One year ago, my wife and I were living paycheck to paycheck. I was working a job I didn’t want to be at while she was attending college. On January 10, 1998 I quit my job (family business) out of frustration. Having no job and no income gave me the motivation I needed to dive into real estate investing.
I ordered Lonnie’s books [Deals on Wheels and Making Money with Mobile Homes] from CRE Online and we started with buying a $4,500 mobile home. One week later, we had sold it for $9,500 on a contract.
That one deal was all I needed to realize that investing in real estate was my future. I began looking diligently for more mobile homes to buy when we came across a 10-unit mobile home park with seven mobile homes included.
We signed a contract to purchase the park and, at the last minute (with no money to our name), decided we were going to the CRE Online Convention in Las Vegas. My wife and I flew out to Vegas to the Convention, which helped pave the way to our future in real estate. When we returned from Vegas with armloads of materials we had purchased, we closed on the mobile home park (with none of our money into the deal).
A few weeks after getting home, we signed a contract to purchase another mobile home park, this one a 20-unit park which included six mobile homes and also 50 storage units. We purchased that park with none of our own money and walked away from closing with $12,000 in our pocket.
All of these purchases occurred between January and May of 1998, and all this happened while we knew very little about what we were doing. It was definitely a growing and learning process.
It is now December 1998, and we have done many more deals since May, including mobile homes and houses. Our focus is now single-family houses. We’re buying, and/or lease optioning homes and then leasing with an option (rent to own).
We’re having more fun than we’ve ever had; we’re making more money than I made when I had a job; we’re free to do whatever we want whenever we want; and we’re in a business that we’re passionate about. Not just because we can make a lot of money, but because it’s so fun to help people get a home who would normally never own a home. That’s why I quit my job–to enjoy my life.