronald Reagan As a long-standing Executive Member of Costco, I have always marveled at two things. One, how have they been able to sell a […]
Bonds and the 60/40 Portfolio Are Dead – Where to Invest Instead
Financial advisors have long touted the 60/40 portfolio as the silver bullet to managing retirees’ portfolios. By investing 60% of investable assets in stocks and 40% in bonds, historically, this portfolio construction has achieved diversification, volatility reduction, and solid appreciation. The ultimate goal, of course, is ensuring said portfolio will provide for an enjoyable lifestyle, […]
Cash Flow is King: Benefits of Real Estate Syndications
You hear the phrase “Cash is king” quite a bit in the finance world. I don’t agree – whether you are concerned about inflation or not, having your money in cash is not the most efficient use of your capital. I prefer “Cash flow is king”. That is why I buy real assets that produce reliable cash […]