Robert Gunther

Just getting back into the rental game... Experience: I purchased my first stand alone home when I was 14. My mother was into rentals and when I was 14 said "mom, I want to buy a house". She said OK, find one and we can buy it. I looked in the paper (there was no Internet back then!) and found a 500sqft house built in the 1950's that had some fire damage. It had exterior walls and roof, but nothing inside. They had gutted it already. We got financing for the full purchase price of $9,000 and put a few thousand into redoing the inside. Rent was $325 a month. At the time a 14 year old could not legally be on the title, but we purchased the house from an attorney and somehow he got an exception and my name was on the title! When I graduated from high school it was paid off and the income from that house put me through college. Thanks mom! We sold that house after maybe 15 years or so. I looked up the value of that property today. I actually thought it would have been demolished by now. It is still standing and has an assessed value of $63,000. Real Estate Goals: Buy-and-hold.