Being in real estate, it’s probable that Portland investment property popups hit our screens more often than yours. Nonetheless, I bet that every Portland web user knows the phenomenon: you’re trying to accomplish something on the internet, and these ads keep bouncing up, doing their best to distract you. It seems to take more time to continually patrol your browser settings than to just X the pop-ups.

In any case, the other day while stuck waiting for something to process, I noticed the headline on one of those ads (they seem to be news items or features, but they all turn out to be ads). It showed a pretty model looking into the snout of a piggy bank under the headline, “How to Use Real Estate Investments to Cover Student Loan Debt, Car Payments & More.”

It occurred to me that this wouldn’t even make the first draft of any decent Investment Property for Dummies book (there seem to be several). I didn’t click on the ad, but I bet it would point out that a good Portland-metro area investment property produces cash…and then you could take the cash, and use it to cover student loans…etc. This seemed to be beyond a no-brainer. But it was intriguing that the sponsors seriously expected that people would click on it to find out how to use real estate investments, etc. It set me to actually looking at more of the pop-ups.

Over on the right of the monitor was a great big threatening one. The model was holding a hand to her forehead as if it ached terribly under “How a Lack of Confidence in My Real Estate Calculations Just Cost Me $25K.” This one was more tempting, but still resistible. There was a good chance that the article was actually an ad for a mortgage offer that, had she only trusted it by believing in their calculator, would have led to lower payments. We never click on the calculators that ask if you live in Portland, because they make you jump through hoops, and only at the very end tell you they’ll send you the answer (soooo, what’s your name and email address, chump?)…

There was 7 ABSOLUTE MUST-READ REAL ESTATE BOOKS FOR BEGINNING INVESTORS, which didn’t even have a picture of a model trying to look intelligent (it showed the back of a book being read by the model). When the title is in all caps, it’s like the ad is shouting…best to skip those.

There was a much more intriguing 6 Superstitions That May Affect Your Real Estate Investing—but the picture only had what looked like a motel room key with a key-tag that had a big number ‘13’ on it. Clicking on something like that is usually bad luck (maybe that was one of the superstitions). Next to it was the seemingly not-directly-relevant EARN YOUR MBA THE SMARTER WAY, which sounded like a good idea, but a resistible one, since I only had a minute or two before the computer finished processing.  

One last temptation was You Can’t Succeed Without Discipline, Right? WRONG. Here’s Why, which showed a ditzy blond with big glasses and a sun dress holding her forehead with both hands! But then my project finished processing before I could find out why you don’t need discipline to make the most of your investment property.

You have to suspect that discipline couldn’t hurt, even for the ditzy model. If you agree, have at least a bit of discipline, and would like to have a look as some promising Portland investment property opportunities, I hope you’ll give us a call!  

Craig Reger Group

We sell more because we do more.

(503)-893-2022