I’ve heard the statement many times. "You know, I’ve been wanting to get into real estate, but…"

How do you finish that sentence?

"I don’t know how or where to get the money."

"It’s too risky."

"Is it biblical?"

"It would take too much time."

"What if it doesn’t work?"

"It seems like real estate investors take advantage of people."

"What about a real estate bubble or a market downturn?"

"I’ll start when I get in a better financial situation."

"I don’t want to deal with clogged up toilets in the middle of the night."

These thoughts and many others can prevent us from achieving God’s best for our lives and realizing our full potential.

Whether your desire is to quit your job and get into real estate full-time, or you just want to add some appreciating assets to help in your retirement, or restart in real estate because you did it the wrong way, I believe everyone should have some form of real estate in their portfolio!

We know that real estate investing is one of the best avenues to create wealth. God created real estate, and it’s valuable because He is not making any more of it!

And it is interesting to note that if you study the lives of some of the wealthiest people in the country, past and present, you will find that even though there is a diversity of investments and businesses, one common thread in almost every one of them is real estate.

I mentioned in the first session, about how many of us have thought at one time or another, "Man, why didn’t I buy that piece of real estate back when?" What makes us think that things will be different ten years from now if we don’t act and start buying real estate now? I believe ten years from now, we’ll be wishing we had bought more real estate when "prices were so cheap."

Most of the time, we don’t take action because we don’t know how or where to get the money. Maybe you believe that real estate investors take advantage of people. Maybe you’re afraid of a real estate bubble or a market downturn. All of these reasons boil down to one thing: FEAR!

Perhaps you have heard the "horror" stories of people who tried real estate investing, and they had a bad experience with "problem tenants" or "maintenance headaches." They don’t hesitate to tell you all the reasons why real estate doesn’t work. These are the people who usually just dived headlong into the world of real estate investing without educating themselves. Some of these well-meaning people will consider themselves experts since they have bought a house or two, but chances are they did not buy it right, they did not finance it right, they did not market it right, they did not manage it right, and now they are blaming everything but their own lack of education. I’ve made some mistakes in my real estate businesses, but I’ve learned from them and I move on!

Most people simply buy real estate rather than first investing in learning about real estate. With the real estate materials provided to you through EPIC Wealth Strategies, you can be on your way to learning the correct way to invest in real estate – with excellence, honesty, and integrity.

The Scriptures are full of references to God’s commands of possessing land. In Deuteronomy 1:8, God says, "See, I have set the land before you; go in and possess the land." Similar verses are Deuteronomy 3:18 and 4:22. Psalms 37:22 says, "Those the Lord blesses will inherit the land." Psalms 37:29 says, "The righteous shall inherit the land." Psalms 135:12 says, "And He gave their land for a heritage." I Chronicles 28:8 says, "Be careful to follow all the commands of the Lord your God that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants forever."

In fact, "land" is mentioned in the Scriptures over 1,700 times, so apparently God places quite an importance on it. In today’s terms, you can substitute the words "real estate" in the place of "land" (sorry, the word "real estate" wasn’t translated from the original Greek and Hebrew). God created real estate, and He created it as a good investment. We’ve seen the world latch on to the idea of real estate investing, especially in recent years. But as Christians, we can’t back down from something God said is good just because the world has latched onto it. As with the story of the talents in Luke 19, God expects us to make a good return on His investments, and you can do that in real estate.

This entire series is based on Multiple Streams of Income, with real estate being one of the three main asset classes you should invest in. But even within real estate itself, there are ways to diversify your property portfolio through various property types, locations, and buying/selling strategies. Later, we’ll look at the many ways you can diversify your real estate, even through various commercial property types, but before we do, let’s look at some of the reasons why real estate is one of the best investments you can make…