Why invest in real estate?

For us, it came down to two reasons:

1. It would take us until we were in our late 70s to save up the $2,000,000 our financial planner said we would need in order to retire.  That simply did not fit into our life plans.   
2. Regardless of whether the real estate market went up or down, our rental properties produced positive cash flow month after month. 

I bought my first rental property in 2006, just before the market crashed.  My husband had passed away suddently of a brain aneurysm, and I had just received his life insurance check.  My children were 4 and 11 at the time.  I knew I had to make the money last, so I purchased a new townhouse with the cash, and collected the positive cash flow every month.  (If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently by leveraging that money to buy more properties.)  When the housing bubble burst, I saw my $189,000 townhouse drop in value by almost 70%.  But... and here is why I love rental properties...  I still collected the positive cash flow every month.  It didn't matter whether the value of the townhouse was $189,000 or $55,000, I was still getting the same (or more) rent each and every month.  It was then that I realized the importance of cash flow.

It scares me to think of what might have happened to me and my children if I had put that money into the stock market in 2006.  And, as a side note, my townhouse is in a market that is currently appreciating in the double digits.  That is the icing on my cash flow cake. 

Now, happily remarried, my husband and I purchase properties that produce positive cash flow, month after month.  In doing so, we will have enough passive income through our cash flowing properties to retire in the next 7-10 years, while I am in my 50s and my husband in his early 60s. 

And that DOES fit into our life plans.