Spouse’s Role in Your Investment Journey

[Carollee Fleming]

My husband and I are new investors, currently with 4 doors, looking to expand our portfolio. My question is, what roles do your spouses play? Do they actively participate; have separate careers; have careers that work along with your goals?

Thanks in advance for sharing!

[Jill F.]

We buy value add properties that we plan to renovate and get the rent up (usually hundreds of dollars/month) at each turnover.

My husband and I are both 'retired' and we split up the apartment work as follows: I manage the rentals, come up with our work processes and do all tenant facing work including marketing units, showings, work queue assignments, contractor relations, rent collecting, lease violations, complaints, turnovers etc. In addition, I am responsible for finding deals, designing our renovations, and managing our renovation projects including procuring materials and subcontractors as needed. My husband does all the accounting and book-keeping, he gets us financing when I find deals, and he has MAD carpentry skills! he makes our units look better than the competition for less money-- The one thing he does in that realm that I think really sets our units apart is fabricating custom counter tops for the often small apartment kitchens so that we can have super custom looking kitchens using stock cabinetry CHEAP. We enjoy working together but life IS much better (easier) since we grew enough to hire a fabulous full time painter/floor layer/tile layer/generally handy man and another very resourceful maintenance guy that does 20 hours per week; we also are still able to call on our original, mechanic, handyman that recently had a baby so his time is very limited but he still does mechanic stuff for us like fixing/maintaining the plow, mowers and work van.