Houston Southard

Winona (Acquired July, 2018)

I bought this little lady in the summer of 2018 for $195,000 and started living for free. The only thing I knew about money back then was how to spend it. I had $70,000 in debt, $12,000 of which was on the cards from seeing if I could wear that strip on the back clean off.

I had bad credit, was loaned the seasoned down payment, and used my 401k as collateral for reserves. Turns out you don’t actually need money to acquire income-producing assets.

I moved in to that bottom left unit to satisfy the requirements of my 3.5% down FHA loan, put good tenants in at market rent, replaced a sink here and a fridge there, and refinanced into a conventional loan in the summer of 2020. It’s now valued at $320,000.

Little known secret: when you convert out of an FHA loan, you can go get another one, which is how we get to sweet Oleatha.