New Member from Logan UT, Ready to Learn!

[Wayne Crabtree]

Greetings! My wife (Bobbi) and I (Wayne) decided 3 years ago to sell our house in Smithfield UT and start finding ways to prepare for retirement. After months of labor and frustrations, we sold the house for more than we expected and were ready for the next step with 40k in the bank. About this time, my dad decided to sell an old house (1907) on 1 1/3 acres in So. Utah. Though pretty run-down, we bought it from my dad for 9k more than appraisal (my dad is not one to give ANYONE a deal!) and he carried the loan. We took 1 1/2 yrs of weekends and using all our vacation time and hiring a local handyman as well as a few contractors and were able to turn it into a really nice place for us to retire in 5-10 years. And because we can't support 2 houses, we hired a management company called Kabino and are now renting as a vacation home. Just started last Sept. and it has almost paid for itself on a monthly basis and spring is looking really good for reservations. It is a 3 bdm 2 ba but we can only rent the bottom floor for nightly rentals due to narrowness of the stairway (fire code) so we've been debating renting the whole house on a monthly basis instead. Giving it a year to see...

As the farmhouse project was winding down, we found a triplex here in Logan that needed fixing up where one of the units was a converted garage. We live in that unit and rent the other 2. All 1 bd units, our mortgage is 1700 and we get 1350 in rent. We have made some major improvements to the unit we live in and plan to move out in a year or 2 and BRRRR it. When we move out, we will be able to get 800/mo for this unit and plan to do some light renovation to the cheaper of the units to raise its rent potential as well.

We are currently looking at subdividing our So. Utah property into 3 building lots but are finding it to be more expensive than we expected so doing lots of research now. Bottom line is that we don't have a problem with taking action - we just need to learn more so we know better what we are doing. Several friends recommended BiggerPockets and I have been receiving emails for several months and so here we are! Sorry if my intro was long... I have rarely been accused of being short-winded. :)

Wayne