How we got started and then got started again

My name is Ed Register and about 15 years ago I was involved with Real Estate, my partner and I had 30 single family homes brining in a decent income stream.  We decided to build out a restaurant and add that to our portfolio.  This was a huge undertaking and started slowly taking our focus away from managing our properties.  We began to have too many vacancies and started getting some neglected maintenance issues.  This didn't happen overnight, as a matter of fact we ran our Pizza Restaurant and managed our rental properties together for over 2 years.  The restaurant slowly ate away at our time and energy.  I'd arrive onsite around 10AM to get everything going for lunch and still be there around 2AM closing up, often times during the day having to run out to a property to handle some situation.

During this time my wife and I had a baby which added more stress and sleepless nights into the mix.  We tried various things to manage both businesses but with little success with all we had going on.  We finally decided to get out of both businesses and go back to work for someone else for 40 hours a week and just take home a paycheck.  We sold some properties, shut down the restaurant and sold our part of the business to our partner.

Fast forward 13 years....

My wife and I both have very successful careers and make good money, but we still have that real estate bug.  We did purchase a new house and at the time couldn't sell our old house so we had 1 rental property.  Like many of you here we have been enjoying watching the flipping shows on TV and started getting interested in what real estate could do for us today.  

So we started putting things into place, start a new business, lining up financing, educating ourselves on local markets, joining BiggerPockets, joining a local REIA group, networking, trying to find a house to flip, getting a Realtors license (again), and about a million other things.

The two most important things that have helped us get restarted has been BiggerPockets and our local REIA group.  Both of these help us tremendously with learning information and networking.  There is a wealth of information to be learned from both.  We also share our previous experience with others to help them understand how not to manage your business.  It's always good to build off your mistakes but even better when you can learn from other peoples mistakes and save yourself time and misery.

Things are moving along well now.  We have many of our business processes in place and are tightening up everything.  We have looked at many (50+) houses and put in several offers (8) and finally have had an offer accepted for a house we want to flip.  As a matter of fact our now 13 year old son asked us to buy him some work boots last week so he can help us work on the house!  

If all goes well we will close on the house in about 2 weeks and get started.  If you are interested in following us on this journey and learning some of the things that are working and just as importantly the things that are not.  Stay tuned to this blog to see how it goes.