Do not buy rental property; just more and more expensive principal residences.

On Friday's, the WSJ has a "Mansion" section. It is what it sounds like—expensive houses.

.

My most recent book advocated doing all your real estate investing via your principal residences and moving up to a more expensive one whenever you can do so safely.

.

.

Generally, that would have you end up with a $5 to $10 million dollar house. But I also said NOT to buy more than one acre of lot nor more than about 3,500 square feet of interior home.

.

The Mansion section has some houses that comply with those two rules, but most in there do not.

.

Basically, larger properties are not homes. They are showing off and jobs. Bigger properties require staff and/or heavy use of outside contractors. That, in turn, puts you into the recruiting, training, evaluating, counseling, and firing of domestic help business.

.

Your home should be a source of comfort and security, not a considerable list of new chores. I love Marshall McLuhan’s comment on such rich people. “To the spoils belongs the victor.”

.

Over my adult life, I have often read of nouveau riche stars buying some enormous estate of a deceased star of yesteryear. Then, later, I read that they sold the big ostentatious spread for, essentially what I recommend.

.

To put it another way, I want you to end up in a multi-million dollar home where almost all the extraordinary value stems from its LOCATION and none from extraordinary acreage or square footage or extravagant finish like gold faucets.

.

Around here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I would probably have to own a normal-size home in Palo Alto or adjacent towns like Woodside. There your neighbors would be people like Steve Jobs' widow or Mark Zuckerberg.

.

Is there any benefit is living near those people? Not that I know of. They may be a bit if a pain if they need security that interferes with your movements. My point is that the neighborhoods to which I am sending you are where the world's biggest experts on being wealthy live. People who may have tried the 20-acre estate and learned the it's-a-job lesson.