Last updated on April 27, 2021
Part 1 of this series chronicled the beginning of my real estate journey. It was marked by excitement and naiveté, and as you’ll see in this post, it just about did me in. As I mentioned at the end of that post, my business partner ended up moving out of state, and I was left with an unfinished house and an inherited crew that wasn’t doing what needed to be done. And to top it off, I really didn’t know what in the heck I was doing. To say I was scared was a major understatement.
When I first started writing this post I quickly moved on to the good portion of this time period. I mentioned in the last post about being an Enneagram 7. One of the things you should know about Enneagram 7’s is that we have a need to avoid pain. I recognize that I was doing just that as I wrote the first draft of this post. The truth is that this was one of the most painful couple of years of my life. I was in the deep end of the pool, and I didn’t know how to swim.
So as an exercise in growth, let me back up and share more of this story.
My business partner and I had purchased this home on Evelyn Ave in Cooper-Young the summer of 2009. We had big plans for it, but it just dragged on and on, and as I mentioned earlier, when the economy got really bad he was over-leveraged and ended up moving. We had borrowed the money from my parents, and all of it was gone. I ended up going back to them to borrow more, and I set out to finish the house. By the time it was finished it was the summer of 2011. The good news was that the business partner was fully out of the picture and I owned the house 100%. The bad news was that I couldn’t sell it. By this point I had my real estate license (more on that back story in a bit), and so I put it on the market for $133k. It sat for 6 months. I took it off the market, then a few months later put it back on for $118k. Another 6 months came and went without so much as an offer. What was I going to do now?
The worst part of all of this is that I had made promises to Mandy that I now couldn’t deliver on. Selling this house was going to mean that she could stay home with our kids. I kept thinking I could turn things around, but it just got worse and worse. She had never felt good about the partnership I was in, but I didn’t listen. She ended up having to go back to work for a year, unfortunately at a really tough school. It was one of the hardest seasons for our marriage.
I ended up getting the house rented, and from the very beginning it cash flowed quite well. I can look back on it now and see that holding on to it was one of the best decisions I made, as it’s now worth close to $200k. Even after the house was finished and I had it rented, there were some long-term effects. I remember that every time I drove past Home Depot, I felt a little sick. It also took time, counseling, and a lot of work for Mandy and I get to a good place.
The word “work” is a good word to use here. I worked hard. Not always smart, but definitely hard. I learned a lot during this time. More than anything, my faith grew because I was forced to depend on God to help me. As hard as it was, I can look back on it and say that I grew, and that I am better as a result.
Now lest you think that this entire period of time was terrible, let me share some happy things! One day in early 2010 my friend Josh introduced me to his friend Rob. Josh knew that both of us had an interest in real estate, and he thought we should meet. I’m sure glad we did. Soon afterwards I started working for Rob. He was trying to buy foreclosures, and I was getting good at researching and finding deals. One lovely spring day he asked me if I had considered getting my real estate license. I told him I hadn’t given it much thought. So I started thinking about it, and by the end of the summer I had gone to class and passed my exam.
During those first few years being an agent I wrote so many offers for Rob that I got pretty good at it. During all of this time I was also the pastor of a young church, so there was a limited amount of time I had for my new business. Slowly but surely, though, I began building my list of clients.
At the end of 2013 Mandy and I made one of the best financial decisions we’ve ever made. We bought a new house. But more than that, we decided to keep our first house as a rental. I always tell people interested in getting started with real estate investing that the best way to do it is to turn your current home into a rental. This was a game changer for us.
So going into 2016 I now had five rentals and a growing business. I had gotten through the global recession, and things were looking up. One day in early 2016 I started researching a house on my block that had been vacant for awhile. I figured out who owned it and found an email address. I emailed him and asked if he’d be interested in selling it. The next day he emailed back and said he would. I was kind of surprised. So I talked with Rob, and we decided to buy it together. This would be the first of twenty projects we would do together.
The final post in this series will be how things have grown and changed in these last few years.