Cat Calvosa

I served 23 years in the Army and am retiring in the spring of 2024. I am married and have two children. My husband Ed and I are excited to start a new chapter in our lives. We rented out a house we owned in Maryland from 2012-2017 and didn’t really know what we were doing. We had enough income to cover the mortgage and minor maintenance issues, but no real income. We sold it, because we didn’t see much of a profit. What I didn’t realize then was that I was gaining equity in the house and that was my profit. Looking back, I should have kept it and raised the rent for the next tenant to stay on par with other rentals like it. Hindsight is always 20/20! Recently, I started helping a friend of mine with managing her 20+ properties in Tampa, FL (both residential and commercial.) I helped her to get automated using a web software called TenantCloud, which so far seems to be very useful at organizing and automating payments. I am still learning the software, but it's been very helpful despite the little glitches it has. My goal is / was to get her organized with all her tenants, leases and income tracked in one place. We plan to keep using Zillow for listing vacancies and Quickbooks for accounting. However, TenantCloud has made it simpler to consolidate all the info into one place to ensure that everything is going right. Our family plan is to start our own Vacation Rental Company to generate enough passive income to live comfortably in Central Florida. We want to get into STRs, but haven’t found anything we can cash flow in the area we want to get started (Tampa.) I'm taking accelerated entrepreneurship classes to help me to understand all the ins and outs of starting / owning a business and to understand the software / programs that are out there to help me along the way. The PM I'm doing for my friend is also helping me to gain experience along the way. I am here to learn and grow and eventually jump in with both feet! I look forward to all the advice people are willing to share with me. Thank you!