Post 1, In the beginning....

Hello and welcome to my Blog site here on BiggerPockets.  Let me introduce myself and give you a little background into my experiences, life, and all around ideas.  I will tell you right now, up front, with total disclosure... I have no idea what I'm doing.  Well, I have a little idea.  I'm hoping to make it a big idea, but I'm in the dark with a pen light hoping to find the light switch.  So here is what I've got.

I kinda, sorta started doing Real Estate investing back in 2001 when I purchased my first home.  I was getting married, had 2 step children, and needed a place to live other than my small 2 bedroom apartment near campus.  At that time, I was a ripe old 24 years old.  At the time, I was simply purchasing a home but I did finally move out in 2013.  That's when my long term ownership turned into my first rental property.

I was lucky in that I found a management company that was small, personable and responsive.  The one person I have dealt with primarily through that entire process was great in showing me the owners side of owning a rental.  Since I didn't have much else to do, the house produced income but I ignore her advice about saving money on the side since I've always been perpetually broke.  Important lesson there.

I purchased my 2nd home to live in and almost immediately 1 of the kids went to college.  Shortly there after, the 2nd one left home to start their own life.  So now me and the wife were empty nesters about 3 years ago.  Nice big refurbished house, and only 2 people.

We were lucky in that our rental property did well on it's own, very little maintenance or up keep and over 3 years only had 2 good tenants.  The cash flow was around $300-$400 depending on the year.

So, here we were, all alone in a big house in a neighborhood we accepted to get me closer to the city I wanted to work in but not really liking it.  We had debt like everyone else, cars, Student Loans, ETC.  But we wanted to move, to change, to venture out now we didn't have the kids.

We found a really nice apartment complex right after I found a perfect great job.  Too bad the two were 20 miles apart...  Oh well, we knew what we wanted and we knew we could make it work.  So I sold the 2nd house.

This was just about a year and a half ago, so middle of 2015.  We sold the house for a great profit, only did upkeep and put in a patio.  So our Long term flip worked out great.  Unintentional, but great.  And that's when I thought, hey, I can get use to this.  With a significant portion of our debt paid off and only the cars and rental property left, we were in a much better place.

After about 2 years later, our renters moved out.  The house, although still in great shape, had a lot of equity in it. Renters had been paying the mortgage and the house went up in value over the 16 years.  Then it hit...

I found BiggerPockets.  So many possibilities, so much information.  If only I had a little capital.  Then the light bulb went off.  Before I even considered refinancing, I called my real estate agent and we got the house on the market. 

And that is where I'm at.  House is currently under contract, work is being done.  And here is where the setting money aside has bitten me in the ass.  I can't say I don't deserve it.  It wasn't the world conspiring against me.  It was me.  My stupidity and short shortsightedness.  Granted, if I had been smart enough when I was younger to listen to the professional giving me advice, I'd probably been much further along.

The roof is 16 years old.  It's in great shape for it's age.  But that's like saying it is expected to be replaced around this time plus or minus.  So, now I'm having to get that replaced.

Does this make it not worth it?  Heck no!  The length of time I've kept the house, the condition it's still in, and the lower principal makes the house well worth the replacement.  And this will give me the seed money to start treating this like a part time business and pay off 1 of my cars leaving me with a car loan.

That is where I'm at today.  In the next few weeks I hope to close, pay off 1 car loan and start my investing.  I (now) know I could have done better.  I could have re-financed.  I could have probably pulled all the cash out that I needed and then some in addition to having a rental property.  At this point, if the sale falls through, I think that is exactly what I'll do.

If it doesn't, I'll have a chunk of change to start working with.  Either way, I'm in a better place now than I was 6 months ago, and a lot better place than I was in 16 years ago.

So, I named this the Bank it or Bust Blog. Because I'm either going to succeed in part time real estate and retire on passive income in the next 5-10 years (I hope faster), or end up with a bust.  Truth is, a bust is just another lesson.

--Zane