My wife and I are in our early 50s. W made an attempt to do real estate investing in 2007, at the height of the craze and just before the crash. People were buying unbuilt homes at one price, and by the time they were built the house you would stick a sign in the yard and make $100k. Without any homework or GOOD advice we decided to do it, also. Long story short... we lost $30k as we watched the market tumble.
That scared us away from real estate investing for about 14 years although my wife and I would periodically talk about it.
My brother makes his living doing rentals and flips so we were talking one day and my interest got sparked again. My wife and I talked many times about it, and we both decided to very slowly start approaching it again, but this time by doing the work first. My brother had mentioned the BP podcast so we listened to a gazillion of the episodes mainly with Brandon and Dave. We ordered 5 or 6 of the BP books and pored over those. For about a year we did a lot of reading, listening, talking, looking at houses, and PRAYING.
We got our finances in order (HELOC, 401k loan, bank preapproval) and felt we were finally ready. We were able to spend about $65k on a house which would leave us plenty for the rehab. The problem... no houses! We spent several months looking, even made a few offers, but none were accepted. I have another friend who moved from flipping to developing. We were having lunch with he and his wife, and they were identifying with our struggle to find the right first house. He related that it was when he and his wife earnestly prayed together and turned all the frustration and pressure over to God they were able to find their first house. We had really thought there were NO houses and maybe we needed to find another route (hard lending what we had set aside?). But we did also understand that we had begun to leave God out of the process which led to feelings of failure and frustration. When we involved God and let Him lead it really took off the pressure and at that point we were fine waiting on His timing. His timing turned out to be about 2 weeks.
My wife has a friend who lives in an upcoming area just outside of Chattanooga. The homes were 1930s 955sf DUPLEXES built to house factory workers for a local industry. In the 50s-60s they were renovated into small single familys. They are now going through another resurgence EVERYONE knows about them, and they are very hard to get at a good price. A new multimillion dollar development is also going on right next to them.
One evening my wife's friend says that she just saw a realtor stick a sign in the yard 2 doors down. We thought it was probably one that had already been rehabbed but we liked the area so we got in the car and went to take a look. When we pulled up we got excited because it looked pretty run down! We looked around, called the realtor, and set up an appointment to look at it the next morning. We took my brother and his wife, a handyman, and looked it over. Everyone agreed it was a great house if the money was right. They were asking $75k. I offered $65k. Later that night the offer was accepted! I found out later that I called before it was even listed on MLS. The gentleman in the house had just passed and his family wanted to sell the house fast.
It was a complete to-the-studs rebuild that went way over budget and way longer than anticipate (1 year) as my wife and I also both work full time. HOWEVER, it was such a good deal and we truly were just following God through it that it ended up being the best thing ever for our marriage, relationship with God, plus we got a masters in how to do this.
End result... we could have sold it and done fairly well (comps are in the $220s there) but decided to BRRRR so we could hold onto it and do REALLY well in retirement.
Just this morning (2/18) my wife turned over the keys to an awesome young couple with a better credit score than us. It is cash flow positive after setting aside repairs and CapEx, but everything in it is new so hopefully we can build that up over the years.
Bottom line... we could not have done this without BP. This is unsolicited and the BP folks don't know me from Adam, but Brandon and Dave were amazing with the info on the podcast, and the books were such a solid source of information. We also used the tools to run deals through including the one we ended up buying. You guys truly are changing lives for the better. Thanks for letting God use you to bless my family and the families of so many others. Hope to meet you both in person one day and shake your hand.
Sincerely,
David Karnes
Chattanooga, TNN
