My problem property gets a tenant... finally.

I have this rental property that's been a thorn in my side pretty much since the day we first acquired it. I bought it late last fall with my then partner, intending it to be our first minor rehab and then to rent it out after the fix up. We got seller financing and used a credit line for the simple rehab materials, and decided to do all the fix-up ourselves. Ideally we were hoping we'd be able to lease-option it to a first time lower-income buyer and give that person the chance to become a home owner, but it seemed like it was in a great rental area and so we were fine with straight renting it if we didn't find a tenant-buyer.

I can not begin to describe here all the things that went wrong with this property, both because of the house itself, because of the time frame we bought in and because of my partner's and my various shortcomings (lack of time, lack of agreement, lack of a pickup truck, etc.). Perhaps one day I will be able to share the grueling details with you all, but I think I need a little more time to heal first. I can say that lease-optioning didn't work at all, and finding a tenant has been a difficult puzzle to solve. The neighborhood was full of rented properties, the rent was right, and the phone rang consistently, but for some unknown reason I could not get a prospective tenant to move into the house. Its shameful to say this, but the property has been vacant all this time, and carrying costs are eating us alive!

So now we have a tenant ready to move in on the first of the month. Please praise the God or Goddess of your choosing for us. I find it interesting, though, that the longer this property sat around and did nothing for us but drain our bank account, the less and less I was interested in dealing with it. I know that logic dictates that I should have become more desperate to get it rented and therefore worked even harder, but the exact opposite is what actually happened. And it wasn't just me, my partner actually "lost interest" long before I even did, and only thought of this house when he wrote the check for the mortgage and called to ask me if I'd found a tenant yet.

How did we finally get it rented if we'd nearly mentally written it off, you may ask? We finally decided to hire a property manager. Sad, but the decision had to be made. We opted to have the management company only handle finding the tenant, I will still be managing the property after she moves in. Its a big blow to my pride that I could not get a tenant in the house myself, but at least now I do not have to duck the question at my REI meetings of "So did you get that house rented yet?" Ummm, no, hey what's that shiny thing over there?

I think its important to realize when you are not performing as well as you'd like to be and to know when its time to delegate things to someone who will get the job done and/or clean up your mess. Granted we probably should have delegated a lot sooner, but at least we made the decision to do it now before it got any later in the year. I had nightmares of crossing the one year mark of holding this house with no tenant!

So as of the first we will have no vacancies, hooray! Now I can concentrate on finding more properties without feeling guilty that I still have one sitting unrented and semi-forgotten. I think I'll skip looking in the same area as this particular house for a while though!

To blog or not to blog, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler to suffer the thoughts of mine own mind without exposure, or to take up the pen and unleash those thoughts, and by that stroke open mineself to the world?

For me it wasn't much of a decision. I already narrate my life in my head as I'm living it and talk WAY too much about my own situations, good or bad, to anyone who makes the mistake of asking, so it's no big step to write all those thoughts and soliloquies down for the world to see. My only hesitation is that everybody who thinks they are anybody, especially in the real estate investing world, already has a blog. Isn't the blog market over saturated already? Do we really need another person throwing more junk into cyberspace that no one reads? Well, maybe not, but my ultimate decision was "too bad!" and here I am. The internet pretty much has unlimited space anyway, right????

Let me start out by saying how incredibly excited I am to be a part of Local Real Estate Deals as we begin our quest to link real estate investors across the nation together on a huge variety of media platforms. Local investing topics in a national format, who'd of thunk? Trust me when I tell you that LRED will soon be an industry leading company and household name to investors everywhere in the USA, and maybe even beyond!

So what will I be offering to my faithful readers here on LRED's blog profile? Probably nothing Earth shattering, sorry to disappoint! A little humor, a little insight, hopefully a little education, and, if I'm really lucky, maybe a little scattering of brilliance every now and then. I will happily post the good alongside the bad and the downright ugly, freely sharing my experiences with real estate investing, personal development, my road to wealth creation (road still under construction!), and the goings-on at Local Real Estate Deals. If you're looking for all the answers, keep looking (and let me know when you find them!). In the mean time, subscribe to this blog and give me some feedback as we go. The only thing I like better than hearing my own self talk is hearing the ideas, experiences and feedback of others in response!!!

Oh, and don't worry, I'll keep the Shakespeare references to a minimum, I promise! ;-)