If you buy a fully leased commercial property at a fair market price, you are going to have to wait for inflation to increase the value of your rentals and thus the capital value. Alternatively, if you buy a property that has some vacant space, with some rents that are below market, rooftops that are underutilized, storage space that is not leased, and a host of other features that you can do something with, then you can exchange your ideas, thoughts, energy, and enthusiasm for huge chunks of capital value very quickly. In other words, you are an extremely important factor in the real estate you acquire.

Another way of expressing this is to say that when I buy a property, it is a different property from when you buy it. Physically it is the exact same property, but since the ideas that I bring to the table are likely to be different from the ideas that you bring to the table, the property itself ends up being different.

Whether you like it or not, you end up being part of the equation. That is why the more ideas you have in your head, the more value you add. That is how I came up with another signature statement:

The most valuable piece of real estate is the six inches, give or take an inch or two, between your right ear and your left ear. What you create in that space determines your ultimate wealth and happiness.