INVEST IN RESIDENTIAL INCOME PROPERTY

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OUR INVESTMENT STRATEGY

Our investment strategy is this:

• To buy property in the sunbelt, where retirees are moving

• To buy property in the "path of progress"

• To buy property in new, master planned communities (with homeowners associations)

• To buy property before the Bell Curve starts to go up

• To sell property at the top of the Bell Curve

• To buy property that will break even - or put a couple hundred dollars in our pockets each month

• To buy houses that will rent out easily (or easier than the competition)

• To achieve financial independence before we're 50 years of age!
• To study, to be informed, to know the markets where we are investing.

To achieve these goals we:

• Finance our new home purchases with 20% down payment
• We don't believe in "Get Rich Quick" schemes.  They're mostly just "Go Broke Quick" schemes that only profit the person who is selling you.
• We tend to keep our income properties long term.  We rarely "flip" them for a quick profit, and we only sell our property when we feel that a community is tapped out for rapid growth.
• We read extensively about demographics and read magazines such as Where To Retire to find out where the best new communities are going to be.
• We travel to the communities where we're considering purchasing income property and spend a week getting to know the local market - demographics, home prices, rental prices, ease of finding renters, availability of new home builds, availability of resales, employment opportunities, growth rates, etc.  In each community, we interview Real Estate Brokers until we find someone we're comfortable working with.  I look for a broker who has extensive experience in the community, who understands investment purchases, who works full time, and who is trustworthy and an independent thinker.
• While we respect the big investment programs, like Marshall Reddick, we prefer to use our own judgment and choose the folks (Realtors, Property Managers, etc.) that we wish to work with.  Besides, our conservative approach to investing doesn't fit with the "OWN PROPERTY FOR ZERO DOLLARS DOWN!" programs.
  

The fellow who wrote the Property Management for Dummies, Robert Griswold, has recently co-authored a new book that's called Real Estate Investing for Dummies - it's loaded with good information. 
I heard Robert Griswold speaking at a seminar.  He's a busy man - with a large property management company in San Diego, and he's personally involved in BIG real estate investments in Southern California and Nevada, plus he hosts a radio program about real estate.  Buy it.  Read it.  g

f This books instructs and inspires.  Unlimited Riches - Making Your Fortune in Real Estate Investing, by Robert Shemin.

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Our investment strategy

Where to invest - Right now, we HIGHLY recommend Austin, Texas (not Dallas, not Houston...)

Buying a new home from the builder

Tenants

Property Management

Never pay capital gains tax - 1031 Exchanges

Depreciation is your friend

Leveraging your money (it's a beautiful thing!)

Tenants in common - TIC Investments

Excel Spreadsheet
Investment Property Analysis worksheet
(note: you must have Excel on your computer to open this)

When To Sell

Miscellaneous - And recent remarks by Suze Orman