After a home sale, you will hopefully be flush with cash. However, reinvesting proceeds after a home sale is important if you want to keep up or beat inflation. Therefore, here are some investment ideas to consider after selling your property.
Thanks to inflation, you need at least a $3 million net worth to be considered a real millionaire today! We always need to be investing to try and beat inflation.
To minimize your regret of selling your home and watching it go up further in value, it's a good idea to reinvest the proceeds in other potentially appreciating assets.
In a low interest rate environment, holding too much cash will act as a drag on your overall net worth growth. Further, the housing market is likely to remain strong for years to come.
Be Patient Before Reinvesting Proceeds After A Home Sale
A large financial windfall can either be a joyous occasion or a stressful occasion. It all depends on how well you plan. Because it's generally easier to spend than to save, I always recommend folks sit on their cash for at least a month before making any moves.
Holding a lot of cash is not a bad thing even in a raging bull market. A cash stash is only stressful if you suffer from an overwhelming amount of greed.
Greed can kill your returns because you don't properly think about the risks. All you think about is how much you could be making from a particular investment class without realizing how much you could lose as well.
In this post, I'll focus specifically on what to do with the proceeds after a property sale. This post is applicable to any type of large windfall e.g. inheritance, year-end bonus, gift, etc. But specifically, this post targets those who have sold their homes for big bucks.
Questions To Ask Before Reinvesting Proceeds From Your Home Sale
As we're more than 12 years into a bull market. Selling a property to cash in the gains is becoming more common.At the same time, demand for real estate has never been higher post-pandemic.
With mortgage rates still low, massive gains in the stock market, and a desire to live more comfortably at home, demand for real estate will likely continue for a long time. Personally, I believe national housing prices will grow in the high single-digits for the next three years.
Before you sell your home, here are some questions you should first ask yourself.
1) How much will the sold house be worth in 5, 10, 20 years? The goal is to come up with a baseline financial target to shoot for. Either use the asset's historical annual rate of return over a 50 year time period or a risk free rate plus a reasonable premium. Inflation is a powerful force that should be ridden for as long as possible. For example, it requires at least $3 million today to be considered a real millionaire thanks to inflation.
2) What does your net worth allocation look like post sale? Once you find out, you can make a better assessment on where to allocate capital. After an extended period of time, your net worth allocation may skew more towards one asset due to outperformance.
3) How do you feel about the current economic environment? You are either bullish, neutral, or bearish. Make a best estimate of where we are in the cycle by studying previous cycles and extrapolating current data into the future.
4) What are your upcoming financial needs over the next 1, 3, 5, 10+ years? There must be a purpose to investing otherwise there's no point. The biggest expenses include another home purchase, college tuition, healthcare costs, and retirement.
5) What is your estimated tax liability? There's no avoiding the tax man. Calculate all the costs involved in selling your house (commissions, taxes, etc), the amount you spent improving your house, and any tax benefits such as the $250K/$500K tax-free profits to figure out your taxable profits. Put that money aside.
6) How much are you will to pay in commissions? The cost of selling a house is still egregiously high. It may be best to hold on and keep on renting it out.
Once you've answered these questions during your one month+ cooling off period, you'll have a much clearer sense of how to reinvest your proceeds.
How I Reinvested Proceeds From My House Sale
In 2017, I went from having $2,740,000 of exposure in one asset in SF with $815,000 in leverage (mortgage) to having ~$1,800,000 in cash after selling. The sale paid off the mortgage.
Here were my initial thoughts after depositing the check.
1) Reduce risk by $815,000 by paying $1,800,000 cash for a different San Francisco single family home. But I've already got exposure in San Francisco through my primary residence, a rental condo, and a vacation property in Lake Tahoe. So I'm thinking this isn't the best idea unless I can find another sweet panoramic ocean view home that has a clear appreciation path to $2,500,000 (39%+) over the next 5 – 10 years.
2) Reduce risk by $815,000 by investing all $1,800,000 in a portfolio of different real estate assets e.g. REITs andreal estate crowdfundingprojects to keep real estate exposure from falling by only 29%. This is the most sensible move since I'm bullish on real estate long term and I get to diversify from a single home to multiple properties around the country.
3) Find a dream home in Honolulu with a 10,000+ sqft flat lot near the beach. Unfortunately, these homes cost ~$3,000,000 – ~$5,000,000 and we're not ready to leave San Francisco until its time for my little one to go to kindergarten in 2022. I've been searching for a couple years and haven't found the ideal property at an affordable price.
Years after my rental home sale in 2017, I feel great because I was able to successfully reinvest my home sale proceeds in real estate crowdfunding, stocks, and municipal bonds. The reinvestments have done well.
Slowly Invest Your House Sale Proceeds
I usually like to reinvest proceeds in the same asset class while I work on building up greater amounts in other asset classes to get to my desired net worth asset allocation. But after much deliberation, I wanted to focus on de-risking.
When you survive a financial crisis with a relatively large amount of assets that got pounded, you really appreciate second chances to take money off the table.
Remember, I took a big risk in 2014 by taking out another $1,000,000 mortgage to buy another property while keeping my previous home as a rental with a $1,000,000 mortgage for three years. Further, I'm unemployed!
Here's how I've reinvested the money so far:
These are the three main categories that accounting for the majority of reinvested proceeds. They've all done well so far.
Municipal Bonds: $500,000 into various individual California municipal bonds with a 3% – 4% tax free coupon, which is equivalent to a 4.4% – 5.9% gross yield based on a 32% effective tax rate (federal plus state). I've always enjoyed keeping a good amount of low-risk/risk-free investments because it ironically allows me to take maximum risk in my life: moving cities, switching firms, starting a business, retiring early, etc. Target annual return (gross): 5%
Real Estate Crowdfunding:$250,000 into multiple real estate crowdfunding projects,which brings my total to $500,000 + a $10,000 Conshy, Pennsylvania commercial project. The fund made new investments in Virginia, Dallas, Seattle, and Utah.
This investment is my way of reinvesting a portion of the proceeds in 100% passive real estate that hopefully has more upside than San Francisco real estate, which has started to slow. Target annual return: 8% vs. their 15% target return.
My favorite two real estate crowdfunding platforms are Fundrise (diversified private funds) and CrowdStreet (specific real estate projects in 18-hour cities mostly). Both platforms are free to sign up and explore. I really like how CrowdStreet is also offering speciality funds on occasion as well.
Stocks: $100,000 into an S&P 500 index ETF IVV and $50,000 into various large cap tech growth stocks. I used the small sell-offs in August and September to allocate capital. I'm not excited about the stock market, so this is more an asset allocation decision. I will be allocating $100,000 into the stock market with every 2% correction, with an assumption the stock market won't correct by more than 10%. Target annual return: 7%.
College Savings
529 Plan: Reinvesting home sale proceeds of $35,000 to my son's 529 plan felt wonderful. I can super fund the plan with $70,000 in one year, but I'm not sure I'll do so because these long-dated target funds are very aggressive. With an 18 year target date, the fund has a 90%+ weighting in stocks, so this 529 plan is really just a stock fund at this moment.
Besides, I have 18 years to reach the limit of $359,000, which should go up in the future. I'm more worried about allocating capital at the top of the market and not being able to legally allocate more if there is a correction.
Paying Down Debt
Debt Pay Down: Reinvesting proceeds of $50,000 to pay down a 4.25%, 30-year fixed mortgage on my Lake Tahoe vacation property also felt good. The goal is to pay this debt off completely by 2022 before leaving California.
I plan to consistently pay down mortgage debt using my FS-DAIR framework.
Total Invested: $935,000 over three months
Total Cash Remaining: $865,000 from home sale proceeds
Return Goals For Reinvested Home Sale Proceeds
Return Hurdle: 4% (I estimate the house I sold will increase by 4% a year on average for the next 20 years). $1,800,000 of my equity will turn into $3,944,000 in 20 years at a 4% compounded return, if I cancel out the cost of carrying the $815,000 mortgage (2.35% + 1.2% property taxes + maintenance expenses = a wash).
Estimated Return Of Reinvested Proceeds: 6% (blended rate of return for investments excluding cash). $935,000 will turn into $3,000,000 in 20 years at a 6% compounded return.
Activity Difference: Going from semi-passive income to 100% passive income. Hallelujah!
Rating The Reinvestment Risk
It's always good to make sure that what you are reinvesting in matches your risk tolerance and financial goals. Here's my reinvestment risk assessment:
On a scale of 1-10, 10 being super risky and 1 being risk-free, I rate keeping $2,740,000 of exposure in SF real estate with a $815,000 a mortgage an 8. My rental property was valued at ~30X gross annual rent, which was very expensive. I'm already long three other properties in the Bay Area.
If this was my primary residence and I had no other properties, I would assign a risk score of 5 for holding on, despite the surge in prices because I have to live somewhere.
I believe there's a 50% chance the property I sold could decline by 10% ($2,500,000) over the next several years due to an increased supply of luxury condos. There's a small chance mortgage rates could go higher as well.
Heck, I may have sold my property for $2,500,000 this year if the buyer threatened to walk away. But I also believe there's a 70% chance my old SF property will simply appreciate at a rate of 1% – 4% a year forever, just like inflation.
I give my reinvestments a 3 out of 10 in terms of risk. 51% of my reinvestment is in almost risk free investment grade municipal bonds that will pay back their principal plus a coupon over the years.
25% of my reinvestment is in real estate crowdfunding in cheaper markets with higher yields.
20% of my reinvestment is in higher risk equity investments. While the remaining 4% of my reinvestment was used to pay down debt.
Why Still Hold So Much Cash?
Despite not wanting to own any more physical property, I just can't seem to break my addiction. For 20 years, I've been combing the listings and going on open house walks every Sunday. There's still so much upside for cheaper property on the western side of SF.
There are inefficiencies in the real estate market. Some reasons are due to out of town sellers, out of town realtors, bad listing timing, bad marketing, inexperienced sellers/realtors and so forth.
I always believe I can get a deal for 5% – 10% below fair market value. Why? Because that's what I've done with the past two properties. It's smart to buy big city real estate before there is herd immunity and everyone comes rushing back.
I ended up investing the remaining cash proceeds all within nine months of receiving them. I also ended up buying a large single family home a month into the pandemic. Our forever home was a great deal.
Visualizing Reinvesting The Remaining Proceeds
With whatever cash you have left, clearly visualize how you plan to reinvest the proceeds in what time frame. You don't have to exactly follow your plan. However, you should write something out in order to have a good idea when opportunities arise. In my case, I've got $815,000 left.
1) Taxes: $100,000$150,000 set aside for taxes. I've actually been looking to buy a Honolulu dream home to do a 1031 exchange once 2014, but couldn't find the right house. It's hard to leave my network in SF and get on a plane before my son turns three.
2) Physical property in SF: All $815,000 if a bargain can be had at a 10% discount to market. Need to have lots of cash to be competitive, unlike my buyer who had to take out a $2,000,000 loan and a $300,000 bridge loan to get the deal done. Rental properties are looking very attractive given interest rates have plummeted. Further, the value of cash flow has gone way up.
2) Municipal bonds: $100,000 if the 10-year yield gets back up to 2.3% and $300,000 if the 10-year yield gets back to 2.5%. Minimum $10,000 a month no matter what happens to interest rates. This is unlikely to happen as the 10-year bond yield sits just under 1% for 2021.
3) Stocks: $100,000 for every 2% correction in the market, and up to $500,000 if there is a 10% correction. Minimum $10,000 a month no matter what happens in the market.
4) Debt pay down: $10,000 a month without fail, and $100,000 in 12 months if the 10-year yield doesn't get to 2.5% and stocks do not correct by 10%.
5) Real estate alternatives:An additional $100,000 – $500,000 in real estate crowdfunding if existing investments do well.
Real Estate Alternatives Look Attractive
Given all the fund's investments are equity and not debt, it can take years to see any type of returns. This is exactly what I want because of my current high tax rate, especially since I just sold a house. I plan to have dinner with a member of the investment committee before committing more capital.
Below is a snapshot of my account so far. I've received $330,283.73 in distributions as of 2021 after investing $810,000 in capital. I still have 13 real estate crowdfunding investments that will be paying out over the next two or three years.
Earning real estate income 100% passively is a blessing now that I have two young children to take care of. As a result, I'm very happy investing in real estate crowdfunding, real estate ETFs, and public REITs. Just know that REITs and real estate ETFs are more volatile, as we saw during the March 2020 correction.
It's Worth Being Patient With Cash
You don't have to reinvest proceeds after a home sale immediately. You also won't get all your investments and timing right. If you are unsure about an investment, go halfsies.
For example, locking up $310,000 in a 4.1%, 7-year CD from 2007 – 2014 was a suboptimal financial move since the S&P 500 outperformed. At least I earned a steady, guaranteed return.
However, using $246,000 of the $400,000 in proceeds from the CD to buy a fixer upper for $1,230,000 in 2014 was great. The property has now appreciated to ~$2,200,000 (78%), has ben a good financial decision so far. Although, I did spend $100,000 remodeling the property. The $426,000 in equity for the downpayment and remodeling costs has grown to ~$1,600,000 in equity (+276%).
There will always be great opportunities in the future if you have the cash and the courage to take advantage. Not everybody could have bought my house in 2014 because not everybody had a $250,000 downpayment or the desire to look west. When you have cash, you have options.
Besides providing optionality, cash also provides security. You don't have to worry as much about losing your job, paying for an unexpected medical bill, or seeing your business go down the drain. With less worry, comes more happiness. And happiness is what having money is all about!
Real Estate Is My Favorite Investment
With stocks at record highs, I think real estate is the most attractive investment going forward. People will convert some of their stock gains into hard assets like real estate. Mortgage rates will continue to stay low. Further, everyone is spending a lot more time at home due to the work from home trend.
Reinvesting proceeds after a home sale into diversified real estate makes sense. If you don't have the downpayment to buy a property, don't want to deal with the hassle of managing real estate, or don't want to tie up your liquidity in physical real estate, take a look at Fundrise, one of the largest real estate crowdsourcing companies today.
Real estate crowdsourcing allows you to be more flexible in your real estate investments. You can invest beyond just where you live for the best returns possible. Reinvesting proceeds into real estate crowdfunding after a home sale is good for diversification. Further, you can back a lot of your time.
Sign up and take a look at all eREITs Fundrise has to offer. It's free to look.
Real Estate For Accredited Investors
If you are an accredited investor who wants to invest in individual real estate crowdfunding deals in 18-hour cities, check out CrowdStreet. I've met a dozen of their people before in Palo Alto and I really like what they are doing.
CrowdStreet's deals are in 18-hour cities where valuations are cheaper and net rental yields are higher. Thanks to positive demographic trends and work from home, 18-hour cities are doing well. Reinvesting proceeds from a house sale in individual commercial real estate projects in faster growing areas can be a wise move.
CrowdStreet is also free to sign up an explore as well.
Invest In Private Growth Companies
Finally, consider diversifying into private growth companies through an open venture capital fund. Companies are staying private for longer, as a result, more gains are accruing to private company investors. Finding the next Google or Apple before going public can be a life-changing investment.
Check out theInnovation Fund, which invests in the following five sectors:
- Artificial Intelligence & MachineLearning
- Modern DataInfrastructure
- Development Operations(DevOps)
- Financial Technology(FinTech)
- Real Estate & Property Technology(PropTech)
Roughly 35% of the Innovation Fund is invested inartificial intelligence, which I'm extremely bullish about. In 20 years, I don't want my kids wondering why I didn't invest in AI or work in AI!
The investment minimum is also only $10. Most venture capital funds have a $250,000+ minimum. In addition, you can see what the Innovation Fund is holding before deciding to invest and how much. Traditional venture capital funds require capital commitment first and then hope the general partners will find great investments.
Investment Ideas After Selling Your House is a Financial Samurai original post. I've been helping readers achieve financial freedom sooner since 2009.
