Woohooo, We're Excited!!

We have a real-life, Real Estate Success Story, and couldn't wait to share it with the BiggerPockets Community. BiggerPockets has been such a wealth of information and the knowledge we have gained and continue to acquire from this valuable resource is immeasurable.

My wife and I have been real estate investors since 2008, acquiring 4 single-family homes (outside of our primary residence) over the past several years. While 3 of the homes were yielding pretty consistent positive cashflow, one of our properties had constant tenant turnover, causing us to spend lots of money in vacancy costs & make-readies for the next tenants. As we all know...this eats at your profits quickly. 

Decision Time...

We determined that we should go ahead and sell the property, and in order to avoid the capital gains tax, we decided to do a 1031 exchange. This was our first time doing a 1031 exchange, so we had plenty to learn, but we knew that it would provide tax savings. We set our sights on multi-family units, as we felt like we were ready to graduate to larger investments and take advantage of the concept of economies of scale.

It Worked

We put just over $14k into renovations, worked with our real estate agent to stage and show the house, and had 10 offers in 3 days! We closed in less than 2 weeks on an offer that was $7500 over our asking price. Our next stage was to locate a property/properties within 45 days in order to meet the requirements for the 1031 exchange. After spending many hours researching over 100 properties on the MLS, using the BiggerPockets calculator to find the best deals for us, honing our negotiation skills and placing several offers, we landed not one, but TWO multi-family properties that will yield us $4000/mo gross...a nice jump from the single-family that we sold, which was about $1100/mo gross. Not too shabby for our first venture into multi-family dwellings!

Thanks, BiggerPockets

The goal is FIRE - Financial Independence/Retire Early, and we are well on our way! Thanks to BiggerPockets for being our long-distance teacher. Did I mention that we’ve done all of this from Budapest, Hungary?!