Posts Tagged ‘fixer upper rental house business’

Add “Start a Rental House Business” to Your Bucket List

Friday, August 24th, 2012

Taking a break from my regular fixer upper rental house blogging, today I am going to comment on some favorite blog articles that I have recently read.

Fearless Men

While I agree with Fearless Men’s article on the silliness of most bucket lists, in their article, 12 Things A Man Doesn’t Have To Do Before He Dies-Stupid Bucket Lists, I also think that starting a part time business is the exception to the rule.

While most bucket lists consist of activities that might reduce your life expectancy ( e.g., bullfighting), or your ability to enjoy life (e.g., broken body from the ever-popular choice of skydiving), a part time business, like owning rental houses, can actually improve your life.

Landlord Investor

Chuck’s article on Vacancy, First one in a while for us . . . is an insightful description a recent episode of  losing  and replacing a tenant. I appreciate this “real life” rental story that I can both relate to and learn from.

Louisville Gals Real Estate Blog

In her article entitled, 13 Cool Tools to Make You a Marketing Superstar, Sharon describes 13 amazing tools to help real estate investor to streamline their business. This is great for me because I didn’t know a lot of these things even existed, or that I needed them, until I read her article.

Any Shiny Thing

I actually read Lynn’s article Nora Ephron Left Us Sleepless a couple of weeks ago. It’s the type of article that touches your heart and makes you reflect on life’s bigger issues.

Turn Your House into a Rental House

By now, you probably know that my theory is that one of the easiest ways to get started in real estate investing is by turning your home into a rental house, instead of selling it.

My wife, Angy, and I are presently finishing up a book about how we go about doing this, entitled, not surprisingly, How to Turn Your Home into a Rental Property, Instead of Selling It.

Here is a quote from a book

According to the American Association of Realtors, the average American purchases 7 houses during their lifetime. In our opinion, those are 7 houses that we should hold onto for the rest of our lives, to generate monthly income and for long-term economic family security. Don’t give away the goose that lays the golden eggs!

 

The usual procedure that most people follow is to sell the home that they live in and to use the cash from the sale to buy a new house. If we tweak the old procedure just a little, it can result in a huge difference in our net worth and our economic security. We propose that instead of selling your home, just refinance it, and use the money from the refinance as a down payment on your next house. Now, you own two houses and you can just turn your old home into a rental property.

Presently, the book is going through the final editing and formatting process. Of course, it’s being reviewed by Homeland Security and the Pentagon, to avoid any classified information from leaking into the wrong hands.

By September the book should be available in both Kindle and paperback editions.

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Generate Cash Flow from Low-End Investments – Bryan Wittenmyer

Monday, September 10th, 2007

For those of us in the fixer upper rental house business I like to share interesting books that I happen to be reading.

I am presently reading Bryan Wittenmyer’s book Perpetual Income: How to Generate Cash Flow from Low-End House Investment. The author writes a book that truly gets down to the nuts of bolts of all aspects of finding, buying and renting low-income properties. A lot of real estate books are 90% fluff and 10% substance. This book is 100% substance.

The key, as Wittenmyer explains it, is to buy low-end (and not slum) housing because it is cheaper to buy, pays a pretty good monthly rent, and can be paid off quickly. This book has an enormous amount of really practical suggestions that apply to both low-end housing as well as middle-end properties.

I particularly enjoyed his section on what to repair, in recognition of the fact that the tenants will not take care of the property anyway. I like his practical advise on how to repair typical rental problems, but by spending the absolute least amount of money in the process. One suggestion was to mix leftover paints together in a five gallon paint bucket, and use the resulting grey paint to paint attics, or other areas where the color doesn’t matter. He also suggests not washing a wall before painting (unless heavy dirt exists) because paint can do a great job of covering the fingerprints and odors. Wittenmyer says, “why waste time cleaning when you can paint over it?”

I couldn’t agree more.

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