Specialist · Grand Rapids, MI · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 611 votes
My name is Charles. I started investing right before the 2008 housing crash. Today I own my home free and clear and working towards providing financial freedom so I can quit my comfortable sales job. I hit rock bottom when I was living in a half finished house I planned to flip after selling our home on a short sale. With no plumbing, a newborn child, a wife and dog to feed I chose to change my future....and take a shower at my brother in law's house. Ill stop here but if you want to know what happens next, just ask..
While my true exposure to real estate investing came in college I remember my first "real start" in real estate investing. My wife and I had just gotten married in October 2011 and the next year we made the difficult decision to sell our home on a short sale rather than sink all of our wedding money into refinancing it. We moved from a 2100 square foot 4 bedroom, 2 bath home with our newborn daughter to a 850 square foot 2 bedroom, 1 bath home that I bought with all out money from our wedding and I wrote a 9000 convenience check off of one of my credit cards. We bought it for 17,000 and downgraded from a home with a mortgage of 160,000. It was the best decision of our lives because we paid off that credit card balance in 6 months by making the same payments we were making on our house and we saved a ton of money owning our home free and clear. We were spending more time with our daughter and less time cleaning a huge house. We had utility bills and a HOA of only 300 a month and the rest of the money we saved to invest and renovate the home before we sold it a year later for a 26,000 profit.