First Success

[Carrie Hallensleben]

Hello, 

My husband and I are new to the world of real estate although he has been involved in renovation projects for over ten years more as a hobby and as side jobs. We both are teachers in the Kansas City Area and my husband, Thomas, with a MA rather than a PhD has found it VERY difficult to secure a stable position in academia. He is an adjunct professor with no benefits or retirement. Sooo... we finally decided to take our future into our own hands and take advantage of his love for building and remodeling. 

We were able to use equity in our own home and buy a bank owned townhouse last April. We got it for a good price and Thomas tore everything out from the pink & blue carpet, blue laminate counter tops, lavender wallpaper and 1980's appliances to be replaced with stainless steel, granite countertops throughout, new flooring etc. It was a LOOONG process and a great learning experience for us. I'll attach a link to my youtube marketing video. We were able to rent it for $1250 and had several interested parties. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-ecI3yIMiE 

So now...we want to turn this exciting prospect into more of a career. We are both extremely grateful for Bigger Pockets which I came across while in the mist of renovations. The podcasts are so interesting. We would love some advice for the future. We are lining up funds to buy another property. We want to start an LLC and have contacted a lawyer friend to help us with that. We are thinking buying and flipping the next one would be smarter so that we have more money to move forward on this path.

I'm wondering if getting into property management might be worthwhile for Thomas. He's also thinking of cutting back on teaching as much and getting his general contractor license or a real estate license. We heard a great podcast just last week by an investor in our area and hope to make contact with him or someone else to help influence our learning curve. We'd just love to hear more about what you might think would be the next smart steps for us.

I know this was a long one. Thanks for reading and responding,

Carrie