Own something
I belong to a generation that will never be able to own a house if my income growth plateaus or interest rates go up. My wife and I are probably going to rent for the rest of our lives. This is the case for millions of millennials and Gen Zs who have no generational wealth and no home ownership.
I recently watched Pavel Durov’s interview and was inspired by his perspective on real estate. Owning a property, he argues, ties him down to a physical location, limiting his freedom. His aim is to completely focus on improving Telegram. It’s a point of view of a billionaire living an ascetic lifestyle, of course.
I’m no Pavel; I have not founded a profitable startup, no inherited wealth, or millions in bank account. What I only have is a lifestyle based on less material ownership, like Pavel. This got me thinking how someone can actually remain free and focused while accumulating wealth through properties? It’s antithetical to want to have less but also to own something.
Enter REIT
In mid-2025, I started investing in the Philippine stock market – arguably an illiquid and lagging market in Southeast Asia, where oligarchs and monopolies reign supreme. Despite this, I wanted to try to bet in my home country and see if profits trickle down.
Since day trading is not ideal, I got interested in REITs, or real estate investment trust as an asset class. It essentially allows you to invest in and indirectly own properties by simply acquiring and holding REIT stocks. By law, REITs are required to pay shareholders at least 90% of their taxable income through quarterly dividends. It’s a good way to literally make money work.
Anyone with healthy personal finances e.g. living below means and avoiding lifestyle inflation, can theoretically accumulate both wealth and freedom at the same time. Imagine acquiring X hundred thousand shares of a stable, strong-asset pipeline REIT and holding them for life. Quite a risky idea, right? But without oversimplifying, the idea is to acquire REITs, collect dividends, reinvest or spend, and enjoy price appreciation over time.
If the goal is to be wealthy, it’s not easy. But wealth itself can be subjective. You can be “wealthy” by owning a simple lifestyle you want or materially owning properties. The common denominator is you have to own something. As a thought experiment, instead of locking yourself into a mortgage, you could acquire >100,000 shares of a REIT lump sum or over time and HODL to accumulate wealth.
Why aim for six digits of shares? It’s simply a numbers game. The power of scale allows you to make a living off dividends and small price fluctuation. Picking the right REIT, however, is difficult because you need to look at the company’s fundamentals (yield, weighted average lease expiry, leverage, etc.) and it’s quite risky. Let's assume the fundamentals are positive. So, a Gen Z, with a long-term focus on gaining wealth, using this model can prove to be viable.
Less stuff, more stocks
If you subscribe to the idea of less material ownership but more equity ownership, you would totally get me. I like to think about a life with less than ≤50 stuff while owning, albeit indirectly, shares in office towers and retail properties without the burden of directly owning or managing them. Instead of buying stuff, why not buy more REIT stocks?
We can borrow Pavel Durov's philosophy: own less, stay focused, don't get tied down. Instead of earning equity through mortgage, we can build wealth - one share at a time. For most people in my generation who might never own a house the traditional way, this could be a viable version of ownership. We don't need to own a property to own a piece of it.