​Starting over in Kansas City

[Lucas Evans]

Hello everyone I would like to give you some background and then give you my plan. I had bought a small house several years back that was in much less than perfect shape. I paid cash for it and moved in and fixed it up with the intent of selling it to get out the equity tax free. I had changed careers from food service management to accounting after getting masters in accounting. Starting out in a new career in an area where there weren’t many jobs in that field resulted in low pay but at least it was experience.

Unfortunately while working on the house I got hurt and had to have surgery and also my wife had some medical issues that resulted in a pile of medical bills that all wanted paid right away. Having all of my money tied up in the equity in the house it was tight. Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was laid off. This caused the medical bills to start coming after me and threatened to destroy my credit. Push went to shove and we had to do the Big B. Bankruptcy ch 7.

We have decided that we never want to be in this situation again and need to move to the Kansas City area because of the better job prospects and real estate opportunities. We have saved up several thousand and still have the equity in the house. We plan on trying to find a low cost rent to own residence that needs work to fix up and live in. (Or if that doesn’t work out get a 6 month lease somewhere maybe?) When the house here sells we plan on buying a foreclosure in need of repair. When we get it ready we will move there and rent out the first property. Since bank financing is out of the picture for a while we are hoping to use the rent and equity to keep buying distressed properties and repeating till we are in a position to finance the properties. At which point we will focus on gaining more buy and holds. So what do you think? Any advice?