So I get a lot of questions in my email box from my website. Most are legitimate investors with legitimate questions – some are from newer investors with just basic logistical questions – and a few are from people just trying to get started and doing some of their research on my site. One such person – bless his heart – had the courage to ask the following question: (BTW, this is copy/pasted right out of the email, exactly as written!):

“I am trying to get started in the property investment world and came across your site. One thing I do know is nothing worth anything is free, what’s the catch? or (what’s) in it for you?”

I tell you I was laughing so hard, tears were coming down! Of all the people in the world who I’m sure want to know that – no one ever asks! This charming soul just said what was on his mind – to this day I don’t even know his actual name or anything.

And I’m so glad someone finally asked, because there are actually several reasons I do this and I’m happy to tell you what they are – and although agents act like there’s some big secret – there really isn’t! What’s the most obvious reason anyone does anything for a living? Simple! Money!

Investors don’t actually ever pay me anything – no one whips out their checkbook and says “hey Alex, great website, learned a lot, what do I owe you?” Nothing like that. If you like the opportunities I find and present, and you’d like to buy one, I get a referral fee (or other type of fee) from the developer, or whoever is involved. I collect that fee after you close on your new property, have all your questions answered, ducks in a row, and paperwork in order. In a nutshell, ‘you likey, you buy – I get paid’. That having been said, ‘you no likey, you no thinkey you likey me? You no buy’. Everything else on my site IS free.

This is why I spend so much time seeking out GOOD INVESTMENTS. In a competitive market like we’re in, I’m only going to have to search harder to find these opportunities. If I don’t find good ones, people don’t buy. If people don’t buy I don’t collect any referral fees or commission. If I don’t collect any referral fees or commission, I go out of business. And if that happened, I’d have no resources to produce a website or the materials on it. The circle of life investment-specialist-realtor-style.

Okay, so we’ve covered the money part – why else would I do what I do? Well, if you’re familiar with the social security set up, or are a fan of the Kiyosaki “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books, you already know. There are 75 million baby-boomers who will begin retiring in the next 5 to 10 years. When they do, and they turn 70 1, they are mandated (yes, required!) to begin withdrawing money from their retirement funds on a regular basis (i.e. stocks of some sort). What could happen to the stock market with 75 million people withdrawing? Doesn’t take a genius to figure that one out.

The stock market has the potential to become very unstable. And a vast majority of our middle class society has the majority of – or all of - their retirement funds tied up there. Let’s pick a random number and say 50% of retirees are planning on leaning on their 401K and IRA for retirement money (pretty conservative, I think) which is all in the stock market. And the stock market goes soft, goes into recession or even a crash. The result is that those people can’t retire or can only afford semi-retirement or have to lower their standard of living just to survive. We, as a nation, need to look for other ways to subsidize our retirement or we could be looking at one of the most major national crisis’ in history.

But what if there was a successful movement of people to educate themselves and begin to save in other ways? What if a significant number of people decided they would not rely on the social security system and created their own solution outside of the stock market? How much of a burden would be lifted on the rest of the nation if say, even one in every ten people could successfully do this? The impact would spread like a ripple through the water to their friends, family and other loved ones. The burden would not fall on their children either.

This – to me – worth WAY more than any paycheck.