Rags to Riches Stories

[Vicki Gleitz]

I love to hear rags to riches [and rags moving up to riches] stories and I would love to hear yours.  YES, YOURS!

[Brian Burke]

I first became interested in real estate when I was in high school and my parent's house fell into foreclosure.  I figured there must be an opportunity somehow to buy real estate at a discount and make a profit.  I didn't have any money so it was more of an idea than a business.

When I was 20 my then-fiancée (and now my wife of 24 years) lived in a small apartment. We were both working in a grocery store part time, I was making about $12/hour and she was making around $8.  We were barely getting by...macaroni and cheese and overdraft protection on our checking account were our two best friends.

Around that time my mother had no place to live and found her way to our couch along with my two much younger sisters.  That just wasn't going to work, so I managed to buy a cheap mobile home with no money down so I could rent it to her and get her out of our apartment.  It might have been a great arrangement if she'd have actually paid rent as agreed, so we went further into the poor house as we borrowed money to pay on that house while barely scraping by on our own expenses.  Eventually I had to get her out and sell at roughly a break-even, but I was now even poorer than when I started.

Next, I bought a fixer by buying subject to the existing financing and using credit cards for the rest...flipped it and made a very (very) small profit, and thus my business was launched.

Bought a couple more fixers by borrowing private money from a hard money broker and using a signature credit line for the rest.  Next, after having experience and a track record, I started raising money from investors and that was a game changer.  This little business that started with money borrowed off of credit cards has now bought over $200 million in real estate.  It hasn't been easy and I wouldn't want to do it all over again, but I wouldn't want to change it now!