All Forum Posts by: Pat L.

After 30 years of DIY, my wife insisted I go to her CPA after my first IRS Audit. They finally nailed me for $9,800 & two years later they sent it all back with interest. 

My second IRS audit (for tax yr 2019) dragged out for 6months of back & forth phone calls, emails & volumes of scanned documents/ledgers. It was initiated because the new young CPA assigned to my return made a subtle, lazy, stupid mistake in recording a carry forward loss. The IRS agent then went back from 2019 to 2012 (the year of my last audit) dwelling on numerous random petty expenses, the many property purchases/sales, partnership %'s etc etc. My wife was convinced it was a training exercise for the agent. 

Again I handled the entire audit myself & managed to come out unscathed, but ONLY because we keep excellent detailed records. 

 & now the WH is studying ways to force LL's to provide more affordable rental accommodation across the USA .....the proverbial dichotomy !!

https://www.politico.com/news/...

protected class ....

This is alarming if not unbelievable ....

https://nypost.com/2023/01/18/...

We NOW use rent prep, yet some of our 'most difficult' tenants were well qualified & had screened so well. Drugs, divorce, tenant share splits & the sudden appearance of a destructive dog/child are a common theme. It's tough to screen out the human frailty factor, but the inherited tenant is usually a 50/50 crap shoot. 

Middle aged single women with at least 2 cats are NOW our favorite tenants & we have 8.

Then again, after 40+ years we could count our bad tenants on one hand.

We corrected the same issue with a new fan with a remote, then put the separate ceiling LED pot lights on a $19 (AMZ) remote switch near the bed. Beats rewiring :)

We had an old 1800's stage theatre restored on a busy Main St in a local town nearby. They installed several new a/c condensers & all of them were swiped in one night. Now they are all on the 3rd story roof, problem solved. Good Luck..

"..people, might be inclined to argue that it was cheaper then, but wages were also super low......"

I had many of my colleagues tell me I'd go broke tapping myself out financially by buying these 'crappy properties'  being a 'slum landlord'. They would drop by after-work & weekends, drink my beer, & laugh at the amount of rehab needed. Years went by & most worked past 65 & then took menial Jobs to supplement their retirement or to just keep 'busy'. By that time we had accumulated a lot of properties & kept 'busy' by buying more & rehabbing. 

During the 2008 era mortgage debacle some friends & especially my (still working @ 68) BIL, inundated us with RE Crash emails warning us that we would lose everything if we didn't get out. We just kept buying, however, by the late 90's we were already completely debt free & ALSO free & clear on all of our properties.

But what we enjoyed most was us encouraging/financing many young kids, (including our own), to get into real estate. Several today are doing VERY well, (in fact a couple of them are close to $1mill on paper), but some just gave up. 

I bought heavily during the 80's with rates @ 18-19%, but the homes I concentrated on sold for about 1-2 years my salary. Conv. financing was tough so I concentrated on seller financed sales & rented EVERY room. I even had duplexes rented by the room, plus put rooms in the basements. I converted some of the bigger older homes into 3 units doing all the work myself as permits & zoning were extremely lax. Once the rehabs were completed I was able to refi into rates dropping to 9%. As prices increased I reluctantly sold off a few to achieve free & clear status on those I kept. There were many years of frugal, knuckle busting living but I retired early & never looked back. I still have several from that era, now worth a LOT of $$$.

"You're cooking with gas.... in Texas & we extract it here"