My First Little Duplex vs.
​The Stock Market

"Never let your failures go to your heart or your successes go to your head"   - Soichiro Honda

​I was wondering how my very first little real estate investment compared with the stock market
​so I crunched the numbers. and here they are.

Duplex Purchase:

- 131  Spring St Albany NY.   A very simple duplex purchased for about $41,500  around 1986

- Cash invested for down payment and closing costs about $2350 

- Other monies were invested for repairs but monthly rent collected paid for those repairs.

- Today's estimated value  per Zillow: $119,000

Seeing as I bought it 30 years ago, the loan would be paid off now and similar apartments on 
Craigslist rent for about $675 per unit.

So if I still lived there, I would  be living for free, have an asset worth about $119,000 and be collecting
about $675 a month in rent from the other unit.  


$2350 Invested in the Stock Market:

- Using a Dow Jones Industrial Average Calculator...$2350 invested in the stock market in 1986 with all dividends reinvested would give a return of 2078.672%.

- Using that rate of return my initial investment of $2350 would be worth $48,833 (instead of $119,000).  

- If my  stocks were worth $48,833 I would have to get 16.5% in dividends to equal the same income I would get on my little duplex from renting just one unit. Many professionals say that stocks with dividends over 8-10% are risky.

Albany NY is not an expensive city...today I live in Los Angeles. But  if I did live in Albany I would be living for free and collecting rent. By now  I  would have purchased a number of other rentals to increase my cash flow as property is very reasonable there. Here in Los Angeles we get a much larger cash flow on  apartments so you don't need as many units  to generate a nice income for retirement.


Click Here For Inspiration:  Come To Your Own Conclusions by Osho