Make It Happen.. No Matter What!
So, it’s been awhile since you last heard from us. Too long in fact! And here I am walking around Washington DC with six $1,000 checks. And as I walk around our nations capital, I’m struck with how amazing my life is.
Let me back up and explain…
Two months ago, we decided to sell one of our rentals. It’s a nice house in a great part of Arlington, MA. Great for home owners. We’ve had an amazing tenant in there for 4 years, but they have a growing family and needed a change. Based on the market analysis and input from our advisors, we decided the best move for our financial future was to sell the house. But not just sell the house. We had done enough learning and mentoring that we are going to do a 1031 exchange.
Briefly, a 1031 exchange is where you sell a property and instead of taking the proceeds from the sale and putting them in your pocket and paying capital gains taxes, you roll everything into a new property. Or multiple properties, as we are doing.
Fast forward through two months of work, research, meetings and waiting. With the birth of our son, Cameron, mixed in for good measure, we get to the point in the process where things are happening. I’m getting on a turn around flight to Indianapolis and leaving the kids and Stephanie for two days to go and meet a new partner and turnkey investor. I needed to get out there and vet this operation and the product that they were selling, which is turnkey rental properties.
I spend a guided day with them getting to know them, their methods, systems, team and most importantly their work product. To put it mildly, I was very pleased with what I was seeing. The rentals were great. I saw every step of the process. From dumps that had been sitting for years that they had just gotten the deed to, all the way through to move-in-ready places with the tenants moving in and through to a very happy owner of a place completed by this team.
The thing that struck me the most though was the consistency. Even though every house is different, they used the same finishes everywhere and it always looked great.
Fast forward another week to today. We’ve completed our due diligence and selected the final properties for our 1031 exchange. We selected 6 solid properties based on the numbers. Sure I walked through these and about 6 others and they all seemed good, but I keep reminding myself to take the emotion out of this. “We are looking at the numbers to select our rentals.” And we did just that. There was one house that I “felt was a good rental.” And on paper it was. It was the only property that I saw that I thought “my family could live here!” But it was outside of the price range just slightly and didn’t maximize our metrics for the portfolio, so we didn’t take it. This reminded me of how important key success metrics are when investing in real estate! It is about the numbers.
Which brings me to where I sit now… On a bench in the National Botanic Garden enjoying the beauty of all the ferns, orchids, trees and succulents with six thousand dollars of escrow checks in my bag. Looking for a stamp. I may be in DC for my job, but I’m still working on building my families’ financial future and taking action. Taking action to further our goals and to help share it with you.
Take action. It’s hard. I get it. I didn’t want to get in a plane and leave my family to look at properties just to come home for 24 hours and turn around and fly to DC for work. But I did it. And more importantly WE did it. Stephanie and I knew it would be hard, but we did it because we know that a little immediate pain to start something new will give us long term happiness.
So again. Take action. It’s scary, you don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t know if it will work out know if you have all the steps, but just do it. Take action and let us know what you are doing! Leave comments to tell us what you are doing our what questions or problems you are having! We love to hear from you.
Remember to tell your friends and family what you have learned! Even better, have them sign up and have a great discussion over dinner!