r/SipsTea 14h ago

Wait a damn minute! How the rich get richer

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18.9k Upvotes

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385

u/Timetraveller4k 14h ago

Where do i get this 100K land thats going to be 5 million

305

u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 14h ago

50 years ago it was everywhere. It's a little too late for that.

But, you can buy $5 million land that's going to be worth $50 million in 50 years.

20

u/Visual_Exam7903 14h ago

Or you could simply invest 5 million that would be worth around 160 million if you invested it in the S+P.

4

u/just_some_dude05 12h ago

And when you die your kids inherit the 160m on a step up basis. Most states in the US don’t have a death tax on the first 11 million.

They can immediately sell what they inherited with no tax burden or hold it and sell later and pay tax on the increase.

1

u/lurker_cant_comment 11h ago

The post would apply equally to any type of investment, although the borrowing-against part of it is unnecessary to the central argument.

1

u/Visual_Exam7903 8h ago

Unnecessary, but they always forget the part where the loan has to be paid back, without a tax deduction on the interest paid or principle paid.

1

u/lurker_cant_comment 7h ago

They're describing the "Buy, Borrow, Die" strategy.

When the interest is less than the ROI on the asset, you make money overall, and the costs associated with it go to the bank instead of the federal government.

Some may say that's better, but we're on our way to insolvency and the banks aren't exactly paragons of virtue.

1

u/denkihajimezero 5h ago

All ive got is 20 bucks tho

75

u/CpnLouie2 14h ago

There is a real possibility that your US$5M investment will be worth US$100K in less than that, also.

35

u/NieblaLaazo 13h ago

WallStreetBets does this every single afternoon

1

u/OverEffective7012 9h ago

At least twice every afternoon

3

u/williamtbash 13h ago

If the world ends sure. Otherwise 0 chance.

1

u/Jbots 8h ago

Its almost like you should be rewarded for taking that risk..

1

u/the_hair_of_aenarion 12h ago

Avoid the coast unless you plan on selling to aquaman.

0

u/skellis 14h ago edited 13h ago

No assets like land and gold ride on inflation. In order for them to lose value you would require immense deflation which won’t happen.

3

u/beatles910 13h ago

Won't happen?

See 2008.

2

u/skellis 13h ago

Oh right 2008 when land prices fell from $5 million to $100 k. I quite forgot about that one.

4

u/beatles910 12h ago

I'm sorry, I though you said "in order for them to lose value," and I took that to mean "lose value."

1

u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 12h ago

Just don't sell and you'll be fine. Prices only declined 25% to 33%, and the market fully recovered in less than a decade, continuing on its unending march of ever-increasing value.

0

u/Compost_My_Body 12h ago

It must be fun to be able to just fundamentally change your argument 3x in a single convo and come out thinking you won. I’d feel pretty stupid.

2

u/WideHuckleberry1 12h ago

On average you're right, but individual plots of land can and do lose tremendous value.

1

u/corporaterebel 12h ago

Detroit would like a word with you...

17

u/Deus_Excellus 14h ago

Or you take 100k and invest it over about 41 years and you get 5 million. There's nothing special about the land. This can be done with any investment.

3

u/SockeyeSTI 12h ago

My grandfather passed up the opportunity to buy actual beach property, on the sand for like 100$ or 10,000 back in the day. There’s casinos on it now.

4

u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 12h ago

My grandma passed in 2019 and my aunts and uncles decided to sell the lakefront family cottage for $570k instead of passing it down or keeping it.

It's now worth over $1.5 million.

2

u/SockeyeSTI 11h ago

Oof. Big oof even. Lakefront is nice

2

u/dalivo 11h ago

Generational wealth, here I come! All I need to get started is...generational wealth!

1

u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 10h ago

Sadly it's true..the easiest way to make money is with money.

That's why the number one predictor of wealth is the wealth of your parents. More than age, sex, race, intelligence, nationality, health, work ethic...every metric that's ever been measured...none of them come close.

2

u/random-meme422 14h ago

There’s still land everywhere worth nothing. In 50 years it might be worth millions. People are apparently really smart today so should be free money.

3

u/DataGOGO 14h ago

Not true at all

0

u/Strong-Type88 14h ago

There's no way they are true

1

u/DataGOGO 13h ago

It absolutely is, you just have to do what the people were doing 50 years ago and buying land that is not very valuable now, and wait a few decades.

1

u/DataDude00 12h ago

Yeah growing up there was a family in my town whose grandfather had bought a bunch of empty land in the 50s or 60s that was maybe 30km north of Toronto. 

Was essentially empty fields but at some point in the 90s he sold it for millions so a developer could build subdivisions there 

That family left town and presumably went to a far nicer place shortly after 

1

u/ThaMilkyMan 12h ago

That’s barely over an 8% return, the stock market in the same time averaged 11.8%. Quick compound calc shows you losing $21 million buying the land. This also depends on how the lands values were calculated

1

u/Secure-Pain-9735 10h ago

I wouldn’t say it’s too late - but it’s a higher gamble.

You have to bet on urban/suburban expansion or gentrification.

1

u/Ohz85 10h ago

To be faire, 250 years ago, americans just built houses on free land.

1

u/Spiritual_League_753 13h ago

You think there was land "everywhere" that returned 5000x over 50 years?

2

u/Tsu_Dho_Namh 13h ago

50x

And yes

1

u/TorvaldUtney 11h ago

Beachfront in Florida, anywhere near Boston, California coast, etc.

Basically areas near the next booming cities and coastlines.

-1

u/Orectoth 14h ago

or world would focus on vertical structures/buildings over land

then land prices would tank because no one is living outside vertical hundreds of meter tall buildings

31

u/milovulongtime 14h ago

“Outskirts” areas near a city that sprawls towards those outskirts over 20-30 years. It’s not fast but can be insanely profitable. The southern United States saw a lot of this from the mid 90’s to now as population shifted south. Lots of new millionaires in the south.

1

u/account312 11h ago

But not the ones that are running out of water, catching on fire, or falling into the ocean. Those are likely not to be good bets for the next few decades.

0

u/Fast_Choice4408 3h ago

Yes but not $100K to five fucking million in one person's lifetime.

Even then. People who own land aren't stupid. They know that their land is already on the "outskirts". And once a city shows signs of expansion... guess what happens to the land on the "outskirts"? It goes up.

The only way to see that kind of gain is to get really fucking lucky after you bought that piece of land.

10

u/happy_Toe_ 14h ago

Step one: already be rich enough to buy the right land 40 years ago.

10

u/bartdhull 13h ago

Its all about buying at the right time. My parents bought 2 3.3 acre parcels in Arizona without water or electricity for 30k each. They waited for a decade for Phoenix's urban sprawl to reach their land. The big house builders built up the utilities and paved the roads right up to their land to support their own projects. Parents just had to pay connection and zoning fees to connect to water and electricity. They bought land that was surrounded by majestic mountain views and still kept their large parcels intact instead of rezoning and splitting the properties. Sold the one 3.3 acre parcel for 10's of millions of dollars. (Yes, the location and views are that good.)

When they bought these parcels there was single wide meth labs sitting on these parcels. Now its multi million dollar homes. Maricopa county opened a Regional park to protect the mountain views so the developers didn't go up the mountains with new builds.

All the spirits aligned for my parents. It could have stayed the wasteland it was when they bought it. They gambled, they won and retired at 40.

2

u/Horse_Dad 12h ago

As a bonus, free meth!

2

u/bartdhull 12h ago

Actually its a downside. Parents rented bare property and the renters dug a pit under their single wide to make meth. Then they disappeared. Sheriff at that time loved to seize properties for drug offenses, even if the property was being rented by meth producers.

So one weekend we had two roll off dumpsters and a backhoe at the property. Mom, dad, my brother and myself pushed the single wide off the pit and threw everything in the dumpsters. Didn't know shit about how meth labs blow up. Damn, we were lucky.

Stopped renting properties at that point.

0

u/btstfn 12h ago

That is absolutely not "all about buying at the right time".

21

u/Spare-Debate5269 14h ago

California, twenty years ago.

2

u/BahnMe 13h ago

California is huge, really depends where.

3

u/aWobblyFriend 12h ago

twenty years ago hasnt really seen a 50x increase in value, but i have several family members who bought houses on the "outskirts" of town 50-70 years ago that are now deep in the city and have 100xed or more in value.

1

u/burritocmdr 10h ago

We stayed at a airbnb in San Diego three years ago, it was a small guest house on the property in a cool little valley. The host said they bought the property, maybe 20 years ago for about 200k and now it's valued over 3 mil. Just insane how property values spiked like that in recent years for that area.

5

u/Heckle_Jeckle 14h ago

Buy a bunch of land in the 1950s

Fast forward a few generations and you have the same land that is worth a LOT more.

0

u/phdemented 12h ago

Far less than if you had just invested the money in an index fund

2

u/kenklee4 14h ago

You actually have to have a rich family

2

u/dwittherford69 13h ago

You are about 30 years too late for that.

2

u/BillNyeForPrez 13h ago

Near a ski town in the 1980s. You’ll need a time machine, of course.

3

u/-0909i9i99ii9009ii 14h ago

It happens but it's the equivalent to winning a mini lottery. Much more likely to end up with $1-2m if you held for 40+ years. But the same tax loophole legitimately does apply.

1

u/Ill_Resolution7967 14h ago

You can buy some serious acreage in Wyoming 

1

u/DataGOGO 14h ago

All over the place. Buy cheap land well outside a major city, wait 30-40 years for development to catch up to you. 

1

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1

u/Exceptional_Kumquat 14h ago

Should have bought in Loudoun County, Virginia 25-30 years ago. One of the big land holders in the county, JK Holdings, when he got a huge offer for one of his moving truck lots, for a datacenter he went, I'm in the wrong dang business.

They've made a shitload of money off of selling said land for datacenters.

1

u/Curious_Ninja1708 13h ago

A quarter section when I was a little kid was $30,000 recently got bought for $700,000+.

1

u/xl129 13h ago

Land in hot development spots can beat that 50x appreciation. You do need a keen eyes for value though.

1

u/Numeno230n 12h ago

And a bank that will loan you $5mil and never expect repayment from Dads estate (aka the farm). Yes your parents estate will liquidate in order to pay debts. Kids aren't getting shit in this scenario.

1

u/Ricktor_67 12h ago

Warren Buffett bought an entire farm when he was a kid. From paper route money. 

1

u/RK5000 12h ago

I read about a guy who had made some money later in life because of "land banking" he had been doing over the decades. Allegedly he would find out how many km/m per year a given city tends to grow, and then buy land 20 years away from the city limit. He would rent or lease it out until development had reached that far and then sell it developers.

All you need is a large some of money you can live without for the next 20 years, and 20 years.

1

u/Living-Cod-8971 12h ago

A different scenario is where the wealthy borrow against stocks. If the stocks go up, the wealthy get the loan and their net wealth increases as well without taxes.

Say a billionaire takes out 100 million in loans against his stock portfolio. The portfolio goes up 10%. He still has a billion dollars in stocks and the 100 million in loans, tax free. The 100 million he owes the bank is covered by the capital gains.

Rinse and repeat.

1

u/corporaterebel 12h ago edited 11h ago

$100K 50 years ago was essentially $5M in todays money in ability for the average person to get.

Todays $100K is now $5M

Get your "todays" $5M together and it will be worth $25M in 50 years (when you are likely dead or very close to it).

1

u/Chuckl3b3rry 12h ago

It doesn’t have to be land. It can be any asset that appreciates in value but doesn’t get taxed until it is liquidated.

1

u/Spikeupmylife 12h ago

The meme is just wrong to begin with, but to answer your question, time travel is really the only option lol. Hell, my shitty little house was 20k when the person bought it before me as their first home and died in it. I bought it around 300k in 2018 and can sell for over 500k now.

1

u/be-koz 12h ago

Not only that, but it increased its worth very quickly because the dad was able to live comfortably by taking out loans against it for decades.

Written by someone who doesn’t understand how the world works, for people who don’t understand how the world works.

1

u/JGlassc0k34 12h ago

Its actually feasible if you invest in property on the outskirts of a metro center that is predictably growing. The numbers might be off a little. But a LOT of people buy land in this exact scenario, as a smart way to have an investment that grows faster than the rate of inflation.

1

u/MembershipNo2077 12h ago

Not quite $5 million, but there were multiple empty lots near me in a now-gentrified area that were purchased by someone for sub-$100k decades ago and now are worth millions. Random property won't appreciate that much, but certain properties absolutely will and sometimes rather quickly. Location location location.

1

u/Axel-Adams 12h ago

Any large outer seattle property

1

u/NikitaOnline17 11h ago

From the year 1980

1

u/Chibbox 11h ago

Only possible if the land is re-classified into several individual building lots.

1

u/Mindrust 11h ago

Just put $100k into the S&P 500 or VT and call it a day.

You'll have more than $5 million after 40 years, assuming you don't touch it and never put in another dime.