All Forum Posts by: Mikila Foster

Thanks, guys

  Some good thoughts here.  I made a phone call to this County Office since the property is outside of city limits. Zoning and other restrictions are really loose here. I was told I simply needed to get it resurveyed and redeeded, which would probably cost around $1,500. I am going to do a little more research into that since that would be time well spent.  The back half of the property already has a well and power pole from a mobile that was previously there so selling that separately would net us an additional 5-10k.  The wild card there is access easement. I have to find out more about that since it is some distance off the road with a shared driveway. Of course if I subdivide it I would be able to take 20 feet of the edge of this land and set it aside for an easement for that piece of property.

I don't want to keep this property anyway so hearing sell sell sell is music to my ears. We bought this place not as an investment but to live our dream of the country life. Sometimes when you get what you want you realize the Allure was not in it itself, but in the dream.

Thanks again

Hello folks!  I hope this is the right forum for this question.

I am looking for a little advice.   I bit off more than I could chew with the fixer-upper I bought 2 years ago.  We have been living with the house as-is, and a found a number of additional problems with it.  So, if we were to sell it as-is we would lose about $15K on it, since the price we paid didn't reflect those additional problems.  That idea puts a sour taste in my mouth.

Or, we could rent it out and fix it slooowly with the cashflow.  This is pretty much a holding tactic until inflation catches up to our purchase price and we can break even by selling.  

I would not have bought this to be a rental property, since the numbers don't make sense.

The risk of renting it out is that the house condition continues to worsen faster than we can afford to fix it, or yet more problems are found.  This house needs a new septic system, foundation, siding, roof, and there are mice in the walls despite all the poison I've put out, etc. etc.  I should have run away screaming when I saw this house!  But we bought it for the property, a rare 2 acre parcel close to town. 

What would you do?

Some numbers for your perusal:

Purchase price: 70k

Land value plus shop 35k

Money this house could easily eat before all is said and done in fixing it $70K

Value if we poured $70K into this house  $120-130K today

Value as-is  $55K

Rent the house could fetch if we dropped $5K into it  $800/mo

Existing mortgage $622/month piti

Could refinance to a piti of $500/month

I ran a scenario where, if I dropped $10k to stabilize the condition of the house and $25k to convert the garage to a studio apartment (rent for $300), it would be around 10 years before I could break even.

Thanks for any advice or insight you can offer as you play the what-if game with me.

Thanks for sharing.  It takes a little more work to find the deals, but they are still out there.  High property taxes and high insurance rates overall make profits more difficult to find than increased realty prices, though they are of course intertwined. 

Thanks.  Looking forward to it.

Also I wanted to say that I am looking forward to being a part of this community and getting to know some of you all.

Hello All!  

I wanted to take a minute to introduce myself.  I am Mikila Foster from northeast Texas.  Five years ago  we bought our first house, which when we moved away turned into a rental for a couple years.  I always wanted to be a landlord, but that was the wrong house, and wrong town, and wrong timing.  Here I am years later armed with a little experience, having bought and sold a couple houses over the intervening years, and a plan.  This spring and summer I will educate myself to the max and remodel my primary residence.  September 2016 is the start of my race.  My goal is quite simply cash flow so that I may retire early.  

Welcome