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Real Estate is not easy nor is it inexpensive to learn how to do it right (part 1)
By JD Hawki | July 13, 2009
The profession of Coaching and being an Educator can sometimes be stressful. For many years one of the things I used as a distress-or was to buy and rehab houses. In 1986 I started driving the communities I lived and taught in until I found an old house that had a lot of character and was a bad house in a good neighborhood. I would make an offer at or below market depending on how much rehabbing it needed. When I acquired the property I would start fixing it up to rent and hold until it would appreciate enough to make a little money and I would move on to the next house. I become pretty good at this because appreciation would always come through for me so I could have a small write off and earn a little extra for my time.
Up until 1986 I was a single parent trying to help my X raise twin daughters from long distance. Then they both got married and started their own families. I started more aggressively buying and rehabbing houses as I was not interested in getting married again. This went on for many years then I met a lady in 1994 who knocked my socks off. We got married a year later. We had a lot in common in that she could work as hard as I could, was interested in Real Estate and was good as understanding the concepts of creating properties that would sell. She was and is very good at staging, color coordinating and also seeing trend potential of Real Estate.
Shortly after we got married we decide to move out of our apartment and buy a house that needed rehabbing and had a lot of potential as well as character. We thought we wanted to learn Real Estate from the ground up and to us that meant doing the work ourselves. One of the toughest things about remodeling this house was removing 8 layers of wall paper and paint from the walls. Because of the transition we were in of making a new life for us both and getting settled we took about a year to transform this old house. When finished we decided to put a for sale sign out in the front yard. It sold to the first people who stopped by to look it over. We knew then for sure we could do this business and that we were good as a team.
Shortly after our marriage my wife”s craft industry job begin to play out. Because of our success on this old house make over she decided to start her own buy and rehab Real Estate business. Since then we have rehabbed over 18 houses through the years.
We knew now for sure we wanted to do Real Estate. With my wife working full time buying and rehabbing houses I would help her on week ends and when I could. A few years before I retired we decided we would start looking for a property we would like too retire to some day. We did not care where it was at that time. However we did have a few requirements. The main requirements was it had to be no farther than 10 to 12 miles from a Walmart, unique, a lot of character, a few acres with water and a old house with a lot of potential.
(see our next bog as we continue the rest of the story)
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