Category 3
Real estate income
Someone pays you for the use of property you own — directly, or through a fund.
Everything in this category is paid the same way, so what separates one page from the next is the wrapper rather than where the money comes from: how much it takes to start, how quickly you could turn it back into cash, who does the work, how it is taxed, and how it fails. The line on each card says whether the income keeps arriving once it is set up or whether somebody has to keep working for it. If the mechanism itself is new to you, the course spends a whole lesson on it and is a shorter way in than any single page here.
Single-Family Rentals
You own a house and a tenant pays you rent each month; what survives the mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs and empty months is your income.
Read →Multifamily Apartments
One building, many leases: an apartment property spreads rent across dozens of tenants so a single move-out dents income instead of stopping it.
Read →Commercial Real Estate
Property leased to businesses rather than households, where the income is contractual rent under a multi-year lease and the value is that income capitalized.
Read →Retail Properties
Shops, strip centers and malls where tenants pay base rent plus a share of common-area costs, and sometimes a slice of their sales.
Read →Office Buildings
Space leased to employers under multi-year contracts, where the rent is stable until the lease ends and then everything depends on whether the tenant still needs the desks.
Read →Industrial and Warehouse Property
Boxes for goods — distribution centers, warehouses and light manufacturing — leased on long net terms where the tenant handles most of the building's running costs.
Read →Medical Office Buildings
Clinical space leased to physician groups and health systems, where expensive fit-outs and patient habit make tenants unusually reluctant to move.
Read →Self-Storage
Hundreds of small month-to-month rentals in one fenced facility, where rent can be raised often and the tenant's stuff is the reason they rarely leave.
Read →Mobile-Home Parks
You own the land, the roads and the utility connections; residents own their homes and pay you monthly lot rent for the pad they sit on.
Read →Senior Housing
Housing plus services for older adults, where the resident pays a monthly fee covering rent, meals and care — so the income depends on running the operation, not just the building.
Read →Student Housing
Purpose-built apartments near a campus, leased by the bed for the academic year, usually with a parent on the guarantee.
Read →Hotels
The shortest lease in real estate — one night — which means the income reprices daily and disappears just as fast when travel stops.
Read →Vacation Rentals
A furnished home rented by the night or week through booking platforms, earning more than a long-term lease and demanding far more work to do it.
Read →Ground Leases
You own the dirt and lease it to whoever owns the building on it, collecting rent for decades while the tenant carries every cost of the improvements.
Read →Triple-Net Lease Properties
A single tenant on a long lease pays the rent and also the taxes, insurance and maintenance — leaving the landlord with something close to a coupon.
Read →Farmland
Own the acres and a farmer pays you to work them — fixed cash rent, or a share of the crop that rises and falls with the harvest.
Read →Timberland
Forest land where the trees keep growing whether you sell or not — income comes from harvests you can defer, plus hunting leases and land sales.
Read →Parking Lots
Pavement that earns — hourly and monthly parking revenue on land whose real value is often what could be built there instead.
Read →Billboards
A structure on someone's land rents advertising space by the month — income from attention, secured by permits that are almost impossible to replace.
Read →Cell-Tower Leases
A carrier or tower company rents a patch of your roof or land for antennas, and pays every month for as long as the site stays in the network.
Read →Real Estate Syndications
A sponsor buys a property with money pooled from passive investors; you own a limited-partner slice and receive distributions without touching the building.
Read →Private Real Estate Funds
A pooled vehicle that buys many properties on your behalf and distributes the rent, with a manager, a fee schedule and a lock-up between you and the buildings.
Read →Real Estate Crowdfunding
Online platforms slice property deals into small pieces, so a few hundred or a few thousand dollars buys a share of the rent or the loan.
Read →Mortgage REITs
A REIT that owns mortgages instead of buildings — the income is interest on loans and mortgage bonds, earned on a spread over borrowed money.
Read →Tax-Lien and Tax-Deed Investing
Counties auction the unpaid property tax bill; a lien buyer collects statutory interest when the owner redeems, and a deed buyer gets the property itself.
Read →