Introducing Millionacres -- Our New Real Estate Investing Brand

The Motley Fool's new real estate investing website, Millionacres, recently launched with a ton of valuable content on topics ranging from buying and financing investment properties to real estate crowdfunding to tax strategies for real estate investors.

Industry Focus: Financials regular guest Matt Frankel, CFP, has been hard at work writing new content for Millionacres, and in this clip he's excited to share what he and the rest of the team have been working on.

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on Sept. 16, 2019.

Jason Moser: Matt, we wanted to follow up from last week's conversation. You introduced our listeners to something you've been working on here for quite some time now with the team, Millionacres. It's The Motley Fool's real estate investment service. A lot of cool things going on there. Now you've got this thing out there. People are reading the content, learning about what we have to offer. Talk to us a little bit more about Millionacres. Maybe discuss some of the different ways you and the team at Millionacres view investing in real estate.

Matt Frankel: Sure. If you've listened to the podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about REITs, real estate investment trusts, quite a bit. There's a lot more to investing in real estate than just REITs, although on Millionacres, we do give you a whole lot of in-depth coverage on that as well. We also go into a lot of other ways you can invest in real estate and some other strategies you can use, like investing in properties. I own a handful of investment properties myself. We go over things like how to finance an investment property, which a lot of people don't know how to do; what a property manager would do for you; do you need one; the advantages and disadvantages of choosing that as opposed to something like a real estate investment trust. You're putting all your eggs in one basket, as opposed to a company that invests in thousands of properties. But, on the other hand, there's potential for a lot of great long-term returns if you have the patience to deal with all those things.

We also go into a relatively new way of investing in real estate called crowdfunding. You've probably heard of crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe or something like that.

Moser: Oh, sure!

Frankel: People raise money for medical bills, whatever they need. This has also emerged as a way to invest. Crowdfunding lets people get in on real estate deals that they otherwise wouldn't be able to afford to do or wouldn't know how to do. For example, if an experienced real estate developer wants to buy a hotel, renovate it, and try to increase its income, it might put up a little bit of the project's money itself, then advertise to investors like you and me, where you can get a piece of the project in exchange for an equity interest. That's a really exciting way to invest, but there's a lot you really need to know before you jump into one of those, in terms of risks, what to expect, how to analyze the deals as you're reading them. A lot of really interesting ways to invest in real estate.

There's also a lot of big tax implications of real estate investing. There's a lot of advantages that come with real estate investing when it comes to taxes. But it really is complicated. You need to understand it. There are some tax strategies that you can use to prevent from seeing your tax bills go up after becoming an investment property owner, or even a real estate investment trust or crowdfunding investor. A lot of people don't realize, for example, that REIT dividends are a lot more complex than the ones you get from the average stock. They're usually broken down into several components, and are not usually taxed as qualified dividends. There's a whole lot to really unpack when it comes to real estate investing, which is what we're trying to do over there at Millionacres. I encourage anyone listening who's interested in real estate, or even if you're not, come over there and see why you should be.

Moser: Yeah, most definitely. I tell you, everything you've been doing on it, it really looks cool. I worked with Matty Argersinger for many, many years now. We served three years together on Million Dollar Portfolio. To see him be able to go into this real estate service -- real estate's always been a real passion of his, and I know it's one of yours as well. When you put passionate people on something, you can't help but get good results, because you're happy doing what you're doing. So, yeah, make sure, listeners, you can go check out millionacres.com to learn more about what Matt was talking about there. And, give them a follow on Twitter, too. They're on Twitter. They're tweeting out all sorts of great tips and ideas and things to make you smarter and happier about investing in real estate. You can get them at Twitter @Millionacres_CO.