55 Famous Quotes About Investing in Real Estate

The best way to grow professionally is to be in the presence of greatness. Reading about what the greats have to say is second-best, which is why, in this article, we’ll share quotes from investors who’ve been successful in real estate.

The idea is that you may find some of these quotes intriguing enough to want to look into the histories of the people who made them. And by checking these extraordinary people out, to move one step closer to witnessing real estate mastery first hand.

Who knows, one day others may quote your thoughts on real estate because you’ve mastered investment in properties, but until that day comes, let’s see what the best in the business have to say on the subject.

Entrepreneurs Need Motivation

Even if you do just one house flip a year you are an entrepreneur. And entrepreneurs experience a wide range of emotions: when the deal turns out right the whole process is very rewarding, but if things go wrong it can get really tough. And you might need a reminder as to why you got into real estate investing in the first place.

It’s perfectly normal to have these highs and lows. The ambition for achieving financial freedom (and maintaining it) carries so much meaning – people are easily triggered when something stands in their way.

But don’t worry, you are in good hands. The 55 quotes that follow resonate with what real estate investors face on a daily basis.

The Quotes

We have lumped quotes together based on the topic they address. The first group of quotes revolves around the importance of real estate. Then there are a few cautionary tales, followed by quotes on processes used in real estate businesses, and we end the article with motivational and funny quotes. Let’s get into it.

Value of Real Estate

1. “Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate. More money has been made in real estate than in all industrial investments combined. The wise young man or wage earner of today invests his money in real estate.” – Andrew Carnegie

2. “Real estate is the best investment for small savings. More money is made from the rise in real estate values than from all other causes combined.” – William Jennings Bryan

3. “In any market, in any country, there are developers who make money. So I say all of this doom and gloom, but there will always be people who make money, because people always want homes.” – Sarah Beeny

4. “It’s tangible, it’s solid, and it’s beautiful. It’s artistic from my standpoint and I just love real estate.” – Donald Trump

5. “The land is the only thing in the world worth working for, worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.” – Margaret Mitchell

6. “Landlords grow rich in their sleep without working, risking, or economizing.” – John Stuart Mill

7. “No investment on earth is so safe, so sure, so certain to enrich its owners as undeveloped realty. I always advise my friends to place their savings in realty near a growing city. There is no such savings bank anywhere.” – Grover Cleveland

8. “As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.” – Adam Smith

9. “Everyone wants a piece of land. It’s the only sure investment. It can never depreciate like a car or washing machine. Land will only double its value in ten years.” – Sam Shepard

10. “Real Estate investing, even on a very small scale, remains a tried and true means of building an individual’s cash flow and wealth.” – Robert Kiyosaki

11. “Private property was the original source of freedom. It is still its main bulwark.” – Walter Lippmann

12. “Debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice.” – Dave Ramsey

13. “Real estate is the purest form of entrepreneurship.” – Brian Buffini

14. “I openly detest Wall Street, stocks, 401k’s and bond investing. I despise the banks, who pay almost nothing to hold my cash, and then lend it out at 9X. I only invest in cash flow producing real estate.” – Grant Cardone

Cautionary Tales

15. “As a young twenty-something go-getter, I grew my real estate investment business quickly. I started from nothing, and by the time I was twenty-six I had over four million dollars in real estate with over one million dollars’ net worth… However, I had built the business with too much debt… I spent the next two and a half years losing everything I owned.” – Dave Ramsey

16. “Experience taught me a few things. One is to listen to your gut no matter how good something sounds on paper. The second is that you are generally better off sticking with what you know and the third is that sometimes, your best investments are the ones you don’t make.” – Donald Trump

Real Estate Processes

17. “Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” – Tony Robbins

18. “Take everything you can. Take every single listing, every single buyer. [They’re] gold in the beginning [of your real estate career] because you want as many deals as you can possibly have [at the start].” – Jade Mills

19. “Buyers decide in the first eight seconds of seeing a home if they’re interested in buying it. Get out of your car, walk in their shoes and see what they see within the first eight seconds.” – Barbara Corcoran

20. “The best kind of real estate investment is the one that pays for itself and then some with cash flow. Anything that eats more cash than brought in is a bad deal.” – Paul Sian

21. “Not following up with your prospects is the same as filling up your bathtub without first putting the stopper in the drain.” – Michelle Moore

22. “The only thing you are guaranteed in new construction is that it is going to take longer than they told you.” – Egypt Sherrod

23. “Smart real estates investors don’t like to waste money. But they don’t cut corners that will cost them later.” – Don R. Campbell

24. “The authenticity in your story, the authority in your delivery and the personalization of your presentation will make you that much more real and able to reach that many more people in your real estate business.” – Loren Weisman

25. “Never forget the power of silence, that massively disconcerting pause which goes on and on and may last induce an opponent to babble and backtrack nervously.” – Lance Morrow

26. “He who has learned to disagree without being disagreeable has discovered the most valuable secret of negotiation.” – Chris Voss

27. “Don’t beat yourself up. Some transactions will naturally go smoothly, and others are a month of challenges. Learn what you can from each transaction, move on, and start the next one.” – Kurt Uhlir

28. “Never depend on a single income, make an investment to create a second source.” – Warren Buffett

29. “There’s always opportunity in real estate. It’s just a matter of finding that opportunity in the current market.” –Samantha DeBianchi

Motivational Quotes

30. “People are settling for their reality rather than working to their full potential.” – Grant Cardone

31. “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie

32. “The power of positive thinking is the ability to generate a feeling of certainty in yourself when nothing in the environment supports you.” – Tony Robbins

33. “If you’re committed to it, you’ll find a way. If not, you’ll find an excuse.” – Adam Contos

34. “People who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those who are doing it.” – John Bernard Shaw

35. “Never let people who chose the path of least resistance steer you away from your chosen path of most resistance.” – David Goggins

36. “Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.” – Anonymous

37. “At least eighty percent of millionaires are self-made. That is, they started with nothing but ambition and energy, the same way most of us start.” – Brian Tracy

38. “Knowledge is power and instills confidence. On average, I spend three to four hours every day reading and listening to books, podcasts and news. I not only focus on real estate but also entrepreneurship, history, and other finance, tech, and business sectors.” – Laura Brady

39. “Most homes valued at over $250,000 have a library. That should tell you something.” – Jim Rohn

40. “You are where you are right now financially as a sum total of the decisions you’ve make to this point.” – Dave Ramsey

41. “The investor’s chief problem and even his worst enemy is likely to be himself.” – Benjamin Graham

42. “Investing is not nearly as difficult as it looks. Successful investing involves doing a few things right and avoiding serious mistakes.” – John Bogle

43. “Identify your problems, but give your power and energy to solutions.” – Tony Robbins

44. “People underestimate me, and that’s fine. I prefer to go into negotiations being underestimated.” – Ivanka Trump

45. “I think one of the major results of the psychology of decision making is that people’s attitudes and feelings about losses and gains are really not symmetric. So we really feel more pain when we lose $10,000 than we feel pleasure when we get $10,000.” – Daniel Kahneman

46. “I believe in total immersion, if you want to be rich, you have to program your mind to be rich. You have to unlearn all the thoughts that were making you poor and replace them with new thoughts – rich thoughts.” – Jordan Belfort

47. “A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.” – Bob Proctor

48. “Real wealth is not about money. Real wealth is: not having to go to meetings, not having to spend time with jerks, not being locked into status games, not feeling like you have to say ‘yes,’ not worrying about others claiming your time and energy. Real wealth is about freedom.” – James Clear

49. “You fail your way to success. What we fail to understand is that everybody fails. Everybody fails. In fact, highly successful people usually have more failure than people who aren’t as successful.” – Gary Keller

Funny Quotes

50. “I am basically a full-time psychologist who shows houses every now and then.” – Dori Warner

51. “Why, yes … that’d be fantastic if your parents, grandmother, and second cousin came along while I showed you houses today.” – Amy Chrisman-Williams

52. “Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.” – Mark Twain

53. WTo my real estate agent, Chernobyl is a fixer-upper.” – Yakov Smirnoff

54. “A realtor’s brain is a miracle of nature. It starts working the day they’re born and stops working as soon as they need to pitch a homeowner.” – Unknown

55. “A man complained that on his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbors. I advised him to buy it and it would never seem long again.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson