First rental is a lake house

[Dennis O'Loughlin]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $45,000
Cash invested: $45,000
Sale price: $42,500

2 bedroom, 1 bath with over 1100 SqFt. Tons of natural light with the lake visible from the sitting room and only a five minute walk to the water front. Some interior painting, repair, and updating, as well as replacing a few pieces of damaged siding. The house is being shown to a potential Tennant tonight.

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

The house was well maintained and with it's location we knew that it would be easily rentable. Fixing a few things and updating the paint in a few rooms allowed us to start with a higher rent than the previous owner. This one was strictly location location location with a strong offer.

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

We searched the MLS, found a great realtor, did a video tour, sent in our best offer all online.

How did you finance this deal?

Paid cash to free up as much equity and cash flow as possible on our first investment.

How did you add value to the deal?

Knew that by updating some things we would automatically get an increase in value.

What was the outcome?

Even with a lot of offers on this house we wrote our strongest offer and got the house under contract quickly.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

With older single family houses we learned that sellers are wanting to not have to worry about inspections, even if they are just for informational purposes. After losing several other houses, we chose to not ask for an inspection on this one, realizing that some things will need to be repaired/updated etc and hoping the lack of inspection doesn't come back to bite us.

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

Tonya Feller in Decatur is AMAZING! She worked really hard showing us locations, will send us information on any property we want, was honest if she wasn't sure about the answer to a question, and is easy to talk to.