My First and Unintentional Investment

[Craig Anthony]

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Port Orchard.

Purchase price: $115,503
Cash invested: $2,000
Sale price: $287,000

An excellent starter home for my wife and me at the time of purchase. Quiet neighborhood, safe and walking distance to the Sinclair inlet waterway which leads to Puget Sound waterway.

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

We had planned on living in the area for another four years and then move, but we end it up staying 12 years.

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

We had originally started looking 1999 for five acres to build but we couldn't find anything affordable or what we thought was affordable. Looking back I would have bought the 19 acres around the corner for $80k. My wife and I were out on our evening walk and notice there was a new house on the lot that was empty earlier that year. We had been looking for almost a year and called our real estate agent and told her to make an offer.

How did you finance this deal?

Conventional financing

How did you add value to the deal?

We showed how much rent we were able to charge, the short walk to the water, the patio we added and our shed which had a storage room added to the back end with a door where my wife stored her additional clothing.

What was the outcome?

We ended up giving a $10K credit to replace the ruff.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

I wish I knew then what I know about real estate because I could have gotten more money

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

We worked with an agent my wife was friends with which worked out great because we wanted to sale quickly to purchase a house in Spain, and she was very helpful.