But, being so close isn’t close enough when it comes to building wealth!

Commitment is needed. Confidence must be learned.

We have both been there… Wondering if this is the right thing to get us to where we want to be.

I was a corporate employee most of my working career. I owned my family home.  But real estate wasn’t on my radar as a “moneymaker.” I guess you could say I was on the causal track, because real estate was always about a place to use, not an asset that generates profit.

I wasn’t in the right mindset until I meet Jeff at a holiday party at my house in 2008 (mind you, we weren’t friends at the time, just acquaintances). Jeff was telling folks a story about buying condos for less than $25,000. Watching from afar I could tell that my friends either didn’t quite believe him or they didn’t think a housing crisis was a good time to buy… but I was listening carefully, and when no one asked him to find them a deal,  I did.  Actually, I asked Jeff to find my wife and I two deals!  And he did! Of course, I didn’t know anything about extending my real estate holdings and even less on making them profitable as rentals.  But, Jeff was right there helping me through every step.

When we bought our first rental, which quite frankly was terrifying, we didn’t have any idea or plan on how we could buy another, let alone many more. After all, owning one rental was more than we thought we’d ever do and having it up and running was so exciting and stressful we just wanted to put it on autopilot for a while. So, we didn’t do much for almost a year. We were just getting used to owning a rental and managing it.

But near the end of the first year we knew that if this was how we were going to build wealth that we needed to take action because dabbling wasn’t going to get us there.  So, I went on a learning binge on how to take one property and make it more… finding, funding, fixing, and renting. Actually, in the first three years we added seven rentals. And we haven’t looked back since.