Equity has long been the golden egg of the property investing world. Build up enough equity in your property portfolio and you will never need to work again. Countless celebrity investors and seminar givers have championed the call for us all to buy property and build up equity so we can live the dream of telling our boss where to go and quitting our jobs once and for all.

So how does it work? How does equity help us to achieve our dreams and regain our freedom? After all, equity is not cash and we pay for things with cash. Equity is a paper profit or wealth that exists only on paper. In order to cash in our paper wealth do we not need to sell our buy-to-let properties? This is the question amateur investors and complete novices are most likely to ask.

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