First home lived in and sold

[Roanld Pretzeus]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $232,000
Sale price: $284,000

First home i purchased. I miss this one dearly, its a 1457 sqft ranch style home on a .87 acre corner lot with an amazing natural tree fence line in the woods with fiber optic internet.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

I just got back from deployment and wanted to put my money into something not just give it away for rent.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

I found this deal on my own searches, it actually wasnt even on my realtors listings yet, i cant remeber how i tripped across it really but once i found it i was very confident that it was the right home for me. The market in NC at the time was still catching on to it being a sellers market, we got a 3.4% interest rate and house pricing hadnt really started jumping up yet, i offered at ask and offered 1,500 in ernest money.

How did you finance this deal?

VA loan

How did you add value to the deal?

I threw 1,500 in ernest money on the offer

What was the outcome?

The builder only had my offer as i was quick to the scene. So my offer was accepted.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Purchasing: I learned how easy it was to purchase a house when you do your research and have people around you that you can trust. I want to say there was no challenges because how easy the process was for me, i mean it was the first house i made an offer on and everything went so smooth, so i guess the hardest part was waiting for the closing date!

Sale: This was a tough one to digest we wanted to rent it but I was skeptical of not living in the same state as the property, 20/20 hindsight, i wish we kept it to rent. We will most likely never purchase a house again with a sub 4% interest rate also i dont think we will ever purchase a brand new house with that much property for a price as low as this was.

When we went to sell we went under contract multiple times and people kept walking after starting the contract, so as a first time seller it was nerve racking and stressful, we ended up taking an offer that was a couple thousand less then what we wanted to sell for and the market in NC was still showing strong positive growth, if i could talk myself through this sale now i would convince myself to hold on and let the offers keep coming until i was happy with the number, the market is my favor.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Marsha House with Remax helped me with purchase and sale of this house and she was great.