AM I losing Money on This Duplex Or Is It OK?

[Barbara G.]

How are we doing here?

We Bought 2 matching Duplexes in Feb of 2014 and paid  $332,000 (+ closing costs) for both of them.

They needed approx $37,000  ($18,500 each) worth of rehabbing and were occupied with tenants paying $1,000 each.  We raised the rents to $1,100 and one tenant moved and we were vacant for  2 months while we renovated that apartment.   We spent approx $20,000 so far on renovations and estimate we have approx $17,000 more to spend on renovations.

The bottom line is we don't think we will be finished paying and doing renovations until March of 2016 so we have put all our cash flow back into renovating these 2 duplexes.  When we are finished the 2 will have cost us approx $369,000 and we will have gone without any money for over 2 years

We have saved approx $10,000 in taxes (we believe), and paid down our principal on our morgage approx $8,000.  Zillow puts the estimate of the 2 duplexes at $500,000 which if correct is a lot of appreciation?

So how should we consider this purchase?   Is it a success? or a failure? or just OK?  

These 2 were our first real estate purchase so it was our entry into real estate and we are glad about that

[Mike D'Arrigo]

@Barbara G.This looks like a classic case of not defining your objectives before making an investment. Without having a clear financial objective, you can't possibly know if you're successful . It's like driving your car and not knowing where you're going. How do you know if you got there?