Newbie JA Sweeten from Austin TX

[Julie Ann Sweeten]

Hello BP community! My name is Julie Ann, and I live in Austin, TX. I've been lurking a bit for a while and decided it is time to introduce myself. My spouse and I fell into real estate semi-accidentally: three years ago, we decided to lease our first home here in Austin after purchasing a second home, and then a few months later, we inherited a property in a small town on the Oregon coast. Last month, we successfully sold the local property, and we currently rent the Oregon property as a short-term rental. This has been a huge learning experience for me so far, but I'm enjoying the challenge and am eager to learn more. At this point, my goals include managing the Oregon property more profitably, rehabbing our current home and selling within 5-7 years, and expanding our portfolio. I'm trying to determine the best way to allocate our resources to obtain good outcomes for each of my goals. My eyes are crossed from looking at spreadsheets this week. xD Thanks for having me, and I look forward to learning from y'all! 

[Julie Ann Sweeten]

I'd love to purchase a duplex for our next investment, ideally here in the Austin area, and continue expanding our portfolio with long term rentals. Rehabbing and selling our last property after dealing with a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad tenant (I learned so much!) felt like a flip, and was actually pretty fun and exciting, so I'm possibly interested in that, too. As for the Oregon coast property, I've learned the short term rental model is not profitable for us, and the only reason we've gone that route this far is because of sentimentality (the home belonged to my spouse's parents, and he liked the idea of being able to use the home ourselves when we travel to Oregon, which is about 1xyear). So I'm looking at two other possible options right now for that property - long term rental, or vacation rental. There is high demand for long term rentals in the area, and my numbers support a decent-enough cash flow there, but it would require my family to give up the idea of using it ourselves as a vacay base. Turning it into a vacation rental would require a bit more cash upfront to make ready, but initial numbers (based on average booking rates for Ore coast) still support at least a small cash flow, and we would still have access to the house ourselves. I'm still working through my due diligence process, though, to make sure I have good and reasonable numbers. For instance, I'll be in Oregon next month and plan to meet with our property manager to discuss both of these options in more detail.