The Wealth Formula: Four Principles For Building Your Fortune With Real Estate

财富密码：房地产创富四法则

I’ve had a passion for real estate for as long as I can remember. As a kid, when I was driving around town with my parents, I always marveled at the architecture of old houses, trying to picture how life must have been back when they were being built. It was not a big surprise to them when I pursued real estate as a means to build my wealth.

自记事起，我便对房地产怀有持续热忱。童年时期随父母驱车穿梭于城市街巷时，总会为老式建筑的独特构造驻足惊叹，试图透过斑驳砖墙想象其建造年代的市井生活图景。因此，当我成年后选择房地产作为财富积累的核心载体时，家人对此均未感到意外。

When I graduated from the university in 2005, I had big dreams. Like many of my classmates, I wanted to get rich. Again, this was probably not a big surprise after spending four years eating mostly mac and cheese cooked in a microwave.

2005 年大学毕业时，我怀揣鸿鹄之志。与众多同窗一样，我渴望实现财富积累 —— 这一选择在经历了四年以微波炉速食为主的校园生活后，似乎已成为必然。

I had several personal lifestyle goals. I knew I didn’t want to wait until I was in my 60s before I could retire. I wanted to be able to travel every year and to be able to buy pizza once a week, with as many toppings as I wanted. I also set out with some revenue goals. I wanted to become a millionaire and build a real estate portfolio that would net $100,000 a year in passive income.

我有一些个人的生活目标。我知道我不想等到60多岁才退休。我希望每年都能去旅行，并且每周都能买披萨，想加多少配料就加多少。此外，我还设定了收入目标。我希望成为百万富翁，并建立一个房地产组合，每年产生10万美元的被动收入。

I spent a lot of time reading and learning about real estate investing. The main challenge I encountered was that there’s a lot of conflicting information out there — and a lot of bad advice. That’s still the case. It took a lot of trial and error over the years to get to the right formula.

我花费了大量时间阅读并学习房地产投资相关知识。然而，在这一过程中，我遇到的主要挑战是市场上存在大量相互矛盾的信息，以及许多错误的建议。这种情况至今仍然存在。经过多年的反复试验与摸索，我最终找到了适合的投资方法。

The Wealth Formula

财富公式

One thing I realized early is that real estate is not a perfect market, but there are usually opportunities to be had and people willing to depart from their properties under market value for a variety of reasons. My first job paid about $40,000 a year. I lived very modestly for two years with two roommates, while saving for a down payment. I bought my first investment property in 2006. It had a nice cash flow, and it was located in a neighborhood that was quickly developing. The following year, I refinanced that property to use the equity for a down payment on the next one. Over the years, I repeated that process over and over, rarely having to use any of my own money as a down payment again. I’m oversimplifying the process a bit, but what I quickly realized is that it didn’t take a huge number of properties to achieve and exceed my early goals.

我早期便意识到，房地产市场并非完美无缺，但通常存在诸多机会可供挖掘，且许多人出于各种原因愿意以低于市场价的价格出售其房产。我第一份工作的年薪约为4万美元。在两年的时间里，我与两位室友同住，生活十分节俭，同时为支付首付积蓄资金。2006年，我购置了第一处投资性房产。该房产现金流状况良好，且位于一个快速发展的社区。次年，我对该房产进行了再融资，以利用资产净值支付下一处房产的首付。多年来，我反复运用这一模式，几乎无需再动用个人资金支付首付。我在此略作简化，但迅速领悟到的一点是，实现并超越早期目标并不需要持有大量房产。

There are four key lessons I learned that I believe are crucial for success:

我总结出四大关键经验，我认为这些经验对取得成功至关重要:

1. Be obsessed with success: You need to be able to define what success looks like to you, and pursue it relentlessly. Be honest with yourself about your goals and objectives. Your commitment level must be at least proportional to the size of your desire. The fire in my belly always kept me focused on my vision. Mindset is everything. It’s only with the right mindset that you’ll stop making excuses that get in the way of achieving success.

1. 痴迷于成功：你必须能够清晰界定成功对你而言的具体图景，并锲而不舍地追求。对自身目标与愿景保持绝对坦诚至关重要。你的投入程度必须至少与你的渴望强度成正比。内心燃烧的火焰始终让我专注于愿景。心态决定一切。唯有秉持正确的心态，方能摒弃阻碍成功的种种借口。

2. Be persistent: I could have given up after having issues with a tenant or after one of my properties flooded. I could have given up due to the sheer amount of work was required to feel confident about getting started in real estate. No matter your path to wealth in real estate, there will be many obstacles along the way. The most persistent people will successfully bulldoze through those obstacles without blinking.

2. 坚持不懈：在遭遇租户问题或房产被水淹等困境时，我本可以选择放弃。面对投身房地产所需的巨大工作量，我同样可能中途退缩。无论你选择何种房地产致富之路，途中必然荆棘丛生。唯有坚持不懈者方能无畏破障，一路披荆斩棘迈向成功。

3. Be systematic: If there’s one thing I learned from my experience as an engineer and as a management consultant, it is the importance of having a repeatable system. Imagine applying Six Sigma theory to ensure your investing outcomes are measurable and repeatable. Some real estate investors might have been successful because they were lucky. Or maybe they just happened to have had really good timing. But smart investors rely on a system to ensure they can repeat their process over and over, always fine-tuning and improving it.

3. 注重系统性：从我的工程背景及管理咨询经验中，我深刻认识到构建可重复系统的至关重要性。设想将六西格玛理论应用于投资决策，以确保投资结果可量化且具备可复制性。部分房地产投资者或许因运气或恰逢良机而获成功，但睿智的投资者依赖系统化方法，确保其投资流程能够持续优化并反复实施，从而实现稳定且持续的收益增长。

4. Be smart: My lifestyle didn’t change substantially during my 20s. Sure, I had built a net worth exceeding $1 million and a multimillion-dollar real estate portfolio. But as I kept reinvesting my income, I didn’t have much more money at the end of the month than I did on my $40,000-a-year salary. That was by design. At any time, I could have sold some assets, paid off my debt and enjoyed having money rolling in. However, that was not my objective, and I hadn’t yet achieved my vision.

4. 保持睿智：在我20多岁时，我的生活方式并未发生显著变化。诚然，我已积累了超过100万美元的净资产，并构建了价值数百万美元的房地产组合。然而，随着我持续将收入用于再投资，每月的结余并未显著多于我年薪4万美元时的收入。这是经过深思熟虑的选择。在任何时候，我都可能选择出售部分资产、清偿债务并享受资金滚滚而来的惬意生活。然而，这并非我的目标，我尚未实现我的愿景。

Building wealth through real estate investing won’t make you a millionaire overnight. However, by being obsessed with success, persistent, systematic and smart, there’s no reason anyone couldn’t get rich within a few years.

通过房地产投资积累财富并非一夜暴富的捷径。然而，只要对成功保持痴迷、坚持不懈、注重系统性且行事睿智，任何人都没有理由无法在几年内实现财富增长。