All Forum Posts by: Glen Olson

I am a busy professional with a day job that is unrelated to real estate.  I make good money, and recently left the military.  As a new civilian, I am now a 1099 employee and do not have any W-2 income.  My wife and I got into real estate for investment and tax purposes.  We have been investing in real estate for just under 3 years now.  We have several different "types" of properties to include traditional single family rentals, one multifamily rental, lease to buy options with tenants who hope to buy from us, two short term rentals, and some agricultural farm land that is cash rent.  My question is fairly vague, but here goes.  I'm trying to decide when or if I should transition from "building the portfolio" and acquiring properties and move to paying down the loans and building cash flow.  I realize that buying more properties would allow for greater equity appreciation, but I also need to maintain awareness that buying more properties will also necessitate more time on my part.  My wife has zero interest in real estate and is not involved in the acquisition or management of real estate in any way.  I have 3 young children and need to focus on family and I don't need a second full time job.  For reference sake, we have one mortgage at 7.5%; one at 5%; and all other financing below 4% with an overall portfolio weighted average interest rate of 3.785%

I don't care too much if you have 5 properties or 500, but I'm curious if others have gone through this thought process at some point in their real estate investment journey and if so how did you make this decision?

Thanks in advance!

First off, I agree with David M. above.  Keep cash on hand and don't put yourself in a position where if your tenant needs a new roof or AC unit right now that you'll have to put it on a high interest credit card.

Second, I realize that everybody's experiences are different and so is everybody's unique skill set.  For me, the biggest lessons that I have learned are from the couple of deals that made sense to me on paper but I ended up walking away from them.  These were because they needed some significant work.  I am not a contractor, and have no experience estimating those costs.  Of course one can hire professionals with those skill sets, but for me and my family living in a new city where we didn't know many people, managing and budgeting for large scale renovations would have been a really difficult task when we were starting out our real estate journey while also navigating full time work outside of real estate simultaneously.  Perhaps one day when I know more industry professionals those deals might make sense, but for me, avoiding a big project with uncertain timelines and budgets was a huge victory.