Another Leap

At this point in my life I am about to leap off the cliff again. This will be my second go-round with real estate. At age 53, after going through numerous financial and personal trials I have no liquid cash, no college savings and am woefully under-prepared for retirement. Three years ago I underwent a costly divorce that took much of my retirement and all of my liquid assets and added to my debt substantially. I have since remarried. Now I have 4 children between the ages of 13-16 who will be reaching college age when I am in my late 50's.


I have tried a multitude of investments and some businesses in the past. I had a fifteen year fore-way into network marketing, I've invested unsuccessfully in the stock market and commodity futures. In the early 1980's I purchased 10 rental properties and lost money on all but one. At that time I was buying properties in WV. They seemed like a good deal - owners were desperate to sell and I thought I got great deals. Unfortunately, the population was at the beginning of a downward spiral which deflated real estate prices even more.


I ended losing money on every property but one. I gave 5 back to the original owner and sold others at a loss. I had to sell my primary residence and moved into one of the rentals ( a triplex). While living in that we converted it to a single family home. Unfortunately, do to personal situation I had to leave WV and sold the house to my company. I had purchased it for $35,000, put $65,ooo in rehab and sold it for $122,000. One year later it sold for $199,000, but someone else made most of the profit.


Now I am going to try real estate again. Again I am in an area of decling population (Buffalo). So, I hope to be a little smarter. We bought a house last spring for $81,000 and put $17,000 in rehab in. Now it is being lease-optioned (rent-to-own) for $1050 per month with a sales price of $135,000. So my strategy is to buy, rehab and try to hold only for a short time. I've invested over $2500 in real estate courses, formed an LLC, bought a website
http://www.jinnaproperties.com/. I have purchased some online real estate information from FirstAmerical Real Estate and am gong to go gung-ho into this.


While my wife and I have been setting this up, she learned her mother had a severe stroke. So today (Thanksgiving) she got on a plan to return to China, leaving me with her daughter. Looks like the next few months will be more extreme