You've probably heard people say you can get 15% returns or better with rental properties. Sounds amazing, right? But is it actually real or just internet hype? In this episode, I'm going to break it down step by step to show you how those returns actually are possible. And I'm also going to show you where the hidden risks are. So let's get started. If we haven't met yet, my name is Chad Carson. You can also call me Coach Carson. And in this show, I teach you how to use real estate investing to achieve financial freedom so you can spend your time doing more of what

matters. This episode was inspired by my friends Brad and Jonathan over at the Truths FI podcast. They sent

me a question for one of their listeners, Amy, who was intrigued by the possible higher returns

of real estate investing because it could help her get to her goal of financial independence even faster. But understandably, Amy was skeptical as she should be. When someone tells

you there's this great thing that gets a higher return, it can get you there faster, you should

always have your little alarms go off a little bit and say, what is the catch? And in this case,

with real estate investing, the catch is you have to use leverage,

or in this case a mortgage, in order to get those higher returns. So borrowing money always takes

on a little bit of extra risk. But as I found in my 22 years of real estate investing,

if you're careful and you pick the right properties and you run your numbers well, you don't

have to take crazy risk in order to get these additional returns.

So I want to show you with an example by drawing on a whiteboard and showing you a spreadsheet

exactly how you might be able to do this with rental properties. So in this example, I'm going to

assume we buy a single family house and then rent it out. And there's a lot of type of properties

you could buy in real estate investing. You could

buy duplexes, triplexes, fourplexes, even larger multifamily properties, commercial properties. And

their advantages and disadvantages each type. Single family houses are kind of the bread and butter,

simple type of investment. They don't always produce the best cash flow, but they're often the

easiest to sell and the easiest to understand. So I'm going to go give you an example of a single family house. And in my location

of Clemson, South Carolina and some little cities near Clemson, South Carolina in the upstate of

South Carolina, you could probably buy a property where the full value is $300,000. So that's if you

got an appraisal, everything's fixed up and looking nice,

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