Profile of the typical Real Estate Investor’s Monthly subscriber

Who reads it

Real Estate Investor's Monthly is aimed at individual real estate investors who acquire, own, and manage or flip (resell quickly) their properties themselves. Readers buy all kinds of property including rental houses, apartment buildings, shopping centers, mobilehome parks, industrial buildings, and raw land. Here's the breakdown:

60.00% rental houses
53.68% apartment buildings
29.47% raw land
27.37% duplexes
13.68% offices
10.53% retail
8.42% industrial

This adds up to more than 100% because many investors own more than one type of property. Some subscribers also own other types of properties which were not listed in the poll questionnaire, like miniwarehouses, mobilehomes, and rooming houses.

Active, not passive, investors

Real Estate Investor's Monthly is not for passive investors who buy shares in real estate investment trusts or limited partnerships. And it is not for corporate or institutional investors who are involved in multimillion-dollar buildings with equity owned by large groups of shareholders or partners.

The newsletter for successful investors

Most real-estate-investment information is aimed at beginners. That's because beginners are the biggest group. They are also the dumbest. They can't tell when the guru writing what they purchase knows what he's talking about. Real Estate Investor's Monthly is not aimed at beginners, although they would benefit from reading it.

According to polls, Real Estate Investor's Monthly subscribers:

average 47.5 years old
average 12.85 years of real estate investment experience
average 16.92 years of formal education (that is, they attended one year of graduate school on average)
average net worth of $1,000,000
94.21% are male
44.12% have at least 1 employee
17.09% are full-time investors
10.26% are engineers
8.55% are real estate agents
6.84% are retired
5.98% are accountants
4.27% are small business owners

I have a fairly difficult task. I have to tell experienced, successful investors information which is useful to them, but which they do not already know. Since they already know a great deal, it's tough. I have been doing that in Real Estate Investor's Monthly since 1986. For the ten years before that, I was the main writer for another, similar real-estate-investment newsletter.