"Capt. Rob" wrote in message

Really? Show me--and I won't take your opinion for fact. I'd like to
see
some hard evidence.


You must be joking. We bought in on a 4 way for a 6 unit building in
Brooklyn 6 years ago.

A disaster in the making.

Our investment on that was only 50K cash. The
property was sold last year for 20 times what we paid, plus a nice tax
benefit for restoring a 90 year old building.

Uh huh. We're supposed to accept your claim that your gross yield was
$1million? Whatever.

So in 6 years we did far
better than if we'd used that same money to buy a boat outright,
assuming we could have only done one. There are many deals like that in
real estate. It makes little sense to pay in full for something you
won't keep for a long long time...such as a boat.

Two years ago I bought some land along Lake Michigan for $200K and sold it
this summer for well over two million dollars.

Oh wait, I just made that up. Like you.

Real estate speculation of the nature you describe is highly risky and
seldom pays off the way you claim it did. Being in the right place at the
right time is great, if you have a crystal ball or a clairvoyant aunt. More
often the costs involved with such speculation eat the investor alive and
mitigate any possibility of a decent return. For the average person, such a
lofty return on investment is simply not in the stars. For the average
person, the investment opportunities available, whether real estate or
paper, won't return anything near the interest rate paid on a boat loan.

Max