Greenville Ranch Personal Residence to Buy and Hold

[Keren Threlfall]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Greenville.

Purchase price: $94,000
Cash invested: $30,000

We strategically purchased this brick ranch as a personal residence with plans to rent when we moved overseas. (Instead we moved locally, but still turned it into a rental.) It's a 3BR, 2BA brick ranch with a partially finished basement, good lot, and carport. Due to the basement, we're able to get a bit higher rent.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

With some staging and paint, we were able to sell our previous personal residence at a small profit, and use the profit to leverage 3 more properties: 2 as investments, and one as our (downsized) personal residence at the time. The big appeal was that I could leverage my profit even further by putting a little less down on a personal residence.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

This deal was sitting for a while. Right before the Greenville, SC market took off, there was usually some dormancy in the fall. That allowed me to negotiate, as well. The house had solid bones, but we negotiated on some of the negatives: it had been sitting on the market, it was dated inside, and it had a potential foundation issue (completely checked out prior to closing).

How did you finance this deal?

I financed this as a conventional mortgage for a personal residence. Still with one foot into listening to Dave Ramsey, I did a 20 year mortgage instead of a 30, which initially reduced my potential cashflow. (Later did a cashout refinance.)

How did you add value to the deal?

Creating cosmetic appeal, staging, and buying it knowing the value would increase.

What was the outcome?

This was my highest monthly rental for a while, and it's served us well as a buy-and-hold. I was also able to tap into it later to pull out some equity.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I would have worked to negotiate less cash into the deal, because it had instant equity. I would have also done the cosmetic fixes on the front end so we could enjoy while living there. I only regret...not buying more properties like this when the market was lower. :)

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Tom Glass, Prime Lending (different lender at the time), and Bob Massing of Keller Williams. This was an MLS listing .