Real Estate Is A PPA (Proton Pump Aggravator)

crispydocUncategorized

The gospel of real estate has received a lot of air time on Big Physician Finance recently.

I consider myself to be on good terms with the powerhouse physician finance bloggers (even if all but a couple couldn't pick me out of a lineup). I realize that's such a niche market that it's akin to boasting of your band's status as the fourth most popular folk duo in New Zealand.

[Full disclosure: I have affiliate relationships with a few of these bloggers where I sell a smattering of courses they produce in exchange for which they treat me to a few burgers, as Gasem eloquently puts it.]

As this blog remains a passion project where my hourly income averages well below minimum wage, I hope that lends me a partial air of the detached observer.

Some of the fervor may be entrepreneurial - these bloggers stand to make income through affiliate relationships with others who either sell courses teaching docs to invest in real estate, or else funnel referrals to real estate syndicates seeking accredited investors who can meet their high minimum investments.

But profit motive is not the only story. The natural history of physician financial literacy goes something like this:

  1. Drive a beater! Live like a resident! Frugality as you pay off educational debt.
  2. Index funds! Bogleheads! Backdoor Roth! HSA!
  3. Gonads of bronze: Pray for a recession early in my career to buy stocks on fire sale.
  4. Recession came later in my career than I'd planned. Maybe I ought not to be 100% in equities after all.
  5. Gonads of glass: Bonds! TIPS!
  6. Eventual achievement of financial security if not outright financial independence.
  7. [Bored by vanilla index funds, watching the other kids lick cones with this interesting new real estate flavor.] I'll have what she's having.

So it goes - you accumulate sufficient wealth with index funds that an urge to learn something new, a desire to diversify your portfolio or a drive to juice your returns leads you, eventually, to real estate.

That's where I've been headed, mostly because it's interesting to learn the new skills involved and see how it might engage my intellect after medicine.

After a year of planning, and a few false starts, I've spent the past week signing every legal document ever created.

I made an unsentimental offer and went into contract on a property, sight unseen, that had been listed on the MLS for fewer than 30 hours. It met my paper investment criteria, and I wanted the right of first refusal to purchase it.

I report this with a mixture of excitement and the sense that I might hurl at any minute - this is the largest deployment of capital I've made since buying our doctor house - but it's a healthy sort of uncertainty, like a high school crush.

More to come...