Our first home/investment 15 years ago

[Amy Kendall]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment.

Purchase price: $140,000
Cash invested: $4,200

This was our first home that we bought and later started to rent out. It's where it all started. We now rent this home for $1540. Last year in 2018, we did a large renovation on the property. We also did a cash out refinance on this property when we first started expanding our portfolio a few years ago. It has been a solid investment. We are looking to to do a 1031 exchange on this property in the next year or two to trade up for something else.

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

We had no idea about rental properties at the time. We just bought the nicest/cheapest house we could afford after getting married

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

It was on the MLS. There were multiple offers and we offered full price.

How did you finance this deal?

We didn't know much about financing and this was before the crash. Looking back, our lender was a little shady and took advantage of our inexperience. We had two loans, one for 80% and another for the other 20%. They were ARMs that we ended up refinancing out of pretty quickly once we understood what we had signed up for.

How did you add value to the deal?

We cleaned up the property while living there and made some improvements

What was the outcome?

This property has been our workhorse and allowed us to do tap into equity later to springboard our later investments. I also have managed this property throughout. I sure have learned and changed a lot about managing properties since we started renting this out this out years ago.