10/19/2022
🚨Long / sentimental / story-time post alert🚨
Two and a half years ago, I (Mark) met my soul mate. 100%, no doubt, unequivocally the person I was meant to be with. Through this meeting came a LOT of life changes for both of us. What mattered though was that we were coming together pave an entirely new kind of life for ourselves and for our family.
Soon after our daughter Frankie was born at the end of 2020 and through that process of figuring out what type of life would truly make us both happy, we started gravitating toward real estate. So with some guidance from Rachel's brother, we started doing our homework and listening to the Bigger Pockets Podcast. It quickly became an obsession. I needed to learn everything about everything. From that single podcast, we started ordering book after book after book to further our RE knowledge.... and the more we learned, the more we wanted to keep going, the more it looked like we had found our path to financial freedom and the type of life that would truly be fulfilling for us and our kids.
The "American Dream" that had been shoved down all our throats for so long, sitting behind a desk for a big company for 35 years and hoping you're healthy enough to have a few good years of retirement... that was killing us, and we had found our way out. So after gaining enough knowledge to be dangerous, we made our first official RE move in May of 2021, purchasing our primary residence, then subsequently selling Rachel's house that we had previously been living in. This wasn't the move we wanted to make, but it was the move that set us up for what we wanted to build.
From those moves, and for the first time ever, we had some savings ready to invest, so we started looking. And we looked and we looked and we looked more... but it was the height of real estate insanity of 2021 and we just didn't have enough to win the bidding wars and pay the inflated prices we were seeing. But we didn't stop and finally we found a property that fit. I ran the numbers 100 times and this looked like the one. We called up Rachel's brother and he liked the idea so much, that he wanted to partner with us on the deal.
A few days later we had our first accepted offer on what was to become our first rental property. Now... this property needed WORK (another post to come on that), but after closing in the last week of 2021, we broke ground on a complete rehab in January of 2022, less than a year after we first heard anything about making a life in real estate. After a monster Five and a half month rehab, we officially launched "Garrett's Loft" as a short term rental in June of 2022... but that was just the beginning.
The type of project we chose in Garrett's Loft, was known as a BRRRR and we still needed to complete the third "R" of that strategy, the Refinance. So we started our first cash-out-refi process... which took.... much longer than expected. The good news was we still had some of our investment left over, since we had a partner on our first purchase, so we kept our feelers out there for our next one.
And that's when things really got crazy. We were planning a camping trip with the kids to Mohican, but it reminded me of how much I loved going to Hocking Hills growing up, so I randomly threw that area into my search on Zillow... and I found some intriguing properties, one in particular that was a perfect candidate for another BRRRR, which led me to reaching out to an agent in Hocking, just to see...
Welllll after being on the market for the last 135 days, wouldn't you know someone made an offer on it the day after I inquired about it 🤦♂️. I was bummed, but honestly it was probably the wrong fit for our first out-of-town rental anyway, and what came from my conversation with that realtor was even better.
Over the next week, we got back to wedding planning, parenting, and in general just breathing a little bit, but we did make one real estate move that week, when we attended a local REI Meetup. Now... I'm terrible at these things, but Rachel is much better and pushed me to go.. and I'm so glad we did. During that meetup, we had a new lender to the area overhear a conversation we were having with some other investors and come introduce herself. She was great, and her and Rach exchanged numbers and we went on our way.
The NEXT day I get a call from that same Realtor in Hocking. She was leading the team that was about to list another house in the area she thought would be perfect for us. So I throw all the numbers into my plethora of spreadsheets and... well... it did look perfect for us... but we didn't have a lender able to provide the product we needed... wait...
Rachel promptly shoots a text to our new lender friend and 24hrs later we had a pre-approval in our hand, made an offer, and had it accepted! Uhhhhhh but the closing day is the week after our wedding... Did I mention that? We were planning our wedding during all this? With two toddlers? And also refinancing our first rental??? Ehhh whatever, we'll be fine.
So one month later it ALL came together, and the plans we started putting into motion in May of 2021, were all about to come to fruition. And that's exactly what happened. And all in the same week, we closed our cash-out-refi, we got married in an amazing ceremony with our friends and family, and promptly packed up the kids for Hocking Hills, where we closed on our next deal.
5 weeks from that day, we launched "The Frances Rose", our first rental in The Hocking Hills and a springboard to the next step in our family's amazing journey.
Final thoughts I hope everyone takes to heart:
- If someone in your circle says your dreams aren’t attainable, you’re in the wrong circle.
- It’s NEVER too late to completely change the path your life is on.
- Your Network is your Net Worth
🍻
Husband and wife team, creating unique and memorable vacation experiences for the guests we love.
