"Safe as houses" is a popular slang in real estate that basically means real estate investments are perfectly safe because of the paying character of house property as an investment. Property value tends to increase without the volatility of the share market which makes it an all-round safer investment. When you factor in the return and risk associated with buying property and shares, property is considered a far safer investment.

You don't need specialist knowledge to start investing in real estate. It is easier to research than stock and shares. Understanding the stock market requires a lot of education as well as research brokers and fund managers to help. Investing in property is however a lot simpler: it's as simple as jumping online to start looking for properties from legitimate and registered realtors, real estate firms or property and real estate listing websites. A significant amount of research can be done online, by visiting open houses and auctions or contacting realtors and real estate firms - without needing to have vast specialist knowledge beforehand.

Today, technology has made real estate investments a lot easier. For example, advertising your property is as simple as tweeting about it, sharing a post about it on Facebook or posting an ad on a property and real estate listing website like Jumia House, Nigeria Property Center etc. There's so much technology readily available to real estate investors, that you can easily manage a portfolio of properties without really needing to leave your home all the time.

With property, regardless of your financial aims you are mostly able to find an investment strategy that works for you. There's the long-term capital growth strategy where in the long-term the property purchased delivers capital gain (provided the right area with correct supply/demand ratio and demographics is selected). Then, there's the positive cash flow strategy where you can rent out the property for cash flow. There's also the adding value strategy where you can renovate, subdivide or even alter the use of an existing property to develop, create or increase the value of the property.

For property investments, once you're done paying for the property and settling legal requirements, you directly own the asset and have virtually complete control over it. You can directly influence the asset worth (by adding value to it) and cash flow (e.g. by raising rent).

If you do some research you'll see various offers from realtors and real estate firms offering affordable entry points for real estate investment. The only thing required is for your income flow to be stable enough to support payments in installments till you fully own the property. If you buy smartly, you can even expect equivalent or better growth on these affordable assets than more expensive assets.

Investments typically take time before they yield large returns. This is why if you start today and invest smartly, you'll be patting yourself on the back a couple of years from now for a job well done. To be honest, we are at a point where real estate investments just make sense. But, like any other investment, please be sure to understand what you are doing and be diligent enough to do your work and research to find the 1-in-100 deals that make sense. Some suggestions on real estate companies to consider for this research are Elegant Court, WhiteBricks, Propertylink Real Estate Investment Limited, Cappa and D'Alberto PLC etc.