The Bridgebuilder: Mowing, Cops, and Drug Houses

As he did with a lot of things in his life my grandfather inspired both my aunt and uncle to purchase investment properties after his first big purchase. I laugh when Brandon Turner on Biggerpockets talks about the uncle everyone has that had a tough time being a landlord because that was my uncle to some extent. As any old landlords my uncle has stories that will leave you on the floor rolling in laughter. From Meth being cooked in a barn on the property to the swat team needing his help navigating with the floor plan of one of his properties it is the most insane stories you can imagine. 

As Charlie Munger says, "invert, always invert" so I used my uncle's experiences to reverse engineer how those things happened to him and how I could potentially avoid those issues as I became an investor. I think the 3 biggest take-a-ways for me were:

Buy the right deals: School districts matter, age of units matter, and as always price matters.

Have money to put down and factor in money for maintenance and capital expenditures: A lot of his deals were seller financed low money down. This can be awesome for the right deal but often times these are because there is little demand for these properties. Additionally, cash flow is great but make sure it is real cash flow and you have money to put into properties. I believe all his properties were left better then he found them but there were constant issues because of age of house and quality of tenant. 

Do all the work on the front end and take care of your tenants: Take time and screen tenants hard to find great tenants who pay and take care of them promptly so they want to stay and take care of the place. This is also easier when you have higher demand locations and properties. 

My earliest days of rental properties involved being a quasi handyman for my uncle and grandpa. I painted, trimmed trees, mowed, and did snow removal each year. Additionally, we roofed each duplex over the course of 15 years which was always a fun experience. One particular vivid memory I have was my dad, grandpa, and I getting the cops called on us by a neighbor for cutting brush out of the fence line along the property line. Seems like he liked the privacy overgrown brush gave him. 

I also helped my uncle and grandpa get apartments ready to rent which included cleaning out all the stuff out. My uncle kept a lot of the good stuff which filled a shed on his property we nicknamed "the store" because he had anything you could want. He bought 6 units very close to downtown Waterloo. I do not know exactly how he acquired them but he bought them very cheap and unfortunately they were full of trash. 

They are exactly how I would imagine a drug house would look although I never did run across any. Luckily for him he had a whole army of nieces and nephews to clean up the property! We spent weeks working on it. One of my cousins threw up because of the amount of diapers he had to pick up in one room! It was a wild experience especially for elementary to middle school kids to experience but what an experience it was!

At the time I thought the cash was awesome and being around my grandpa and uncle was a lot of fun. In fact, the last time I saw my grandpa alive we were planting grass on one of his properties. I did not know it at the time but the amount of experience and confidence I had to do it myself was so much higher for growing up doing the things investors do. 

My grandpa had a sign above his desk that talked about a bridge builder spending all his life building a bridge across a river and a kid asking him why since he wouldn't live to see it completed. The builder says to the kid, "I did it for you" so you can go further and achieve more. This is exactly how our journey has played out. I have been able to stand on the shoulders of giants with the experiences my grandpa and uncle had. That sign now hangs above my desk. 

Thank you for reading and I look forward to picking up on this story soon!

Goals: 2 investments owned with partners by 2022; 2 million in real estate sales as an agent by 2022, Live in BRRR generating income by April of 2022

What I need: I want to learn more about USDA properties, I want to learn more about income restricted development and how I can start a project, I want a BRR property in Eastern Iowa.