Congrats on the sale MHG! Love all your stories and experience. You’ve got much more grit than the average RE investor :)

I hear you. I have a love/hate relationship with real estate. There’s really a lot more involved with it than people think. And, it’s definitely not passive as you still have to manage the business and keep an eye on it (as in any other business).

Glad to hear about the sale of your 2 rental properties. I just cashed out on a mobile home fix up myself. Sometimes, it’s just nice to get the cash and not have to worry about the types of things that come up when buying and holding.

Looking forward to hearing more about the sale of the last two properties!

With your workload, it’s smart to consider waiting until you have more time up your sleeve to take on a real estate project. You can always outsource management to a property manager, but there’s always the ultimate responsibility of managing the manager, and obviously researching and picking the right properties to buy. REITs offer great exposure to real estate with zero time management :)

Woohoo! Congrats Dana!

At the same time, I work 50-60 hours a week currently and have small children and I just don’t feel like I can manage that AND the rental properties. I love the passive aspect of the REIT. So I think for the time being I will stick to the REITs to keep life simpler, even if it means giving up some profits.

I should be at 50% of my FIRE number by end of the year. I think I will actually retire in 5-8 years at age 46-49 and possibly look to buy a rental property and try it out then when I have more bandwidth and my kids are older.

Maybe, maybe not. Returns aren’t dependent solely on the property type, or just a few specific factors. It’s more like 1000 little things that make a rental investment good or not. Location (near good schools, healthy amount of jobs, easy access, fun community, malls, good eats, healthy city progress, low crime, parks nearby, etc.) is a huge contributing factor, no matter whether it’s a SFH or multi-family.

I don’t regret buying 4-plexes. I regret rushing into so many without a clear end goal. Now I have to backtrack a little.

Cheers JM! I’m keeping 1 physical rental, which is a duplex that cashflows well and has long term tenants. Also I have several syndication deals (apt complexes) that are passive and dependable. So i’m not exiting real estate completely, just the physical properties that suck up most of my time. :)

Good luck on the sale and congrats on simplifying you portfolio!

I had to pay for depreciation recapture for the first one which wasn’t that bad, since I didn’t own it that long– 3 years, and the current one in escrow I’ve owned for 4 years. The other one I had I’ve owned since 2006; and since there’s a ton of equity, I know I’ll get hit with a big depreciation recapture bill. The tenant so far (2 years +) has been stellar, but I know that the hvac, water heater etc’s shelf life is fast approaching.

What I might end up doing is 1/2 real estate and 1/2 index funds, stocks. I hear you on the passive component of index funds though. Someone once told me, whenever you receive a call from your property manager– it’s never good news. It can be neutral news, but it’s either that or bad news.

Keep up the great content.

jm