Semi Newbie in DFW

[Brian Oney]

Today I finally upgraded from a Free member to Plus member. So why am I introducing myself? Because I never took the time to do it when I originally joined (insert shameful look here). So this is my mea culpa.

REI Background/Experience

When I was growing up my parents actually owned a SFH property in our small town in Kansas - it was one of their previous owner-occupied houses, before remodeling the house we lived in. So I watched for several years, how the less sophisticated side of property management works - no real thought about profitability, making the house nicer than it needs to be, but I did learn about getting the right tenant.

Flash forward to the first house that my wife and I bought, roughly August 2007, in Newton, KS - a beautiful, wood sided Victorian house built in 1910. 18 months later, my wife and I were laid off on the same day from the same company, with our 6 month old daughter in tow. So we shortly became accidental landlords as we moved out of state for my job opportunity. Due to the economy, we just wanted to get the mortgage paid (even though we probably should have just walked away), so we rented it for the next 4 years at $10/month above our payment, taxes and insurance. The tenants left the place in relatively good shape and we re-rented to a short-term professional on a 6-month lease - increasing the rent by $150/month.

REI Aspirations

We are hoping to sell the SFH in Kansas once the lease is up and we make some last needed repairs (exterior paint and other cosmetics). That way we can get it off our books to focus on something much closer to the DFW area, where we currently live and plan to live.

Ideally we would find a small multiplex that we could owner-occupy in DFW (namely northern Dallas area), but as mentioned in other posts, those seem overpriced at this point. I just like the idea of living in a decent duplex, renting out the other side and then rolling over that success into more small multis.

We are looking to move this summer closer to both of our jobs and preferably we could get an investment property to move into. However, at this point that seems like a long shot as our main focus remains on selling our existing SFH, then focusing on a place to live closer to work and finally hoping that place to live is an investment property.

I did attend the DFW Biggerpockets January meeting, which included an excellent discussion by @Grant Kemp . I look forward to attending more meetings and continuing to learn.

The Short Story aka Summary

I've seen the mistakes my parents made in their small town rental and I have experienced first-hand the difficulties of an old SFH managed from out-of-state. Once we sell our original primary residence, we will be looking to re-deploy our capital into a small multi (or settle for a SFH) in the DFW area.

I do want to thank the community as a whole for being so helpful during my time as a free member, when I would ask several questions and often spend hours reading forum posts to learn more about a new topic.