Image from Canva Pro
Mistakes I Have Made
( That You Don’ t Have To)
Mr. Land Trust
As a young man, I never believed I would see 2025. I purchased my first rental house at age 19. While I had very little money to invest in real estate, I did have one very valuable asset … time. I majored in business administration and marketing in college. But I did not really learn anything of value until I met my mentor, Jack Miller. Driving down to St. Louis for a halfday seminar with two friends, my life was about to change forever( and my kids and grandchildren’ s lives).
My mentor taught me the value of time. He said,“ If you want to become a millionaire, borrow a million dollars and have someone else pay the debt back.” He also taught me how to buy houses with little or no money down. This was a huge change in my conventional thinking. I was taught in college that you always needed 20 % down payment and this frustrated my desire to buy many houses( I knew that I would never earn enough money to pay my living expenses AND buy many houses with 20 % down). I did not have a lot of money, but I did have a lot of time. Things were looking up!
With my newfound knowledge, I began buying houses as fast as I could. It was the 70’ s and houses were increasing in value 1 % per month in my town. I could not buy them fast enough. Then came the 80’ s and 90’ s and I began to invest in other assets besides more houses. I bought partnership shares in a chain of catfish restaurants, apartment buildings, bank stock, network marketing company stock and commercial property. I soon found out that partnerships don’ t work and don’ t last( at least that was my experience). I made a little money with the apartment buildings but lost money on everything else( who loses money investing in bank stocks? Me!). Eventually, I got out of all other investments other than houses and one commercial property. It cost me a fortune to learn the lesson to stick with single family homes as my longterm investment strategy.
23