Journey To Becoming A Landlord
2007-04-01
I believe real estate is in my blood. My Dad bought a 20 unit apartment building when I was a small child. Nobody we knew owned rental property. Dad was a porter for a major airline company so I don’t know where he got the idea. At his peak, he owned the apartment building and two rental homes. One was a two family flat that was our first home. The other was a single family that he rented out to his brother.
After I got married, my Dad gave us the apartment building. At the time I was doing my full time corporate career thing and didn’t take any interest in the property. When we moved from Detroit to Atlanta I quickly learned that long distance management has many pitfalls. Even though my husband’s cousin was supposed to be managing the building my husband had to make far to many trips back to Detroit to deal with problems.
Eventually that building became damaged and was declared a total loss by the insurance company. By this time being a landlord had gotten in my husband’s blood. He went on to purchase a half dozen more apartment buildings after we returned to Detroit.
We had owned property for 10 years before I started taking an active part in the business. I got a buy-out from my corporate job and finally slowed down enough to see what he had amassed.
The good news was that we had some valuable property that could produce enough income so that I would not have to return to work. The bad news was that due to mismanagement of the income a lot of important bills were overdue. My husband was a visionary, not a detail-oriented manager.
So I took over the management of the apartment building. I combined the skills I had learned in Corporate America with the systems he had in place that were working. There was some trials and errors, some tears and triumphs but eventually everything started going smoothly.
In 1996 my husband died unexpectantly and I was left with the total responsibility of managing the property. Thank God for good help. I don’t know how I would have made it without loyal people around me.
Eventually I got the confidence to start making some purchases on my own. So now I have experience in not only managing property but buying, fixing and selling, too. That’s where I’m coming from with this blog. I hope to share my experiences and gain insight from the experiences of others.