Michael Dominguez: New in Real Estate To Financial Freedom in 10 years
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Michael Dominguez got into real estate when he was 43 years old. Fast forward ten years and he built enough wealth and passive income to be able to retire. How did he do it? He founded Doors To Wealth Real Estate Group, a team of Realtors focused on educating and assisting people in investment real estate. He bought his first property and continued to add to his portfolio each year for 10 years - to where he now owns 10+ properties and is financially free! He focuses on picking the right properties in the right areas to grow his passive income. He's now a member of the REmax Hall of Fame and has completed over 300 investment property transactions. Real estate should fund your life, not run your life, and Michael shows others how to do that. He's the author of "Armchair Real Estate Millionaire" and wants to show others how they can experience this freedom as well!
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Michael has been doing investments over the last 15 years or so.
- He's a member of the REMAX Hall of Fame, and founder of Doors To Wealth Real Estate Group.
- Michael started in real estate in 2008, bought his first investment property, and have added to his portfolio since then.
- He released a book Armchair Real Estate Millionaire, taking the lessons that he has learned, and compiling that to help people build wealth through real estate.
- The discussions go around on how to treat your tenants properly and the desire to help the people.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro and overview on Michael ‘s career
01:21 Michael’s story and how she got into real estate.
03:44 Talking about the benefit of buying a property.
11:24 Discussion about the chapter three of his book.
14:31 Talking about the cash flow in buying a property.
20:27 Talking about how to treat your tenants right and desire to help people.
30:20 How and where to connect to Michael.
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to the REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
All right, welcome, everybody to another episode of the real freedom podcast. And I am so excited about our guest today, somebody with just a kindred spirit of you know, my mission and what I want to be able to show on this podcast. And today, we've got Michael Dominguez here. And what makes Michael special is so he is has been a realtor. He's been doing investments over the last 15 years or so he's a member of the REMAX Hall of Fame, and founder of doors to wealth Real Estate Group. And so started in real estate in 2008, bought your first investment property, and have added to your portfolio since then. And then exciting news for you. You've got a book out armchair real estate millionaire. And really just taking the lessons that you've learned, and compiling that to help people build wealth through real estate, which is exactly what this podcast is about. So welcome, Michael, we're so excited to have you on why don't you just take a couple minutes and share a little bit more.
Michael Dominguez
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me Actually, great introduction, by the way, I should actually, I should record that and just use that from now on. So yeah, you actually nailed it I, as a second career or third career, I went into real estate, not really knowing where my future was going to go with that. Within about a year or so I was focusing mainly on working with investors. And I was seeing..
Mike Swenson
Just a half step here. So what what did you do before you got into real estate?
Michael Dominguez
Sure, I was actually selling franchises for a pet food franchise here in Canada and, and the United States, but I was I was the franchise coordinator for this particular company. And so I did have a fair bit of experience working with business owners. And so using the term kindred spirits, a good exam, a good good phrase, because I found my people, when I started going into real estate, and I saw a lot of business people that were building wealth through real estate. And, and that's really how it how it all began, as I was focusing on working with them. And then fast forward even just a few months, I was realizing, heck, if they could do it, I could do it. And, and the first property or two that I purchased, to be honest, weren't necessarily the type of properties that I'm advocating today, it's been a fact I've sold those properties. But and, and honestly, part of my mindset for even investing was to make myself a better realtor thinking I had more credibility.
Michael Dominguez
Little did I know as much as that was great. It was the long term wealth and success and, and freedom changes that happened as a result of, of investing in real estate. And, and you know, and to make a long story short, I, I started to make that my number one focus, I turned my entire I created our real estate team, and we focused on working with investors. And we became known in our community as being the go to experts for, for working with investors. A lot of my success came on real estate tours and sort of, you know, back in the day where you actually shake hands with people and take people on tours and stuff like that, I used to have groups of 20 and 30 people going around from home to home. And, and so a lot of that information education that we provide and the tours, I basically put into this book, and so I could pass it on to the next generation.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, and I like, you know, what, what you were saying in terms of, you know, seeing the the benefit of, of buying those investment properties. And I think people also have to understand that it does, it can some people do things quickly, and some people don't, but if you just had, you know, whether it's a goal of a property a year or property every two years, maybe your first couple years, you start out slow like that, but then it's like pushing a snowball down a hill. So it's going to gain momentum, and it's going to gain steam, as you build some more wealth, now you have more wealth to put down on future properties, or you have more knowledge and experience to bring other people in. So I think sometimes what might sell what might prevent people from getting started is just thinking like, oh, I've got to be like so and so and buy five properties this year, and I don't have the time, right, I don't have the knowledge or I don't have the whatever it is, but it just starts with one and one can go to two and two to three or it can go from two to four to eight to you know 16 pretty quickly. But it's you got to get started.
Michael Dominguez
Well, absolutely. And and one of the things I talked about in my book is I'm not necessarily focused on the people that have eight and 15 properties. That's that's awesome what you do, but just to look as little as two or three properties can change one's life. And actually, some of the success stories I chose, were with intention with people with as little as two or three properties. Because two properties for a young couple plus their own principal residence can make a huge difference. There was this one couple that, that they were just had just basically had a got married, had a child. And they were thinking, How the heck am I going to pay for this kid's education, what later on in life, then they thought about, geez, I could refinance one of my investment properties, 15 17 years from now, and in his entire education is paid for. That's the power of real estate. And that's a success story I get, you don't necessarily need to be a full time job to actually make a real difference to real estate.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that that exact example is actually my, my experience. So we had bought our first townhouse when we got married, right as the market crashed in 2006. And so I tell people, I was so excited, because we bought it for less than it was bought, when it was a new construction two years, two years before that says the call, we're getting a good deal. And then I watched as the market went down and, and the value of it ended up being about half of what we bought it for. And so I was I was stuck. And we wanted to start a family. And so we were looking to build, you know, potentially go go buy another house. And so long story short, I ended up renting that townhouse. And I remember doing the math, like I had a 30 year spreadsheet here of my mortgage payment, how much of the principal got paid down every month, and then I would put in? I'm a spreadsheet nerd, if you couldn't tell from my story here.
Mike Swenson
And then I had another column of appreciation, you know, like, what if it appreciated that x? And then I calculated out? Like, how many years would it take to break even but then how many? How much money am I making each month on the print just on principle reduction and appreciation. And so seeing that little incremental gain month by month by month, and then you fast forward, you know, three years, five years, 10 years, that was my goal is okay, this townhouse now can pay for my son's education when he you know, graduates, because we bought it and we ended up refinancing to a 20 year mortgage. So that's where, you know, 20 years, I think we moved out of it, maybe a year or two before he was born. So you know that timing lines up. But that's a real tangible example. And I think it helps people to set a kind of a forced deadline of how to get started, you know, when you can tie a property to a real life event like that, like being able to pay for somebody's education, or if you're retiring and want to retire in so many years. It's like, Okay, if I have this mortgage, now, this could be, you know, helped to fund my retirement, I think it gets people off the ledge a little bit, and willing to jump in and take that risk that seems to hold so many people up.
Michael Dominguez
100% and the other thing that that scares so many people is, you know, again, we all have been reading the stories of the surging housing prices in the last couple of years. And and, you know, a lot of people are might might be thinking, how am I going to come up with the, with the money to purchase this property. But the cool thing is, is that if you do currently own real estate, which many of our listeners are going to be already owning real estate, you've been riding a bit of a wave with your own principal residence. And honestly, my wife and I, that's how we grew our portfolio, we didn't have millions of dollars to start with the fact that we were able to buy a property 10 consecutive years was not because we had a, you know, a boatload of cash to start with, we had a house that pretty much had no debt on it. And you know, in our market, the house at the time was worth about $600,000. And had we done nothing, no, it would have appreciated over time.
Michael Dominguez
And now that same house is probably worth about double that, but $1.2 million, so we still would have seen a $600,000 appreciation in our real estate. But because we leveraged that house, and what we did was we got a we got a line of credit and eventually even a mortgage against the house that was essentially paid off, but use the money to to create down payments for for the properties we started purchasing That in itself gave us the 20% down which was required in Canada to purchase the property, then we leverage the other 80% on a mortgage. So essentially, the 20% came from our house and the 80% came from the bank.
Michael Dominguez
So essentially, that was 100% leverage properties. And you know, for those that are, you know, not great on math, that's not a lot of money to put down. And so, but the cool thing is, is a lot of every one of the properties that we purchased had the right market fundamentals, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, Mike. But secondly, they each covered their expenses and had a little bit of cash flow leftover, even with 100% leverage. And so even if there is a market downturn like you experienced back in, oh 708 as long as the property's covering itself, even if I were to lose my job and not be able to take money towards my life towards the mortgage That's okay. The property's covering itself. And that put me in a position where it's, it's hard to fail. It really was hard to fail.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, cuz when you have time, I mean, yes, the real estate market can ebb and flow. And there, there's bound to be a couple of larger blips on the radar. But yeah, if you're looking out, you know, 15 20 30 40 years, it will, it will pay off over time. You know, I remember my parents telling me, you know, what they first bought their house for and you think like, Oh, my gosh, I can't believe houses were that cheap. And just imagine, you know, fast forward 15 years, when my kids are asking me what we bought our first home for, they're gonna be like, I can't believe that, you know, and so over time, you're gonna win. And I think that's the key is as you you need to have a plan and figure out what if something were to were to go down? Or were to have a, you know, a blip in the long term radar? Could you? Could you cover it, I mean, worst case scenario, if you've got equity in the property, you can always sell it, if something were to happen, or like you said, if you've got the cash flow, you just keep renting it out and put your head down. And over time, it's, it's going to work itself out.
Michael Dominguez
Yeah. And one comment you made, which, which is sort of a common story is that real estate values always go up. And I want to address that a little bit, because the answer is not always the case. And that's really what I like to focus on it. And I have a, I have a chapter that we, that's chapter three, it's called legalized insider trading. And so in that chapter, we, we try to teach the reader to, to go beyond just sort of the assumptions that are out there in real estate. And to do a little bit more understand the fundamentals, I always use the analogy, that if I sit down at a poker table, and I'm the worst person at the poker table, I don't want to sit at that poker table, become a market expert, become an industry expert. And that doesn't mean across all united states, it It might not even be across all of Minnesota, for example, it might be in one district of one city, and you just know that market better than anyone else. But the cool thing about real estate is it does, although it doesn't always go up, if the fundamentals are pushing it up, it's going to go up.
Michael Dominguez
So things such as population increases, and that comes as a result of job increasing. So if you see a market where there's increased infrastructure, increased job market, that leads to an increase in population, the increase in population puts more pressure on the demand side of real estate. And so as a result, the reality is as supply isn't able to match a city like Minneapolis that's growing by over 1% a year, they just can't match that the land price is too much the labor cost is too much the building material, we all heard the building materials are going up. So you can't build affordable housing. So as a result of that, the existing housing stock is just going to keep rising and rising and rising. So that's what I advocate so much as to do a little bit of market research and find a market that's growing by leaps and bounds. There's markets in Texas that are fantastic from that perspective. Interesting enough, a market that I kind of would be nervous to invest in right now is New York City, even though it's one of the greatest cities in the world, New York City has had declining population and, and declining jobs. And that's, that's a scary thing, if you want to be a real estate investor. So I would happily invest in the outskirts of Minneapolis for sure. If If I had that opportunity.
Mike Swenson
Talking about that, you know, so when I worked for my nonprofit before I got into real estate, I was in a lot of impoverished communities where, you know, you think about out out in out east in Pennsylvania, where it was, you know, cities that were mining towns will all sudden the mining dries up, and all the jobs leave, and now you've got houses selling for, you know, I lived in communities where were decent houses were selling for $20,000. And this is 10 years ago, just because nobody wanted to that's the supply was so, so large compared to the demand that the prices were way down. And so yeah, as long as you're in communities that are continuing to grow, you're always going to see that demand but but yeah, if you turn and you look at a city like that, your your investment play if there is any play as it is a cash flow play, it's not it's not an appreciation play.
Michael Dominguez
and that makes me nervous as well. And we'll talk about that behind but um, but yeah, just because a property is cheap does not mean it's a good deal. I would I would rather my investors purchase in a quality market and find a quality property in a quality market that attracts quality tenants, and then it becomes a very easy buying hold. You can hold it for a long period of time, and it's the whole that builds the wealth and that leads towards quality. profits. And at the end of the day, that's what we're all here for. And as good as the cash flow can be on some of those discounted markets, I'll take the long term appreciation of a market like like Toronto or Minneapolis or El Paso, Texas, like, those are markets that are that are going to see like six figure and seven figure surges in value over over our lifetime. And, and that's the kind of, that's the kind of wealth I want to build.
Mike Swenson
And if you even look, if you look at the cash flow of, you know, let's just say 200 bucks, 300 bucks per door per month, well, that's maybe $3,000.02 to $3,000 a year. Well, if it appreciates at 4% 6%, something like that, the money that you're going to make is going to wait more than outweigh what your your cashflow gain is. So it's nice to have both of those working in your favor. But the appreciation is that the long term benefit.
Michael Dominguez
And the other thing that people don't take into consideration when they're investing in markets, like the one you talked about in Pennsylvania, or Michigan, or Ohio and some of the Rust Belt markets, is, you know, the fact that, you know, it's cool that you can buy a house for $20,000. But the reality is, is that it's quite likely that the last owner in the last three owners of that house, didn't put any money into that home because it hasn't appreciated. So you don't want to sink any dollars into it as a result, right. There's a lot of deferred maintenance issues. And so if you come in there, and you don't want to be a slumlord, and you don't want to have low quality tenants, you're gonna have to spend some real money to fix it up to the levels where at least it's it's habitable, and your cash flow for the next five years can go away really fast.
Michael Dominguez
If you've got to sink 30 $40,000 into foundation and roofing and windows and furnace and air conditioner and blah, blah, blah, before you know it, you've you've your cash flows all gone. Also, if it's in a market where pretty much all the tenants are out of work and maybe low credit scores, there's a good chance you're gonna have to struggle to get your rents. And honestly, this this life is like, the goal is to make your investments boring, so you can make your life exciting. Like that's, that's what you're supposed to do. And so you can have those five properties in that cheap town in Pennsylvania. Let me have one in the suburbs of Minneapolis. That's that's going to have a little bit cash flow and appreciate it 5% next couple years per year, like that's, that's the market I want to have. Yeah,
Mike Swenson
and I love in your bio, it says, you know, real estate should fund your fund your life not run your life. Yeah. And yeah, when you when you put in, when you take the time to pick the right areas and pick the right properties, that's where the fun starts to happen, versus heaping more and more problems on top of it, you know, and, and I think that's why some people decide not to get into rental real estate, because it's, it's the example that everybody gives of the 2am toilet breaking, you know, or something like that, well, they think there's more problems with this. But the reality is, is you can hire a good property manager that can help you with that stuff. And you don't have to deal with the toilets at 2am if you don't want to. And when you pick the right property, there's meat on the bone to be able to make some of those decisions. So it's not, you know, hey, if I own 10 properties in 10 years, I'm just running around fixing toilets at midnight every night. You know, you're you're finding great leverage and a great team of people to help you so that it can really fund your life, not run your life.
Michael Dominguez
I was in my success stories that I provided, I asked the question how many hours per month you dedicate on your real estate portfolio. And the people that had five properties or less, we're spending in some cases less than five hours a month on their portfolio, so an hour a week, basically. And that was not by luck, it was because of the quality properties right at the outset. When I often say you should, before you find the property you should look for, you should try to decide on the tenant profile that you're that you're looking for, and then find a property that will suit that tenant profile versus the other way around. Because at the end of the day in a buy and hold, as I said already, it's the buy gets all the attention and all of the investment books, it's exciting. If I can make it on the buy. That's fantastic.
Michael Dominguez
But you know, what if I bought something on the Mall, in the MLS system at retail price, and then held on to it for 15 20 years, to your point from earlier, I'm pretty confident that if I sold it at retail, 20 years from now, I'm gonna do okay. And and the key is to have that property. So it's not taking over your life for those 20 years. And the reality is, is that when you get people with 700 800 credit score with real jobs and real mentality that they're their future homeowners that are now renting for whatever reason, and they're going to treat your property with respect. The reality is, is that we actually have to go to the tenants most of the time and ask if there's anything going on. They don't want to bother They, they, they're just happy, you know, we treat that with respect, they treat us with respect. And yeah, yeah, everyone's if you if you sit in a room with 10 realtors or a 10 investors, they're gonna all share their horror stories because that's the fun thing to do. But at the end of the day, it's, you'll go a year or two without having one real issue in many cases with a portfolio of I've got 12 current properties right now, we just started having on issues, it just was not. I had
Mike Swenson
a tenant that that reached out to me, we had a water heater, so in this townhouse that went out a couple of months ago, and, and so he had texted me and said, Hey, you know, hope everything's going well, sorry to bother you. You know, our water heater is out and I'm thinking bother me, you you don't have hot water for a shower right now. And you think that you're being a bother, you know, and, and so that's where, you know, it was a simple phone call to a plumber, we had somebody out there I think in two days, and it was fixed, and it was taken care of and so, so something like that, yeah, it doesn't take a lot of time to fix that. And yet, at the same time, like you mentioned, I think sometimes he feels like he's bothering me by reaching out and it's like, Hey, you know, I'm happily going to take care of that for you. Because it was it's kind of at its life's, and Anyhow, I knew that those types of, of mechanical issues were going to be coming up. But, um, yeah, he felt bad bothering me. And it's like, well shoot, you know, I want you to have hot water stuff, let's make sure you get get some hot water.
Michael Dominguez
Well, that's the kind of tenant you want to have. And then if you treat them with respect, you don't you deal with it right away, we, you know, when is a furnace go out, usually on the coldest day of the year, right. And, and so we've we've had that happen, and I'm sure in Minnesota, you've had that happen, or at least some of your friends have had it, we actually have a couple of block heaters that we that we have in our storage unit that are there for just such an emergency because, you know, obviously, we're not going to get the temperature up to 68 degrees isn't like that, but at least it could be above you know, above 50.
Michael Dominguez
And, and so you know, not only that, but it's good for us that a pipe burst and such like that either, and, and things like that, if it's going to take a day or so to fix something like that, the fact that we're being so incredibly proactive, it goes a long ways for the tenants, and they're not gonna bother us with little things like you, we all heard about all the rent strikes that were happening across United States and Canada, for people that weren't paying during COVID, my tenant profile, and likely yours, and many of my clients, we just didn't have that happen, like all of our people maintain their job, or even if they were struggling with money, the last thing they were going to try to miss was rent payments, because they, they, they realize that we're business people and you know, we treat them with respect, and they treat us with respect and, and that's, that's the way it should be.
Michael Dominguez
And you know, I don't want to have to be, you know, begging for my rent every month. That's, that's not the way I want to be doing this, this is meant to be a way to fund your life and, and give me choices. And, and, you know, I'm 54, I'll just turned 56. But at 55, I made the decision to I could retire if I wanted to. And and when I was 43, that just was not even in the cards, like I had not a lot of wealth, but just a decade worth of, of good decisions, made a massive difference in my life. And now I have not only enough money for myself, but I have a legacy that I can pass on to my son and my niece and nephew and I'll be able to help on their education and, and like these are the things that real estate is able to provide for me and I'm traveling anywhere I want to travel assuming that things open up again.
Mike Swenson
well. And I think another thing that I that I've heard from people that are investors too is a desire to to help people, you know, provide a great place to live, that you're going to be an attentive landlord, and there's a lot of value there. Because there is a lot of landlords aren't there that a lot of landlords aren't there that aren't providing great value. And so even just providing a quality place and you take care of it, you make sure it's kept up, if somebody's got an issue like the water heater, you take care of it, that's adding value for them too. Because there's, there's people that love renting, you know, or there's people that you know, are still saving up for their house. And so to be able to provide that value and help people as a landlord is something else that you can do. And not feel like I'm you know, obviously you're in it for the money too. But you're also in it because you're you're wanting to help people and wanting to provide a good place for them to live.
Michael Dominguez
Yeah, the perfect tenant is somebody who has intention of leaving your unit in two to five years. And most likely they're going to they're going to leave not because they found another rental around the corner, but because they're actually looking to purchase a job transfer. We're just not losing tenants because of $50 here $100 there, it's just not happening. It's It's It's actually it's, you know, the whole honesty we're seeing today That are staying too long, because with the rents increasing as much as they happen, which is very common in markets where we see housing pricing increasing, we also see rents increasing as well.
Michael Dominguez
And so many of my rents are actually a little below market, because we, in our market have a form of rent control, where we're not able to keep up with market values, you know, your market may be different, I don't know. But so we're actually kind of falling behind on our market, we're still cash flowing, we're still doing well, we've got great tenants, they're all paying the rent, they're treating the house with respect. But you know, if they move out, we're not going to cry over it, because we'll find another really great person and collect a little more rent to so
Mike Swenson
yeah. So what are their things are important? You know, we talked about the insider trading piece, you know, what are some of the other concepts that you want to make sure that that people understand?
Michael Dominguez
Well, you know, again, it's, you know, I kind of alluded to it, because obviously, we can't go into a lot of detail today, but I always like to tell people, that it's not necessarily something that's going to take over your life, it's, although it's something that you'll, you know, it's amazing how you'll start to network with other people. And actually, one thing I do want to share really quickly, is if you are just getting started, it's likely that your circle of friends, your family and influence, isn't pot quite possibly not in real estate investing, and that's okay. And I'm not saying you dump all your friends and family, but try to include in your circle, people that are actually taking action, joining investing groups, local groups, listening to this podcast is a great place to start.
Michael Dominguez
But, but going beyond that, and actually talking to people who are actually doing action, and starting to, by networking with some of those people, you'll really, you'll start to it'll feel more normal to take action and, and, and avoiding the negative influences that are sort of telling you to stay with the status quo, the status quo has got you to where you are right now, which is probably not terrible, but you can do a lot better. And this is a way just with some minor modifications in your life can can drastically influence and change the, the the outcome of where you're going to be in life.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, and I think it comes down to having that, that future way out there. Right. It's, it's going to help drive your action today, when you can see what it can become, if, if you could say, you know, to somebody watching this or listening to this, you know, that's 43 years old and think, okay, you know, 1010 plus years from now, I could be retired. You know, a lot of people just don't even think that's possible to say, Well, what if you took a little bit of extra time and you spent on, you know, trying to figure out this real estate thing that you've always wanted to do, what it could mean from now as you can retire in 10 years, versus what piles of money am I going to have to put away and invest in the stock market or, you know, whatever that might be? Well, if you just find some, some great cash flowing properties that are appreciating, and you do that a few times, boom, now 10 years later, you've got something completely different and, and like you said, somebody that something that you never thought was going to be possible, you know, 10 plus years ago so
Michael Dominguez
so there's there's a quote that from Bill Gates, which I liked is one of my favorite quotes is people tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in 10 it's it's amazing how many you know times I go on these short term diets and lose a few pounds and gain a few pounds and and but but with a long term mindset in health in health, you know, you're gonna do a lot better and with regards to wealth building, the the line that we were told when we were teenagers in our 20s about saving money and going into gi or into investment vehicles that are making two and 4% return on bonds and stuff like that, you were told a bunch of lies basically leveraging your money and actually finding ways of getting safe returns with significant returns is a way to just jumpstart your your wealth.
Michael Dominguez
And and the aha moment for me came a few years ago or more than two years ago now but when when I realized that my nine to five job that took 2000 plus hours a year to accomplish paled in comparison to the wealth I made through my real estate earnings and so I thought holy crap my houses are making more money than I am and and then it just got stupid the difference between the two of them and and that's and that's kind of neat when you have almost like a second or third income in your house in the income as someone who's not actually working and it got to the point where now that I'm 56 my my part time passive income is actually generating enough wealth that I've reached my financial freedom number where I don't need to work anymore and and I could just live off of my earnings and live a very comfortable very comfortable life I'm making you know 15 to $20,000 a month range now from cash flow and and other dividend And other residuals, which wouldn't even have been conceivable 15 years ago, just not even in the realm. So it's been pretty cool.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And for those folks that want to learn more about you and learn more about your book, How can they do that?
Michael Dominguez
Absolutely. And yeah, I really, regardless of where you're where you're located, whether it's the United States or Canada, or, or anywhere else in the world, a lot of the stuff I teach is more mindset and market fundamentals. And, and so it's, it's universal, it's not relevant for just one region. And so my book again is armchair real estate, millionaire and, and conveniently enough, it's armchair real estate, millionaire calm. And if you want to reach me, I'm at info at armchair real estate, millionaire calm. And I really encourage you to pick up the book for the 2025 bucks that it costs you to get it. I really think that this could be a major point of difference in one's life. And it's interesting how real estate has changed so many people's lives. And I've seen it, it's we've had such an incredible success rate for ourselves and our clients and everyone we've spoken to, as long as you buy properly and you're dealing with quality people, you're going to do very well.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And what we always tell tell our team is, you know, there's there's two great times to plant a tree 20 years ago, and today, right, so, so make that decision today that you know, whether it's by the end of this year, or within the next 12 months, I'm gonna have my first rental property or whatever that is, you got to set a goal. And you got to put a timeline on that. But yeah, you you can be anywhere you want to be five years from now. And in your case, 10 years from now two and look back. So it's about starting today. So what it what barriers in your way today, that you can get started in your book, obviously would be a great resource for people because it is it is mindset, it's it's been, okay, taking the risk, because you know what the reward is on the other side of it.
Michael Dominguez
And it's nice to know that the risk is, and again, we talked about this a lot in the book about, you know, we all talk about the term risk. And anytime you're putting money into an investment, there is an element of risk. But honestly, I think it's far more risky to put your money in a savings account where you're guaranteed to make 1% interest that in my mind is the riskiest thing of all. So because you know if let's say the the inflation rate is 3%, by you putting it in a one or 2% you have 100% guaranteed yourself a loss and, and we even to even compare with banks and how why they do leveraging at such low interest rates. And that's a story for another day. But the fact that they're willing to do that tells us that the banks people that know a lot more about finances than you and I do. They think that real estate investing in certain markets is a very low risk investment. So so really seriously thinking.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, well, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate your time and best of luck to you in the future.
Michael Dominguez
Thank you. Nice to meet you again.
