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Category Archives: rental properties

Why Would I Sell?

When you decide to sell or continue holding an investment property, there aren’t any right or wrong decisions—only consequences. It’s important to be mindful of those consequences and make the right decision for the information you have at the time. Then live with the consequences without regrets.

So you have a nice rental property with multiple income streams. Why would you want to sell it?

A lot of reasons may influence your decision.

A Better Life for Everyone
Several of our tenants have fallen in love with their rental and asked us to sell it to them. They get a house they know and love. If they have traditional financing, we get a chunk of cash to reinvest. If we owner-finance, we get a much smaller chunk of cash, but we continue to have passive income without the expenses of renting.

Continue reading →

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Properties for Sale in Abilene

Walking away…

The Mangums are selling two rental properties in Abilene, Texas.

  1. 410 San Jose
  2. 809 Peake

San Jose house

These were some of our earliest investments, and have been cash-flowing and appreciating consistently the whole time. Even though both of us still have family in Abilene, Carol and I are shifting our efforts southward to the San Marcos and San Antonio markets. Continue reading →

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We Have a House for Rent

The front of the house, showing the lovely trees.

Great news for those of you who have been asking us so patiently! We have a very nice house for rent in Cameron, Texas for $1100/month. We are now accepting applications.

We don’t have a page for this house, because we haven’t renovated it (just fixed a few things). The same tenant has occupied it since before we bought it, so it must be a great family home. I believe he was there a total of almost ten years. That’s a long time to pay rent.

I’m proud to say the tenant told me he’s buying a house. As much as I like to keep good tenants, I like seeing them step up to home ownership, too, even when they don’t buy their new house from the Hermits. Continue reading →

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Location, Location, Right?

It’s a cute and festive office. Just loud outside.

If you have even dabbled into real estate only to buy your own personal home, you’ve heard the saying that the most important factor in buying and selling property is location, location, location. Lately we’ve been reminded of that fact in a number of our decisions about what to do with a property.

For example, Lee and I will have vacancies coming up on a couple of our Cameron properties, so we’ve discussed what to do with the houses. We were talking about what a great house our current office would be for a family, with four bedrooms, two baths, a laundry room, a deck, and charming details. But, that house and the one next to it are on the main highway going through town. That’s not ideal if you have small children or are a light sleeper. So, the rent on that one won’t be as high as it would be even a few blocks over (in a good direction, at least).

Look at all that valuable land. Or potentially valuable. What about building apartments?

The properties also have huge lots, as you can see, plus there’s an existing warehouse on the property. Maybe it would be better as a business rental. The smaller house might even do better moved to another location (calling Texas Flip and Move! Where are those Snow Sisters?*). Then we could build duplexes or something there. So we have lots to think about.

Another example is this property we looked at recently. It’s in a small town and is well maintained, other than some needed foundation work and roofing. However, it’s being offered at a surprisingly low price. Why? All it takes is looking around. It’s literally on the “wrong side of the tracks,” and most properties on the street appear to be in such poor shape no one could live in them, while others have been very poorly maintained. There are two other reasonable properties. Plop this house elsewhere, and it would be just fine.

Not bad at all for an old house. Just not in the right place.

The house we just got in Temple, on the other hand, looks bad, but is near a lot of nice things and is surrounded by houses that are fixed up. In this case, location is a plus!

*Texas Flip and Move is a DIY channel show where quaint Texans with stereotypical accents buy old houses move them, and fix them up to be vacation houses, lake houses, and such. People buy them at auction then move them to some…place.

The actual tracks the yellow house is on the other side of.

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Carol Saves the Day at Villa Park

You may remember our Villa Park casita, where Anita and I lived last year, and which had the most disaster-fraught renovation in history. We rebuilt this little house completely, saving only the shell of the outside (the city required we keep the dimensions and roofline). We even installed a new, real, foundation to replace the three slabs with no rebar and no plumbing it previously had.

We had a hard time renting it out last year, because we were unable to stage it once we moved to the Bobcat Lair, and people being unhappy that it shared the yard with the house in front. But, when we did get a fence and all that, we got some really great renters who were settling in nicely. One of them even got an award at the local elementary school.

Unfortunately, the other renter got a great job promotion that required moving to scenic Bentonville, Arkansas (there are other companies besides Wal-Mart there). We certainly didn’t want to force them to stay, so Carol jumped on getting it rented again.

Why it worked this time

We were motivated, because if we couldn’t get it rented, the renters would have to pay until we did, but if we rented it quickly, their initial deposit would cover that. Carol got to work and made this nice Facebook ad:

You get a screenshot, because I can’t make it play here.

Click the link to see it live, I hope.

https://www.facebook.com/BigAustinHome/videos/1800913923318570/

We all shared it everywhere we possibly could. People lined up to see the space (literally, four families went to see it in 15-minute intervals), and it was rented in just a few days to some other fine folks with no kids and no pets! Hooray!

It worked because the tenants had decorated the casita nicely, which showed how well it “lived.” The current tenants cleaned it up (they were motivated) to perfection, so people just loved the place.

That’s a real lesson to remember: staging truly helps sell or rent houses. I now really wish I’d done a better job the first time.

We sure appreciate Carol’s hard work to get the casita rented so fast! Lee and I won’t even notice a drop in our cash flow. Win!

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