The 2 Year Road to Redemption

[Emmett McNulty]

After looking back on the past couple of years and reading similar stories, I wanted to share some of my story.

In mid-2014 I was turning 30, had recently changed positions and was beginning to realize that my financial future was limited by my employment. I was spending 10-14 hours per day working and seemed to only accumulate more debt. This led me to start taking the limited funds we had to start pursuing various business opportunities. These businesses provided educational return, they got me reading books, but ultimately I failed in terms of finding personal and financial reward through them.

Approximately 6 months after my realization, my wife and I were sitting in bed and I was reading the book “Rich Dad Poor Dad”.I remember distinctly, putting the book down and asking my wife “how would you feel about us selling our house and buying 2?”.To my surprise she said “That sounds fine”.

That next morning I called a realtor, listed our house and started looking for properties in Denver, Colorado.Our current residence sold very quickly, and we moved into a single bedroom apartment in an “OK” part of town. A funny story about that.Our son was 1 at the time and I couldn’t muster up the money from our house sale to purchase 2 properties. So, we moved into the 1 bedroom apartment and our sons crib was put in the closet! Believe me when I tell you that, Ill never live that one down!

After approximately 8 months with both of us working full time and with the funds from our house, we had enough saved up to finally close on 2 properties in downtown Denver (we actually built these on foreclosed land, probably more suitable for another post). Meaning our son lived in a closet for the better part of a year!

We had our second home rented out before the closing.

At this point and after reading numerous books on real estate, I realized that although we had reached our goal of owning a rental, our finances were completely vertical and I need to spread out to increase cash flow and reduce the impact of a vacant property.

In January 2016, I started data basing different markets across the USA. Plugging numbers form local property managers into maps and spreadsheets, analyzing home costs vs. rental income vs. population growth and a few other factors. This lead me to look at a handful of cities, in which I started calling RE agents in and booking flights to see houses.

After visiting several towns, I put two houses under contract tin Columbia, Missouri (February 2016). Keep in mind, I just tapped out our finances on the two houses in Denver.That said, I knew my numbers and thought that these were good cashflow properties. The challenge was simple, I just needed to figure out how to pay for them.

Although I can’t explain it, after reading a book called “think and grow rich”, I applied these principals and well, I started finding money.

At the same time, I met a future partner, other local resources and decided to really start pressing for more deals.

Over the next several months, I went on what my wife describes as an all-out war path. Working 18-20 hours per day, putting out direct mail (biweekly), calling anyone who would talk to me and scraping the market for any leads to be had while building relationships with local resources and lenders. Our portfolio grew from 2 to 12.

At this point, I started to see the light (for me) and decided to sell our properties in Denver. With these sold, we were able to exchange some funds, grow the portfolio and stabilize the existing portfolio into a nice loan with a local bank.

This brings us to September 2016. As it stands, we have collected a portfolio of 16 properties that cashlfow well and have the ability to expand further.

Over the next month, we are expecting a second child, I will be leaving my job and moving to our place of investment to expand our efforts. In other words I am leaving the work force and going at this full time.

Please keep in mind that this is an abbreviated story and in no way could ever represent the amount of adversity that I experienced through this process or the effort that was required.

Looking back, I am amazed with power of real estate and have found a true passion, like nothing I ever experienced in my job and I wish anyone on a similar trajectory to push as hard as you can.

[Michael Le]

What a great story, @Emmett McNulty. It's great to see that your wife believed in you, to see the sacrifice you had to do up front, and to see the hard work that followed pay off. Congratulations to you and your family and on the new baby.