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W hy Y ou Should Invest

in Real Esta te

by

Gary W. Eldred, PhD

o achieve financial freedom, and to enjoy a worry-free retirement that
T provides a prosperous quality of life, no investment outperforms real
estate. Among the most popular asset classes, residential rental properties
have offered the greatest returns for the least risks. “But those results lie in
the past,” you might say, “What about the future?” Good question, but my
answer remains the same—with this caveat.
In the past, relative to stocks and bonds, most residential properties were
severely undervalued. That value difference still favors real estate, but it’s no
longer a slam dunk. Buying property today requires more education and more
market knowledge than you had to have during the great bull market in the

first half of this decade.
Baby boomers scrambling to fund their retirements, pension funds racing
to accumulate assets to fund their future liabilities, and the already affl uent
searching for ways to enlarge their wealth are bidding up the prices of all
types of investments. The Dow Jones Industrial Average Stock Index now sits
near its record highs, yields on long-term government bonds are fl uctuating

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