There are six elements, or pillars of successful investing. All of these must be considered with every deal, every system, and every strategy in order to make wise investment decisions.
These elements are as follows:
- Time
- Effort
- Risk
- Service (Does it create sustainable value for people?)
- Market Dependency (Will it work in any market, or only in certain markets?)
- Profit
Here’s the bottom line: The Strait Path™ real estate system takes the least time, effort, and risk, creates the most value for society, and generates the greatest returns for more investors in any given market than any other system you will ever encounter.
In short, it is the best form of real estate investing available to most investors.
The Benefits & Competitive Advantages of the System
By considering these six pillars, studying all forms of real estate investing, identifying and incorporating the good elements of each, eliminating the flaws, and then putting it all together, we’ve created a system with the following benefits and advantages:
- Simple. Anyone can learn and apply the system.
- Streamlined. We’ve done all the leg-work for you. The system gives you everything you need, and doesn’t confuse you and weigh you down with unnecessary details.
- Coherent. The system is logical and orderly. Each part fits perfectly into the whole.
- Replicable. Once you’ve discovered the power of this system, you’ll never want or need to use any other strategy. You can execute this system endlessly, in good markets and bad.
- Predictable. There are no surprises on the Strait Path™. Everything comes together like clockwork.
- Proven. The system has been proven with over 700 transactions.
- Safe. No one has ever lost money long-term using the system properly.
- Sustainable. This isn’t a “here today, gone tomorrow” system. Because it is based on sound principles, it outlasts all other systems and strategies.
Any system that does not consider each of the six elements equally and holistically is doomed to fail. They are inconsistent and unreliable.
These forms of real estate include the following: rentals; fix-and-flip; lease options; speculative building; equity leveraging; distress sales including short sales and foreclosures; land, residential development, and commercial development; and multi-unit investing.
Strategies Compared & Contrasted
The 6 Pillars
1. Time
Real estate is a complex, multi-faceted industry. From finding deals to negotiating, signing contracts to managing properties, it requires massive amounts of knowledge and time.
Successful and sustainable real estate investing requires that you learn how to reduce your time, while at the same time increasing your profits.
The less time you spend on any individual deal, the more time you have to spend on creating multiple deals. The more time your strategy requires, the less successful you’ll be and the more likely you will be to wash out of real estate investing entirely. The more time an investment takes, the more like a job it is, as opposed to a true investment, which should be mostly passive.
2. Effort
How much effort and hands-on involvement does your real estate investment strategy require? Are the returns worth the effort?
For example, do-it-yourself flipping may seem like a good idea, but it takes so much effort and generally yields very little return for the effort.
Strait Path™ real estate reduces your effort while increasing your returns.
3. Risk
High-risk investing isn’t investing at all — it’s gambling. It’s for those who get a thrill from the game or those who didn’t work hard to earn their money (easy come, easy go). It’s certainly possible to win big with high risk investments, but it’s more likely that you’ll lose big.
When investing is done right, it’s both safe and lucrative. We shun any form of speculative real estate investing. No amount of money is worth the fear, anxiety, and uncertainty.
And, interestingly enough, our system makes higher and more consistent returns than any other, while reducing the risk. This may sound paradoxical, given how often we’re taught that high risk equals high returns. Once you understand Strait Path™ real estate, however, it’s becomes common sense.
4. Service to Individuals & Society
Every investment system that creates win-lose transactions and elevates investors at the expense of buyers will inevitably fail. Get rich quick schemes built on manipulation and deception are the fastest route to failure, the loss of self-respect, and destruction.
The only sustainable, legitimate, and worthy path to wealth is to create real value for others; in other words, to serve people on their terms. If your intention is solely to make as much money as possible for yourself, you will only earn a fraction of what is possible if you focus more on helping others.
Service to others is a key to wealth creation. Those who serve the most, earn the most. Exploiters may enjoy wealth, but they don’t enjoy peace of mind and self-respect, and their wealth is almost always short-lived.
5. Market Dependency
Anyone who thinks that it’s impossible to make money through real estate in a diving or stagnant market is using the wrong system.
The truth is that it is possible to secure almost full immunity from market fluctuations. In fact, the Strait Path™ system doesn’t even depend on appreciation to be profitable. It doesn’t really even matter to us what the market does. In contrast, most real estate strategies require market cooperation.
We teach investors to profit from the things they can control. If things go well beyond that sphere, they benefit, and when they don’t, they’re protected.
6. Profitability
For most investors, profitability is the primary, and in some cases sole, factor used to decide whether or not to invest in something. They fly from deal to deal with no system in place.
Unfortunately for them, their profits are as fleeting as their focus. They make good money on one deal, average money on another, and lose money on the next. They’re reduced to calculating returns based on averages over time, rather than the performance of each individual deal.
On the Strait Path™, we’re not just looking to make money — we seek sustainable, consistent, and predictable profits. In the absence of a holistic approach, perspectives on profit become warped and misguided. We don’t want the highest returns—we want the best returns when considered in light of every other investment factor.
Profit is just one factor among many to consider. No amount of money is worth exposure to high risk and/or creating a win-lose transaction. The more time and effort you have to spend on a deal, the less it should be worth to you. The more you must depend on appreciation, the less appealing the opportunity becomes.
