Morninnn,
First week of February – rates are raising hopefully not as fast as the inventory in your market!
The race to secure long term debt before rates return to ‘normalcy’ is on. Just remember that a rate in the 3’s doesn’t make up for a bad deal.
All that aside – I have the distinct pleasure of introducing you to an outstanding investor, teacher, and tweeter – Mary Nickless
How man doors do you have?
“10 Doors”
What got you into real estate investing?
“I had my daughter at 34 and suddenly realized I wasn’t prepared enough for retirement or paying for college. When I started educating myself on personal finance & increasing my income, I read Rich dad, Poor dad and it was life changing. I knew I needed to buy real estate immediately. That was October 2019.”
What market(s) do you operate in?
“Tampa Bay Area in Florida”
How would you describe your portfolio?
“Four single family homes, three duplexes”
What are you currently buying?
“We are looking for a small multi-family to house hack”
Tell us about your biggest mistake in real estate?
“We bought a duplex that needed a lot of work, new roof, 2 new ACs, new electrics, etc but allowed the tenants to stay in the property while we did the work. We should have just upon the sale of the property had them move out.”
Tell us about your biggest win in real estate?
“The biggest mistake led to our biggest win. When we went to look at the first duplex that needed all the work, the realtor said the owner of the duplex next door wanted to sell but didn’t want to go through putting it on the market. I immediately said yes we wanted it! The owner had just put on a new roof/AC and painted the outside, it needed no other work to it. When we got financing, it appraised above the price we bought it for. And we recently put the rent up on one side and increased our cash flow $300. It just all-around has been a great deal.”
Outside of real estate what else do you invest in?
“We both have Roth IRA accounts that we max out, a brokerage account and about 1% of our portfolio in crypto, mostly Bitcoin and Ethereum. We sold a bit to rebalance when Bitcoin ran up early in 2021. We’re looking to buy some more as it is going down. We have a small position in tokenized real estate on the Lofty.ai platform, just started that recently. We mostly reinvest our money into our real estate portfolio, but once we reach our target monthly cash flow, we’ll invest a lot more into the stock market. I like to buy dividend stocks and commodities (mostly in gold miners and uranium right now).”
Favorite real estate investing related books?
Rich Dad, poor dad (for mindset not real estate)
ABCs of real estate investing
Building wealth one house at a time – John Schaub
What advice would you give to a new investor?
“Keep it simple and straightforward. Educate yourself, learn how to run the numbers, think about the location to buy in, and then just go for it. You just need to get started and learn as you go. I personally did a 90 day challenge to buy your first rental, it totally worked! Then end date kept me committed and focused. Remember anyone can do this!”
Checkout Mary on Twitter
Enough business
While we’re all pondering where the market will go this year – we need to keep in mind that we’re doing this to secure our family’s financial future.
A future that ensures we can fix our paws when the evil salt crystals get lodged in-between our toes causing them to bleed. Having financial security ensures that the worst this entails is a humiliating cone of shame for a few days.
See you next week!
