I know I didn’t expect to change his entire perspective, but maybe these little interactions could help interrupt the vicious “get rich with real estate” cycle. I don’t know.

I genuinely wasn’t looking for advice, and I wasn’t trying to be rude. I just wanted him to see and possibly acknowledge that what he did - while it made HIM rich - impacted people like me, who work at the institution he went to, just trying to live comfortably in the community I work in.

I said “I’d be happy to give it a shot but you gotta admit it’s a little hard to do that when you’re being priced out of the neighborhoods you want to live in.” He waved his hand at me like he was dismissing me and said “I’m just trying to give you some advice.” And walked away.

He told me “that’s what you should do if you ever want to afford a house”. I said “I’m actually one of the tenants in this scenario, my rent keeps going up and the properties are getting bought up by investors and management companies so they can do exactly that”

He told me about his house in Florida, his “investment properties” all over the state, and how it all started because he talked a guy into letting him pay his mortgage and essentially buy a property without involving any kind of legal process.

He said that before he bought his first house, we went to an apartment complex where “tenants weren’t paying the value of the place” and told the owner he’d pay his mortgage payment and update the property until he became the owner. He said he did this 3 times.

I used to teach elementary music and I loved teaching recorder! However I gave them practice time in class and didn’t let them take them home for this exact reason 😂

It’s so hard to not feel hopeless. But you will make it, we’ll make it. We have to💜