YOU CAN DO EVERYTHING WRONG AND STILL HAVE IT TURN OUT RIGHT (I hope)

I have never blogged before so be patient. This blog is to encourage folks who want to invest but are afraid they will make a mistake. My first purchase of a property where I bought it only for investment was from a guy who had inherited a lot of money and had spent a large potion of it and needed to sell some off to get some ready cash. It was the early 1990s. One of the things he inherited was his mother's house, which was empty and outdated. It also had a $14,000 federal tax lien on it. I was fresh out of college, and had only a small amount of money saved up. Also party to this discussion was a new realtor, who had had been a contractor but lost his business to the bust years of the late 1980s. Both of us knew it was a good deal, but both of us were broke. Between the 2 of us we scrapped up $1,200 and I figured out how get the tax lien paid off through a closing and he got financing for everything from a local bank. I knew the market a little from buying my house about 2 years earlier, and he was a realtor. The seller was happy to lose the lien and have his taxes paid off. My new partner and I and our wives cleaned, painted, and we sort of added carpet. He had some nice but old salvaged carpet we cut to size and left laying on the floor without nailing it down. Eventually we bought a few more properties the same way, no MLS comparisons of value, no yellow letters, no bandit signs, no advertising, no 50% rules, no 2% rules(none of the properties would have passed the rules). We kept an eye out for deals and if we both agreed it was a good deal, we bought if we could get enough down payment and a willing banker. Some deals were years apart. Cashflow was making sure the rent would cover the bank payment. We never took any income out of the business until last year. Eventually we sold our first rental house for over $50,000 to a great tenant who was going to leave to buy his own house. Eventually my partner moved to another town and wanted to retire so I bought him out with a check for more than 10X what our yearly salary was when we started. I learned so much from him. Of course now I have poor cash flow because of the loan I took out to get the money, hehe. My newest purchase will hopefully be my first rehab and flip. Again I did it all wrong, after looking at a prospective rental house in the neighboring town, I noticed a plastic for sale sign in front of a really dirty junky, small looking house, almost submerged in piles of stuff I couldn't identify. Against my better judgement I circled the block and called the number, I eventually met the owner there and by flashlight we looked over the property.(The power had been off for 3 months, he was being foreclosed). We waded through junk inside and out to look at the house(The smell was terrible). The house I had just looked at was horrible, while clean it was outdated, the garage was small and I might have been able to push it over myself. The basement looked like the floor had a small eruption in it, but it was $15,000 more than this house and it was smaller. It was also only 3 houses up the street from this junky smelly house. Despite the clutter, this house had great bones(and hardwood floors). I made a deal to buy it, and learned the next day the foreclosure auction was 6 days away. We closed the night before the auction. I just bought J. Scott's book on Flipping Houses, and Estimating Rehab Costs (after buying the house not before). We will see if this turns out as well as my first purchase.