They all said: You can’t do that any more, page 3

We, the three of us my wife, son and myself, read and discussed what we read and passed books back and forth as we finished them, and in six weeks put our first offer on a duplex.

The realtor said; you can’t do that any more’. So, we went with a different realtor, and on October first closed on the purchase of a two story duplex and a single-family two-bedroom house. Remember, in today's world RealtyTrac wouldn't say you can't do that anymore. RealtyTrac allows you to do this all the time.

That house we bought fifteen years ago is just now being sold by us this week. It has made us a lot of money from purchase to now through rents and refinance and now an increase in value.

The duplex was the first purchase in a sequence of purchasing a couple of dozen properties and I’ll take you through that purchase of the duplex step by step. The asking price was $54,000 and the owners met us at the property. They had evicted bad tenants and were in the process of fixing and painting the place up. We sat down on the floor in the lower unit and negotiated the purchase price of $49,000 with $6,000 down and the balance on a Contract for Deed. But not all of the $6,000 was to be paid at closing. We had negotiated a separate agreement on the down payment as follows. Two hundred dollars in earnest money now. Eighteen hundred dollars at date of closing. The $4,000 balance due within two years of closing. They turned over the keys to the building and the claims tickets for windows and doors that were at the local hardware store. As we took over where they left off with the repair and painting (they left the paint also) we were excited. This all took place on the 15th of August and closing was set for October 1st. It was a start. As we worked on the apartments people stopped by to see what we were doing and we got to know the neighbors and felt good about our purchase. On weekends and after our regular workday we worked on our new purchase, painting, laying carpet (the sellers brought a roll by that they were going to lay and had no other use for it) and interviewing prospective tenants. We also ran off and looked at other properties that were for sale and that’s when we found the little house that we bought on the same closing date and I’ll tell you about that later.  We qualified tenants and had both units rented for move in on the weekend of the date of closing. At the closing this was how the numbers worked out: We had collected first and last months rents on both units. $385 times four equals $1,540. We owed $1,800 on the down payment but we also owed $352 for insurance a total of $2,152. Now the purchase agreement was a standard form and after the sellers expenses and the prorating of the real estate taxes our total cost at closing came to $1,364. Leaving us with $178 in cash from our purchase and we took the sellers of the duplex out to dinner. Since we would be making payments to them we felt it would be good to get to know each other better. We did, over the years become good friends, but the following year when the seller needed money they came to us to pay early and we negotiated a further reduction in the interest and the balance owing, making the deal better yet. Try RealtyTrac , it makes this much simpler .

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