MY TAX RETURN WAS 5 TIMES THE SIZE OF LAST YEARS – Prosper Inc Success Stories, and Prosper Inc Success Coaching.
I went with my Realtor to look at a house last Wednesday. When we arrived, there was another couple taking a look at the house too. The owner showed up soon after us to show them around. The house is completely remodeled, the owner buys low, fixes up and sells. The house was still priced below market value (Worth $60K, priced at $54.9K). As I was looking the house over and talking with the other couple that was there, I found out that they were looking to rent it! I couldn’t believe it, I had the owner to negotiate a price with, and potential renters willing to pay enough rent to make the property cash flow.
I was able to determine that the owner would be a little flexible because the house hadn’t sold yet and he was trying to rent it out to cover his expenses. I could get it below value and have renters willing to move into the place in a month! I went back to my Realtor’s office that day and wrote up a purchase contract for $50K and he accepted. I purchased the house for 5K less than his asking price, an even better deal. I am renting it out and will have a $100 monthly cash flow nearly 2 weeks after closing when my renters move in. Absolutely no cost for advertising and no waiting for renters to come calling. Being persistent and consistently looking at potential houses found me this property. It was just a matter of time if I kept looking hard enough. And it all worked out great having the owner and potential renters right there to deal with.
SUCCESS UPDATE
I’ve been quite busy over the last month and the last year. The house you are referencing below is going great. The lease ended in May this year. I advertised for free on the rental listing at our local Chamber of Commerce and had it rented to a good tenant in about 3 days…great rental market in this college town. I bought the house in great shape, so I haven’t done any major repairs on it since I bought it.
The next property deal I did was a 4-plex in the next town north of here. A Realtor that I had been working with and hadn’t talked to in a while, called me out of the blue and said he had a place to look at. I got it for $164900 and it appraised for $189000 (If rented at market rates. Currently it is still under market rent.). Well, I closed on that property in December, just in time to call it a Christmas present for myself! The rents totaled $1685 per month when I bought it. I raised them to $1735 in February. I just had a tenant move out on me last minute in June (lost his job). Luckily, it was the worst apartment, the guy had a cat and smoked so everything was a yellowish brown smoke color or had cat pee stains on it! I say ‘luckily’ because I have been busy fixing it up and have it rented starting July 1 for another rent increase. Boy was it a mess for the last month as they ripped out carpet and painted and re-did all the floors. I replaced a lot of stuff and got it fixed up. This should greatly add to the value of the property. To get it rented, I called the Realtor that I worked with to buy the property. He recommended another Realtor from his office that was looking for a new place. So now I have a good tenant, a Realtor that understands taking care of rental property and real estate, and she has no pets and doesn’t smoke…excellent upgrade if you ask me.
Last but not least, I just finished a deal on June 5. I bought a property in my town that is a small house with an apartment building behind the house that has 2 apartments in it. The purchase price was $68000, it appraised for $70000 and the former owner paid $70000 for the property in 1996…I got a deal. The gross rents total $850 per month, for about a $200 per month positive cash flow… I feel that I can even raise the value more by doing some cleanup work. It needs shrubs/bushes trimmed, new exterior paint, and other minor repairs. It just looks shabby and a few cosmetic repairs would go a long way on this one. I haven’t started working on it yet because I have been so focused on the vacant apartment fix up on the second property. I’ll be moving on to this one next.
The best part of this spring was that my tax return was about 5 times the size of last year’s return, I had so much depreciation, mortgage interest, business expenses, etc. that I was able to write off. I will have even more at the end of this year. I can’t wait. I am exploring other deals now. I made a good contact with the contractor that was working on my apartment building. He does a lot of building and developing, so I’m tossing around ideas of either adding additional structures to the properties that I already have or buying land and building on it… I have been so excited that it is so easy to rent in this town. I couldn’t believe that I rented my house back out after it being on the listing 3 days. And I haven’t spent a dime in advertising expenses to get the house and the vacant apartment rented.
I owe so much of my success to Todd. He encouraged me to just keep on looking and keep on trying. It truly is a numbers business and the more you hunt around, make offers, and look for deals, sooner or later one is going to come right out and find you!
Carl R.
Murray, CT