My first 5 properties

[Ted Fossett]

I was a poor carpenter in 1989, renting an apartment in Redwood City CA, when I received a mailer inviting me to a Robert Allen seminar. It was going to take a beautiful saturday away from me, but that saturday morning my girlfriend and I said, "What the heck, we can leave early." The seminar was great, and we signed up for a $5k course.

 I was from CO and knew that I would move back to CO within a few years. I also knew that the real estate situation there had bottomed out, and that it would rebound in a few years. Buying "Nothing Down" and having a financial future beyond my paycheck excited me.

After the excitement of the seminar wore off, we decided that maxing out our one credit card was too scary, so we backed out of the $5k course.

But a fire was lit. So I bought the late night Carleton Sheets course and I dove into the material.

Over the next 3 years we made 1 weekend trips per year back to visit family in CO, and bought five 3bdrm/2bath homes using a HUD loan on a foreclosure, and assuming 4 mortgages, with each deal only requiring about $1,500 down.

After renting them for about 10 years, we decioded to go our seperate ways, the divorce required us to sell them, but they netted us $260,000 in profit.

The most exciting thing for me was feeling like my retirement was set after the 5th deal closed (I was only 28 and owned 5 houses!), and later knowing that even though I was barely making ends meet with a wife and two kids at home, that I was "banking" $30-40K per year in equity increases.

My friends and family thought that I was "The Golden Boy."

Heady times. :)