The tenant, the seller, the closing that went sideways. No lesson required.
I bought a corner lot with a 1954 house on it because I wanted the dirt. Half an acre, three streets away from a plant that keeps getting money spent on it, and my whole plan was…
I left a job in logistics eight months ago to figure out how to do this and I've been collecting stories from anybody who'll talk to me. My old boss found out what I was up to and…
Take a subject-to scenario worth studying closely: a divorce situation, a house in a first-ring suburb, the loan in one person's name alone at a low fixed rate from a recent refin…
I had an appointment at a title office to ask what a closing actually costs on a first deal, because every number I'd been given online was a range wide enough to drive a truck th…
A pattern that shows up often enough on voucher turnovers that it is worth telling as a story. Say a landlord buys a small duplex and decides to rent the downstairs unit to a vouc…
A friend manages a 340 unit property and said I could sit in the leasing office on a Saturday if I wanted to see what the job actually looks like. I've been poking around the serv…
Spent about five months on a jobsite last year that I didn't understand until near the end. Single story, enormous, no windows, concrete everywhere. I was on the electrical crew r…
I pay a bit over eleven thousand a year for an LP group. Twenty something people who write checks into other people's deals, monthly calls, one meetup a year in a conference room…
Reading the CC&Rs on a lot before an offer goes in is worth doing even when it feels unusual. Take a subdivision of about 90 homes with covenants recorded in 1978, including a cla…
A 3D walkthrough is worth treating as marketing, not documentation. Take a listing with a nice house priced under the block, staged in the photos with a gray sectional and a rug.…
I've been driving for dollars for four months and finally got a real conversation. Vacant looking ranch, overgrown, mail piled behind the screen. Owner called me back from three s…
Say an analyst spends about six weeks building a spreadsheet for performing notes: remaining term, rate, purchase price as a percent of balance, yield to maturity, and a column st…
Still working through licensing and doing the errands that come with being the newest person attached to a brokerage. One of those errands is going to a house early, turning on ev…
A pattern worth knowing before applying for a line of credit against a rental. Say the owner has held it six years and the bank comes back with a value 61,000 under the owner's nu…
Tagging along on an appraisal for a house under contract is instructive. A typical appraiser walkthrough on a split level might take nine minutes: a laser measurement of the main…
Day job moved offices in the fall. Old place had a server room with a glass door, a rack, its own little wall mounted air conditioner that dripped, and a sign nobody obeyed about…
A 3/2 brick rental in a small midwest town, 1,180 square feet, tenant already in place at a workable rent, cash purchase, no lender, closes without incident on paper. At the table…
Some due diligence only happens by showing up. Take an investor who has spent months reading about a target county and finally drives to the local housing authority office with no…
A story worth telling about what a service contractor learns bidding a data center, because it changes how you read that kind of property. Picture a small commercial cleaning oper…
Take a hard money loan of $55,000 behind a small duplex conversion, a six month interest-only term with a balloon, lent to a contractor known through a mutual connection over seve…
