﻿ Investing for Cash Flow or Appreciation – What's the Difference? | Hipster Investments

Investing for Cash Flow or Appreciation – What’s the Difference? No doubt, the point of investing is to receive income.

Why else would you invest? You want to put your money into a property or a project or a stock or a thing or whatever will earn you some cash. It’s the whole reason for investing- to turn a smaller amount of money into a larger amount of money.

How does one do that? There are a few ways that earning money can happen with investing. The simplest to understand is interest. If you loan someone an amount of money and attach a set interest rate to it, that person will pay you that interest on top of what you originally lent.

Your investment income then is that interest they pay you. You get your initial investment back plus that interest and that is your return. Great money! The nice thing about earning interest is that it’s defined up front with no unknown variables. The only risk in loaning money like that is if the person stops paying on the loan.

Even if you take that person to court, it doesn’t guarantee you will see that money again because if the person truly doesn’t have the money to pay you, the best you can get is a lien put on them saying as soon as they do have the money they will pay you. From personal experience, don’t hold your breath waiting to see that payment show up on your front stoop.

What about earning returns in ways more specific to real estate investing? Like, by owning actual real estate. Flipping houses is very popular. If you flip a house, you buy a house cheap with your own money, fix it up, and resell it at a higher price than what you initially paid for it plus what you had to put into it for the rehab.

When you rehab a house, you force appreciation. It’s a cool play actually. What about straight rental properties though? Rental properties are a long-term hold model versus flipping which is shorter-term with forced appreciation (usually). Since nothing is being forced for a rental property, how do the returns work on it?

Two major things contribute to earning returns on a rental property: 1. Cash Flow and 2. Appreciation.

Buying for Cash Flow vs. Appreciation

When you set out to buy a rental property, you’re first thought should be- “how am I going to make money with this property?” You can make money in a few ways with rental properties: cash flow, appreciation, equity build, tax benefits… But let’s just focus on the first two since those are the big ones and those are the two that will (should) drive your decision of what property to buy.

1. Cash Flow

The most popular way to earn money on a rental property is with cash flow.

Cash flow refers to the profits you collect each month from the property. The way it works is you collect the rent from the tenant (a.k.a. gross income) and subtract your expenses (mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs, management fees, vacancies, etc.) and that leaves you with your cash flow (a.k.a. net income).

Cash flow is exciting because it’s money in your pocket but also your financing and expenses are covered by your tenants’ rent rather than out of your own pocket.

The trick to buying for cash flow is to know how to properly calculate the returns that you should expect on a property. For details on calculating these returns, check out Rental Property Numbers So Easy You Can Calculate Them on a Napkin. But more generally, you need to understand price-to-rent ratios, as they pertain to rental properties.

The price-to-rent ratio will give you an idea, first and foremost, as to whether or not you can even get cash flow from a property. When could you not get cash flow from a property?

When the rent you can collect on a property is not high enough to cover the cost of buying the property. Higher purchase price + lower rent collected = bad price-to-rent ratio. There are few better examples than Los Angeles to demonstrate bad price-to-rent ratios. I used to rent a townhouse in Los Angeles for $2,250/month.

I know that the owner bought the townhouse for $460,000. Calculating the mortgage payment on that house, plus taxes, insurance and condo fees brings the monthly expenses to $2,525.50. See any problems there? The cost of owning that house, per month, isn’t covered fully by what I was paying in rent.

And that doesn’t even include expenses like maintenance and repairs; I only included the fixed expenses that can’t be avoided. Why not raise the rent, you ask? You can’t just raise rents to whatever you want them to be.

What you ask has to match market rents or you’ll never get it rented. So the price-to-rent ratio on that townhouse is bad for investment purposes because the owner is losing money every month.

If you are wondering, yes there are plenty of properties that have great price-to-rent ratios. The first investment property I bought in Atlanta had a great one. I bought the house for $55,000 and it rents for $975/month.

All of the expenses combined only total $650/month, so I’m profiting $325/month. See how much nicer that works out than the Los Angeles townhouse? It’s all because of the difference in the price-to-rent ratios.

Well why would anyone in the world ever buy a house with such a bad price-to-rent ratio that they lose money every month? Oh, it happens more than you think.

The majority of people who do that are those who just don’t know any better. There is another group of people though who happily take the monthly loss; those who are investing solely for appreciation.

2. Appreciation

Speaking of Los Angeles… where better to buy a rental property than if you are just hoping for appreciation?

Read The Rest On Bigger Pockets.

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  • sibi manoj

    That’s really nice article,more over perfect about the cash flow. but before anyone flip a house , he must closely watch the location and the environment , so that after the renovation he will not be having trouble . And about leaving to rent , he must compare the market price for that locality and analyse the amenities he used in his house and make the tenant understand the facts so that he will be gaining a profit at least by 20 – 20 % .
    This article is really useful.

    • Ali

      Hi Sibi, thanks for the comment and good info. For clarification though we don’t work with flipping houses.

  • Jamie Bruce

    I was little confused about the mismatch differences between the two explained in your post. Yet, I am clear with my doubts now. Thanks for sharing such useful information.

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