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Looking for truly passive income

John

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I own an Internet business that's doing very well. I'd like to diversify into one non-internet related area that brings in cashflow. I'm looking to build up 5-10k/month of non-internet income -- enough to live off of if the Internet business ever goes south. I have a decent amount of cash on hand, so capital shouldn't be a problem.

My main requirement is that my new investment can't take up much (preferably none) of my time on an ongoing basis. My time is best spent working on growing my online business, and I get a much better return on my time doing that than I would trying to muddle into some new area. I have more money than time now and I'm trying to learn better ways of getting my money to work for me without requiring my involvement.

I'm looking into several possibilities and I'm hoping that all of you can help me figure out the pros and cons of each, or possibly suggest new possibilities. I've listed my initial ideas below, along with my initial thoughts on each. I don't have experience with any of these areas, so I may be way off-base. Please don't hesitate to correct me if needed.

--Residential rental real estate - Seems like a good income earner with potential for appreciation. The problem is that it seems that it would take up a lot of my time on a regular basis dealing with problems. Even if I hired a property management company I'd still need to keep tabs and manage the managers some. I believe I might be able to make the management more simple and streamlined if I bought a single apartment building instead of multiple single family homes scattered all over the place. Any thoughts on this? How much time do those of you with rental properties run by property management companies end up spending on managing them and dealing with problems? Can residential real estate income ever be truly passive?

--Commercial rental property - Seems like it would require less management and give me less headaches than residential. Is this the case?

--Passive paper investments - Tax free municipal bonds look pretty good to me. From my research it looks like it should be fairly easy to get the equivalent of a 7% yield (when taking tax savings into account). Although they offer a smaller return than my other options they're safer, and require less of my time to manage. The downside is that at only a 7% return I'll have to tie up a lot more cash to hit my target cashflow than I would with other options. It seems to me that this much cash could possibly be put to better use elsewhere. Anyone else here investing in Municipal bonds? What kind of rates are you able to get and how much planing and maintenance does it take to keep your portfolio optimized?
Any other thoughts on stable income producing paper assets that I should check out?

--Other possibilities? Bring them on!
 
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Yankees338

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Jul 24, 2007
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- You could do some hard money lending. Don't know a lot about it, but I imagine you could probably make > 7% with not too much risk. I'm sure there are plenty of resources out there that could give more details around this option.
I've seen some site that's like an online hard money lending classified listing service. I'm sure someone here knows what that site is, but I don't remember it. It seems like that's more small scale, though.
 

JesseO

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Call me narrow minded, but I think the best choice would be multifamily real estate. If you have lots of capitol, you can put down 50-100% and make plenty of permanent cashflow with an inflation hedge. If you have $1M to put down, you can make at least $5k a month easily...while still improving the property and creating more equity/value. Call me a one trick pony (see thread). Not sure how well dividends work out in the stock market, but McDonalds recently raised their dividend rate. I believe that most stocks only give you pennies on the dollar, while they mostly shoot for appreciation/gains. In any case, glad to have you here. ++ for starting this thread.


Please ignore the fuzzy math this time around.
 

John

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Sep 18, 2007
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JScott: Thanks for the great post! Rep++ for you! Becoming a hands-off equity partner in a RE or business venture is an interesting idea that I hadn't considered. Hard money lending is also an interesting idea that I really know nothing about but now want to look into.

As for investing money back into the Internet business, I'm currently doing that and also investing most of my time into continuing to grow the business. I'm looking at also investing in another area because I'd like to diversify and get some income going that doesn't rely on the internet.

Yankee338: I think you're probably thinking of prosper.com. Most people I know of who have tried this haven't been happy with the results.

JesseO: 60k a year out of a 1 million investment is 6% not 16.5%. Hopefully I could do a little better than that!
 
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JesseO

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Sorry, transposed the numbers. It's more like 9.5% COCR with 100% down. $8,000/month or so. Not including other income (laundry, appreciation, etc)

Also, I think prosper.com is more of a charitable site rather than trying to make as much of a return as possible. From what I've heard on the news they help people in the poorest of places...but then again I've only seen a snippet of what they've done on CNN.
 

ProInvestor

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Aug 15, 2007
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If you are looking for total passive income look at Government programs, for example here in Australia the Government pays 100% of the rent to the landlord DIRECT (straight into your nominated bank account!). You can even set up a deal with our unemployment office so they send you tenants direct, have a property manager guy and no agent letting fees.

Good, ehh'????

Rgds.
ProInvestor
 

tbsells

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Jul 27, 2007
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John,
I'm not an expert on the topic but hard money lending seems extremely profitable, hands off, and not very risky. I read a post on here (I think it was by phlgrl) where the poster said they used hard money frequently and they typically paid 3 points plus 15% for short terms loans secured by real estate. That will add up in a hurry. You might contact phlgrl for more details. I'm sure there are others who use hard money lenders and could chime in on rates and fees.
 
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TNT

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Aug 31, 2007
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I like the concept of truely passive income but I am not inclind to just turn that kind of money over to someone to manage for me. I do think appartments are the best rought with a property manager but I will keep an eye on things.
 

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