Thanks
Are they local? Do you manage them yourself or with an agency? Any regrets?
Was a little off on my timeline, the first one I bought was in 2015, house is maybe 10 minutes from me. It was near foreclosure, needed some work. I managed it myself for two years on my own to learn the business end of property management. I am not a handy guy around the house and it forced me to learn to fix small things and also the costs and dealing with vendors that can happen in property management. I knew i wanted to expand my real estate holdings and I thought learning that before hiring a manager would be valuable experience. I will say my first tenant there was pretty easy as well.
I hired a manager for that property after two years. He got enough extra rent through his marketing, and honestly my limited marketing and time to put into finding tenants, to cover his fee. That has been nice because trust me that the calls with problems will come at the most inconvenient times when you do it yourself. That was in 2017, that same year I acquired three condos in a college town a couple hours away. I had lived there before, knew the complex and was familiar with the real estate/property management company.
I purchased another house last year to place with the same property manager I have locally. So as it stands right now everything I have is under a property manager (two local houses with one company, three condos in a college town with another). I do have a beach place I bought as preconstruction back in 2017 as well that is just now being completed. That one has been the biggest appreciation at least from a dollars standpoint of all of them, but I get unsolicited offers all the time from that first house in 2015 offering me in excess of 50% over what I paid.
As far as regrets, it's easy to say now but it was passing on a second house back in 2015. I was trying to decide between two similar houses, should have bought both. I also have had numerous shots at adding another unit at the college complex and lost out. One over a $500 difference. Lost a second beach preconstruction unit over a price change that took place over a weekend when I tried to get one under contract on a Friday afternoon. I can be stubborn and in real estate you should never take negotiations that way. Of course all those regrets are in a rising price environment, it can't stay this way forever.