New in Upper Bucks, PA and taking on our first nasty house

[Julie Miller]

Hello From Upper Bucks, PA! 

My husband and I are both corporate engineers looking to retire from our current positions and move onto new challenges away from the current grind.  With the courage and knowledge of the podcasts that we enjoy during our long daily commutes we purchased our first door.  It is a single family home that I lovingly refer to as "The Cat Pee House" - as it turns out the cat pee was just the beginning of what was causing apotpourri of foul smells.  We purchased this gem from a wholesaler and are rounding third base in the renovations.  It has been a total gut job and we have done most of the work ourselves as most contractors turned green and ran on us.   All in, we project to be at a total of $140k and according to Rentometer we think we can rent it out for north of $1800/month.  So I am thrilled and can't wait to finish this one and move onto the next phase of being a landlord!  I also can't wait to purchase another nasty home in the area.  It has been very gratifying to take something that was an eye sore and turn it into a beautiful home for someone.  Our neighboring landlords were so grateful for us cleaning up the place that one of them surprised us with a new roof for the overhang on the front porch while he was having his roof redone!! 

We are using this experience to teach our 2 sons (age 13 and 10) about financial management and help give them some real world experiences.  They have loved the demo work and have been amazed themselves at the transformation and what they can accomplish in an afternoon. 

Thank you to the BP world for having such great podcasts and helping us to make some large changes in our lives!  I look forward to meeting new people and helping others become successful as well.