Kaitlin and I have wanted to dabble in real estate for a long time, ever since I can remember really. Like many folks we’d watch flipping shows, HGTV, etc. but always had an excuse for why we couldn’t get started.
We lived in California, for starters. The barrier to entry there is far higher simply do to the higher cost of real estate. We also didn’t have much time. I was still getting Kibin off the ground; she had a demanding sales job. If we’d been truly motivated we would have found a way to get going regardless.
Instead, our journey has ramped slowly. In 2014 Kaitlin purchased our Walnut Creek town home; I paid rent 🙂
Our home in Walnut Creek was a great lesson in home ownership considering we’d both spent most of our adult lives renting apartments in San Francisco. When we decided to sell and relocate to Michigan we got our first taste of tax free capital gains from owning real estate. Having bought for $609k and selling for $765k just shy of four years later, it gave us some capital to work with.
We put a fair amount of that cash to work on our new primary residence in Troy, MI. Even more of it was dumped into renovating the house, doing most of the work ourselves. And it was an insane amount of work. I’d do it again, but not the same way. When you have a small dog, toddler, pregnant wife, and have to live in what’s essentially an ongoing construction zone… it’s trying. I look back and wonder how we survived.
Now that it’s been nearly a year since finishing our renovation we’ve got some more cash on hand and a fair bit of equity we can tap into on our primary residence. We started exploring the idea of purchasing rental properties in the Detroit area around September last year (2018), but ultimately decided to wait until we had more cash.
I wish we’d bought then. Everything I’d favorited on Redfin and Zillow is literally up 20-30% since they sold back then. Granted, these homes were in the $50k-$80k, but that’s still solid appreciation.
We’ve recently started seriously looking at rental properties again. This time we’re 100% pulling the trigger. I’m excited about it, and hope I can share some learnings as we go.