Simply put the simplest way to make money in black africa without much effort is in real estate as long as you have done your due diligence. Just buy and go to sleep, few years after the price just balloons.

This might not be a general statement because it depends on which segment you are playing
. Is it the upscale market, the emerging suburbs, the wholesale / commercial segment, the story in most cases is still the same. There are strong arguements about likely property bubble as they say what goes up must always come down. But I do not see this happening in emerging suburbs as every sub saharan Black african country has a huge housing deficit in the urban and sub urban areas. Be it my country Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya or even Uganda, or Rwanda the available statistics points to the same thing, mass housing deficit that is growing exponentially.

Yours trully has been involved in not less than two dozen land transactions in the past 3 years, and suprisely none of them had dropped in price below the cost price quite unlike stocks.
I do not need to crack my brain about fundamentals and technical analysis. I only concern myself with the almighty formula in real estate investment LID:-

L LOCATION
I INFRASTRUCTURE
D DEMAND

The only set back in property investment is that it is not liquid. Most often it takes time to sale. You can have a 50 million bob worth of real estate holding but you may not have up to 5K cash. That is why is is absolutely necessary to leverage on stocks and other finsancial instruments

Is Real Estate Investment For Lazy People ? put it differently would you say people like Donald Trump are lazy? it takes effort, strategic thinking and a focused mind to know where and when to buy, at what price and when to exit with a profit, ... now that will not be a lazy person but a focused strategic thinker, who knows how to scout for investment and timing to exit.... and yeah just like in any investment lazy people also try.....

Hate to burst anyones love or admiration for Donald Trump but unlike Kenya, the U.S has a very linient or bent system for that matter. People like Donald Trump are able to borrow money, file for Chapter 11 Bankrupcy, sit a few years and as soon as his credit is fixed, jump back like a new investor and buy more stuff and retain the ones from the bad loans with protection from the government. You don't believe me go online and see how many times the guy has filed for bankrupcy.


On the flip side if you try that crap in Kenya, auctioneers will auction everything including your smelly socks.

That being said, real estate is a good investment. The way I look at it is if you buy a 2.5m unit in Kenya and pay it off, you will have rent of 16k (+ Rent appreciation) or more a month for the rest of your life. It gets better, your kids inherit it after you kick teh basket and continue reaping the fruits and remembering you for your sweat and that can continue for generations. You can never beat that. If you get blessed and buy a 10M or better off a 16M one in an affluent area the income for you and generations to come will even be higher.

Reduce on the bottle and invest in a unit and I promise you it becomes addictive once you buy the first one.


Trumps 5 Bankruptcies:

http://www.mademan.com/m...p-filed-bankruptcy.html

Since you are talking about holding investments for life and passing them down, wouldn't it be much easier to buy bluechip stocks for this purpose and avoid the maintenance cost that comes with owning a rental unit¿¿

Based on returns of 16k per month it equates to a return of 192k per annum on your 2.5million investment... This is before deducting maintenance cost of your unit

If you invested this 2.5m in blue chipz your return in terms of dividends would be:
1. BAT = 250k p.a and 20.8k per month
2. BBK = 215k p.a and 18k per month
3. STANCHRT = 215k p.a and 18k per month
etc etc..

Statistics show that equity returns trump real estate over the very long term (30 years) by a very significant margin.. Whats even better is they require zero maintenance once the selection process is complete...

@osa2 & simplicity the question was is real estate for lazy people? my answer was no it is not but even the lazy people try to invest in any kind of business,, as you say DT files for bankruptcy every time, it takes a sharp mind to learn the loop holes and work through the system not a lazy one... and that does mean i support his crafty ways...
@guru.... i agree with you fully....

@young.am sure you know real estate goes with cycles just like the markets.it is very important at what point you enter that cycle.if you enter at the top then it stagnates or goes down you wait a long time to recoup your investment and make money.Question is what part of the cycle is real estate in and what part of the cycle is the market in.I think you are in the couple last innings in real estate and in the early innings in market to use a baseball analogy.

@Gordon Gekko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innings i guess you learned something new today

I am realtor and I think the biggest problem with most real estate investors is investing for capital gain as opposed to investing for cash flow purposes. Majority face liquidity issues but a wise real estate investor must consider investing for purposes of cash flow. I'd also say that a good investor can actually invest in any vehicle and make money.

One distinct advanatage real estate has over stocks is control. with stocks, the performance of a particular counter is depended on other people somewhere unless you are a majority shareholder or a decision maker for the said company. When I do my real estate ventures am 100% in control and will most likely influence my direction, simply put I got control.

Real estate is never for lazy people. I put in a lot of time and effort and that places me head over shoulders above speculators/ passive investors who buy plots and go to sleep awaiting capital gain.