All Forum Posts by: Paul Ewing

Welcome Sharon.  I am a bit surprised someone from NY is looking at Wichita Falls.  I am two hours away and hadn't really considered it.  I would love to hear how things go with your investigations.

I had that fun experience.  Both husband and wife had good jobs but within two months wife was supposedly hurt at work and without a job but for some reason not getting any compensation.  Husband quit his job (probably because it was too much work) and they both became "Storage Warriors".  This led to piles of junk as they brought back trailers of stuff from the storage units and spread it out on the drive and they were pretty lousy at it and always lost money so no rent.  I should have evicted them immediately but let it drag on for months with sporadic payments and promises of windfalls they were owed by retirement cash outs and the IRS etc  because I felt sorry for their continued sob stories.  Learned the lesson the hard way that you can't believe renters and even if you do you can't give them any slack or they will take advantage of you.

One possibility is that the house was added on to recently and the county tax office hasn't caught on yet.  This is getting less common since most counties are using Google Earth to see and measure everything.  it could be the county records are just wrong also.  I am not sure if I would go for something that far away in a market you are not used to.  Rural land sales can take a long time to happen and a remote deserted house is a good party place for local high school kids.  There are a lot of places  around me that have been on the market for years.  Most have larger acreage with them, but some are only an acre or two but with a not so great house on them.   

I am in the process of getting my RE License in TX currently with classes through RealEstateExpress.com then I need to do 4-5 years with a broker before getting my own brokerage license.  I am not really that interested in retail sales, but Texas requires you to have a RE Broker license to do third party property management and that is something I am looking at getting into at least in a small way.  Plus I figure the more I know about the laws and structure of RE work the better investor I will be in the future. 

Hello Curt.  I am not in Sanford, but I did rent an older singlewide trailer from a guy there in 2003 and 2004.  It is a nice area.  I was working at a company in Cary and needed a reasonable rent for a pseudo-relocation while my family stayed back home in Texas.  I really liked living outside of Sanford compared to the Cary/Apex area.  I am not sure I would be as happy with the 60 mile roundtrip drive with today's gas prices.

In my area West of Ft Worth (Western Tarrant, Wise, and Parker counties), hardly anything actually makes it to the Extended period any more. My parents picked up two HUD properties in 2012 for 80-90% of list, but both were second place bids after the winner couldn't get financing or something. I am not sure I would try a sub list price bid on something that meets my criteria currently, but I am also in the sub-$40k market. Looking at more expensive homes may be different.

Hello all.  My name is Paul Ewing and I became a semi-accidental landlord in early 2012 when I bought the farm across the road from my that had a house and an older (1970s) singlewide.  My wife didn't want to move to the house so I am currently renting them both out.  I had very good luck with the singlewide after doing about $1500 in repairs and have had the same tenants in it since then.  I had several "learning experiences" with the house and tenant selection and management.  I now seem to have gotten a good one in the house. 

I am in the process of adding two more doublewides to a section of the land and getting them set up and renovated.  I am aiming for the middle and upper working class demographic and aim to keep all the properties at a level I wouldn't mind living in them.  This aggravated the guy that I had doing property management because he seemed to naturally drift towards to slum lord do the minimum possible mindset.   

I am looking to expand my real estate investment with other similar places in the area and in the next five years have a large percentage of my income from passive rental income. Being in the exurbs of the Dallas/Ft Worth metroplex means that we have lots of doublewides on one acre lots that are potential rental units. My parents had picked up three in 2012 for very good prices through HUD and an individual investor but it seems that the number of properties has greatly decreased and prices have doubled in the last year so I am doing a lot more looking.