I know I am very biased. I am in LOVE with real estate and as my hubby will tell you-- it's my addiction. During the Recession we all heard and saw the impact of the failing Real Estate Market. I know I felt like it was the media's favorite subject. The number of short sales and foreclosures were reported over and over again and there were tons of articles about people losing their homes. Even today, there are still tons of articles about how … [Read more...]
Does Renting or Buying Make the Most Financial Sense?
I am an advocate of buying houses to turn into rentals. Whether they are immediately rentals or eventually become rentals later after they are lived in doesn't matter. As an empire builder of seven houses and counting, I am not only a true believer that owning lots of houses can have positive effects on your net worth. I have illustrated this many times on my blog and how personally it has allowed us to gain $400,000 in 4 years. I am also … [Read more...]
Is Buying a House with a Pool Worth the Expense?
As a cost-saving and frugally living family, we recently bought a pool. Many including my amazing spouse, thought this was a contradiction to our frugal living motto because a pool is a hole in the ground where we throw our money. But in all reality, this was the best decision we could have made. It has opened more opportunities and ideas than I had ever imagined. I see the question all the time: "Is it really worth having a pool?" In my … [Read more...]
How to Set a Better Budget for Buying a Home
How do you pick your rent or buy budget? Do you do research on what you want and the prices of these offerings or do you just pick a number? I will be honest, I might own seven houses, but I am CHEAP! It's why we were willing to downsize allowing us to save $1,000 a month during my husband's deployment. While being cheap has been good a good idea for us it has also hindered expansion on our homes. The reason for that is because I have … [Read more...]
Don’t Lose Money by Selling Your Home for Down Payment Money
When it's time to move or upgrade to a larger house, the question that is always asked is, "Do I rent it out or sell it?" Over the past couple of weeks I have spoken with many people stumbling over this dilemma. As an investor who is trained as a financial analyst I have found I see things differently. The lower interest rates mean that it is cheaper then ever to borrow money even though you still need to fund the down payments. From my … [Read more...]
Funding the Down Payment For Multiple Properties
The biggest challenge to building a real estate empire is funding the down payment for all of the houses. As you grow, you will find that it becomes more challenging, especially after you buy your fourth house. While you can buy up to ten houses, after you cross the threshold for the fourth it becomes more expensive for the down payment. Plus you can't forget the Reserve Requirements for any house you buy after the first one. As with anything … [Read more...]
Why You Need to Buy a Family-Friendly Home
Are you a DINK (DUAL INCOME NO KIDS) ? I am. We are dual income no kids, with a eight pound furry child. Lets just say she's a princess and it's awesome. She travels with us or she stays home. Finding her a babysitter is easy and child protective services never gets mad because she is left at home alone. She is perfect for our lifestyle. We are also serial investors and our goal is to create a Real Estate Empire that will allow us to … [Read more...]
How We Started Investing in Out of State Real Estate
Are you trying to decide if you should buy local or out of state? Are you worried that your house that you are living in now will become an out of state rental? Owning out of the area, out of state, or even across country is totally doable. Not only are we a military family who knows that local is only as relative as the current set of orders but we took a jump even sooner than we expected. We purposely bought our first investment out … [Read more...]
How the Number of Bedrooms You Have Can Affect Your Rent
Are you taking into account the bedroom number when you are both evaluating a house to buy or to list for rent in yoru area? A friend texted me the other night and told me there was a rental for sale right next to one of my homes and she asked me if I wanted to buy it. As I am sure you all know I am on the quest to build an empire. So while I am on a little forced sabbatical (just closing 2 houses will do that!), I always love the … [Read more...]
Why I Strive to Put 0% Down on ALL my Homes
Just in case you weren't aware. - I am an investor! I am a small time investor as we only have 7 houses. I am proud to say that I buy ALL houses with the intent to rent them out. Some are rented out sooner than others if we live in them first but the exit strategy for each purchase is to rent them out. As we have discussed in the exit strategy article, everyone should always have an exit strategy if they buy a home. My exit strategy is that … [Read more...]