Jason From Minnesota

[Jason M.]

Hello everyone!

My name is Jason and I live in Woodbury MN a suburb of the Twin Cities. I've been lurking on bigger pockets for awhile now and finally decided to come out of the shadows.

I have been investing in real estate since 2003. I got caught up in the low money/no money down, ARMS, 80/20, interest only loan craze from 2003-2006 and acquired 13 single family homes in and around the Twin Cities suburbs. My rational was to buy anything that looked decent even if there was little cash-flow as long term appreciation would save me!!! I was able the cash flow most of these homes up until the market started to turn in 2006-2007. At that point I stopped buying homes and went into a kind of hibernation mode as the property values tanked and desperately just trying to keep everything afloat.

Fast forward to today. The past 7 years has been a wild ride but I was able to work my through some difficult years. I still own 9 rental homes all that cash-flow around 400/mo. I have been updating many of the homes as I turn tenants and that keeps the rents and tenant quality high. Now that the market has turned up a bit I find myself with a decent amount of equity (Been paying off those first few houses for 10+ years now) and some cash in the bank.

All that being said I am re-energized to get back into real estate investing. I am a licensed Realtor and looking to start flipping a few homes a year and slowly add to my rental portfolio. I'm all about cash-flow these days. I am excited about Bigger Pockets and the wealth of information here. I have listened to about 30 podcasts and loving it! Thanks for letting me share and I look forward to meeting many of you.

[Bill Wallace]

Hi Jason - welcome.

I'm also a Realtor/investor in the west metro.

One piece of advice that's worked well for me. Always offer a deal to your tenants that allows them to cancel their 12 month lease at any time if they use you to buy a house. At the end of 12 months don't allow them to go month to month - make them do a new 12 month lease. I've had 4 tenant transactions adding almost $20k to my real estate income. I advertise this in all my open units and have had people specifically select my properties knowing they could cancel and not have to worry about when they were going to close on a house.

Maybe works well for me as most of my properties are good starter townhouses for young couples so may depend on your rental stock.