All Forum Posts by: Peter Dascoulias II

Welcome!  I went to Belleville East in the early 90's while my dad was stationed at Scott AFB.  Great area!

You're right Shelli!  I'm originally from New England and it amazes me how big Montana is compared to our states.

If I were selling the house I'd put a dishwasher, if renting it I would not.

There is a group of us that try to meet on a monthly basis up here in Great Falls.  We usually just sit around and have a few beers and talk about deals from the past or our intentions for the future.  Our Landlord Association's up here have a tendency to be pretty structured, so we try to have a little more fun outside of the Landlord meetings.

As Patrick said; there are more and more locals popping up everyday on the Forums!

We have six investment property's that my wife and I self manage (4 single family home's and 2 duplex's). Most of our properties are within 5 miles from our personal house except the one that got us in the game. We became accidental landlords when we had a 4/3 built in Central Florida on a nice corner lot for $170,000 in 2005. We had that same house appraise for $262,000 about a year later, but when it was time to sell in 2011 a realtor guaranteed they could get us close to $110,000 for it. We became Landlords and fell in love with the investing side of it. 

I wish I was thinking like you at 17! 

Good job and good luck!

I have a full time job, so my first 5 were turnkey and when I felt comfortable I bought a duplex and single family that needed a bunch of work. I'm still glad I bought the turnkey first to get my feet wet. When I new I was getting some good cash flow I ventured out of my comfort zone. The places that were not turnkey of course have a much better ROI, but also had us stressing big time for about 6 months. All the dust has settled and i'm not sure I would have done it any other way.

I lived in Deltona for six years. We bought our first house there in 2005 and it became a rental and 2011.   The only reason we still own it is it's increasing in value by about 6%-7% each year  and we're waiting for it to reach the break even point At which we bought it.   Then we will 1031 for a propert closer to us. Deltona is a good blue-collar neighborhood with easy access to the highways and it's 25 minutes from the beach. We would have bought more houses there when the market tank, but I couldn't get anyone to loan us money on investment properties in that area.  

I'm a Landlord/Real Estate Investor and I have no desire to quit my W-2 job.  If you have a job that you love the goal to quit make's no sense.  If I lost my current job I would be able to fall back on my properties and if I lost my properties I would still have my job.  I personally have a mandatory retirement at age 57, then I'll spend my retirement years mowing lawns, cleaning gutters, collecting rent checks and a pension.