Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of Ask Marco on the Passive Real Estate Investing show. I wanna begin today with a text I got last night. I was texting one of our investor clients and a person who's become a friend. I really respect him. He's a very successful entrepreneur and real estate investor. His name is Steven. I actually asked him, he made a comment to me in a text and I actually asked him, I said, would you mind if I shared this on the next recording of my podcast? And I was thinking of my Ask Marco episode here this morning, and he said, that's fine, because he was really passing the message onto me that he felt would be an important reminder for other real estate investors to understand the power and benefits of real estate investing, especially in today's environment and climate. And looking at how prices have appreciated so much over the last few years.

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So he said, yep, go ahead. You know, ignore the grammatical errors, but his text is actually pretty straightforward and clean. So with that, I'm gonna read what he sent me and just make a quick comment about it. So Steve texted me last night. He says, I was sharing with someone today, episode number 299. I listened along with him as a side note, the name of that episode or the title is The Real Returns of Real Estate Investing. Steven goes on to say, I have invested in nearly 2,250 unit or more class B plus properties. So that's a lot of property, a lot of units, probably in excess of 12 million in cash. I don't consider myself someone who needs a lesson like the one in episode number 299. While I listened along, I did not learn anything new. But as you came towards the end, I did get a good reminder.

I was fortunate enough to have refinanced plenty of money before interest rates began to jump. I received millions in proceeds, and as you know, I was looking for cash flowing investments, something that's getting harder to find these days. Near the end of the episode, you grounded me by reminding me what I already knew from my years of experience, the true value of these investments, the appreciation, amortization, and tax benefits gone are the bonus. Instant cash cashflow deals. It's time to adjust my thinking out of 2015 and get my money working through these times and appreciate the true benefits of the assets I wish to purchase. I can't be the only one who can benefit from this reminder. It might be a good idea to remind all of your cash flow hungry listeners that though times they are changing, there is still great wealth creation to be made with unrealized gains in low cash flowing properties.

This is an incredible reminder. It's a great point. It's really summarized in the last part of the last sentence. There are still great wealth creation opportunities to be made with unrealized gains in low cash flowing properties. So this is true. I mean, there are five pillars, as I call it, with real estate. And Steven points out appreciation, amortization and tax benefits, you know, being three that are very important to him and something that had helped him not only create a lot of wealth, but preserve a lot of that wealth. So keep that in mind when you're investing in real estate, especially if you're focused on markets that have appreciated quite a bit and are still somewhat pricey relative to where they were in 2015. And your cash flows aren't as sexy or as high. Your cash on cash returns aren't that high. Just remember that this is the long game, not a short game.

So if you're in it and your property is carrying itself, it's paying for itself. Even if you don't have a lot of cash flow, at least not today, that may change in 3, 5, 7, 10 years from now. You've got to keep in mind the benefits of that real estat...