#25 was purchased today

[George P.]

this one actually came a few weeks ago. it's an interesting story.

i was on vacation with my son in florida while my wife stayed back during the xmas holiday to rent out 3 houses. we had just fired our agent who we used to just list and show the houses on the MLS.

anyway, while i was in florida i saw a 2k sq ft house in livonia that had an in-ground pool. the house showed super rough and the pics were terrible. it was listed for 189.9k

i texted my wife and said "go and buy this house". she called the agent and he said "been on the market for 3 weeks, no calls. has 5 bedrooms".

we had been looking for a long time for a larger home for us and she jumped at the chance to see it. it ACTUALLY Has 6 bedrooms, not 5. the listing was wrong.

i offered 100k, no inspections. they came back at 132. we settled on 122k, pulled a loan so that we could preserve the rest of the cash for the future purchases. closed 4 weeks later (mid february)

ARV on this house is close to 230k.

I knew i could not start working on this house until about June. i also knew that it would take about 30-40k to fix it how i want it fixed for us to move in there, so that meant we could move there in august.

2 weeks ago we went out to dinner and while driving i had an epiphany. i told my wife, "we will rent this house AS IS, no updates besides filling in the pool for $1,300. rent it for 1 yr, while the MLS dries up". this house updated could rent for $1,800-$2,100 per month.

she texted immediately tenants in #4 and offered to them to move in this large house since they need the extra room. they signed a 2 yr lease last week and they are ECSTATIC.

I will rent #4 and increase the rent from $1,100 to $1,300 since they have been there for 4 yrs.

the tenants already resurfaced the floors at #25, will put pergo in the living room and change carpet upstairs. 

here's the pool - all 41k gallons of it. 2" pump is about to pump it out.

here it is uncovered, pumping away.

here is my concrete guy who is filling this pit as i type.

the moral of the story.... just have multiple options. and be patient. is it nice to have a huge house so that you can spend 10s of thousands to fill it up with furniture? sure. can we live in a 1k sq. ft house for another 2 yrs while we add to our rental portfolio instead? sure.

[George P.]

and update on this story that happen about 10 months ago...

so, the tenants moved in, paying $1300 per month. they re-sanded the floors, painted....pool is gone.

i am doing a refinancing on the loan (to get a lower APR), so i needed an appraisal.

the appraisal today came at $210k.

so, i got 90k in equity without doing anything to the house. that makes me pretty happy.