Beginning of real estate investing

Beginnings of my real estate dreams...

So I have always had the idea of going into real estate - when I was in high school, my plans were to buy a duplex, live in one side of it, and rent the other side out.  This was a great plan, but never came to fruition.  Nine years after graduating from high school (after college), I bought a single family house, with no down payment, and the house had no equity (meaning, I paid $114,500 for the house, and it was worth $114,500 at the time.)

I don't regret doing that, but I would have been smarter buying a duplex, like my thoughts in high school, or even buying a repo house that needed repairs, so I could put new carpet, paint, etc, in other words, design the house that I wanted, AND have equity.  But I was younger then, and it was before I jumped into the real estate market.

In fact, I didn't do that until 2005, four years after first purchasing my house.

When I decided to start officially real estate investing, I went in with a good friend of mine, we found a duplex in serious need of repairs, and paid way to much for the house (I realize that now, but at the time didn't know any better.)

My friend and I worked hard on that duplex, painting ourselves, doing a lot of the work ourselves, and in the end, it was pretty nice.  I initially paid $32,000 for the house, found a bank that would re-finance the house (which was so easy to do at the time, and which ended up getting me into a lot of trouble when real estate values dropped.)  The house was re-financed for $55,000, which meant that my first rental property carried a mortgage of $55,000, and in reality was only worth around $35,000.  The PITI payment on the house was $495, with one side of the house renting for $400, and the other side $350.

This works well, until it is considered that this duplex was in a very bad part of town, and keeping tenants in it was almost impossible.

This was the beginning of my real estate company, which continued to grow, with a snow-balling effect which was kind of incredible in hind-sight.

I will continue to update the past to bring it up to date, where of course I am patiently awaiting my bankruptcy discharge.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Chris, and I want to document my story of how I got into Real Estate, became somewhat successful by obtaining many rental houses and flipping houses, and how everything I built crumbled (due to poor uses of credit) - and my plan to rebuild (I am currently awaiting my bankruptcy discharge at this moment.)

Anyway, I just wanted a place where I can write down my history, houses bought, mistakes along the way, the downturn, bankruptcy (including the meeting with the creditors - OMG) - and while I am doing that, document my bankruptcy discharge and my rebuilding process.

So if you find this blog, I hope these things are somewhat interesting, and if not, well, it is a great place for me to keep this as a reminder of what not to do in the future.