In June of 2018, I started the Stage Four Reia and Colin Charles and I were the only two people at the first meeting. In January of 2019, Mink Properties LLC was born. This is a partnership with Colin, Dominca, and I. Please visit our website at www.minkproperties.com.

Let’s run the numbers
I bought my first condo for cash. I had about 80K in the stock market and sold it to pay cash for my condo. This was around 1997 and I bought the condo for somewhere around 60K. In in May of 2000, I sold it for 62K and bought a 3 bd 1ba house in Vergennes VT for 94K in June of 2000.  As mentioned, I started house hacking by finishing a basement room and renting out the three bedroom house. This covered my mortgage for the two years that I owned that house. I sold it in June of 2002 for 114.2K and bought the duplex for 129K in June or July of 2002. Again, I house hacked by living in one side and renting the other side to a retired electrician. The duplex needed a roof and full electrical rewiring among other things.
I let the renter stay for free for the first year and he and I rehabbed the duplex. I did all this while working on my associates degree and working a full time job. In 2004, I moved to Florida for work and kept the duplex in Vermont. I bought a condo in Florida that rose in price during the 1.5 years that I lived there. The market had started to decline in Florida and I barely got out of there with a 40k profit. Another job move brought me to DC. I bought a condo in Maryland just before the bubble burst in 2007-2008.  I paid 179K and it has never recovered. It is now my second rental because my wife and I bought a house.
Fast forward to late 2017 and my friend Dr. Waithe told me about Bigger Pockets. From 2002 to 2017, I took a break from investment properties to focus on college and get a Ph.D.
I was listening to Dave Ramsey podcasts and then stumbled across the Bigger Pockets podcast in early 2018. I was new to podcasts so it took me a couple months to start listening to the Bigger Pockets podcast. I started with show number 1 and by show 5, I was hooked. I have listened to 100 shows between early 2018 and mid 2018. I took breaks from listening to the podcasts to listen to the books that the guests mentioned.  I started looking for properties in March of 2018 and in May I bought another duplex. This time in Alabama. I will close on it in June of 2018 which brings me to five doors. In November of 2018, I went back down to Alabama and bought a 4 unit. This brings me to 9 doors.

This is my first post. I started buying real estate in about 1997. It was a condo in Middlebury VT.  I sold that for a slight profit and bought a house in Vergennes Vermont. The house had a basement room and separate entrance, so I had a bathroom installed and I lived in the basement and rented out the top of the house for 2 years. It was a 3 bedroom 1 bath house and it rented for the full mortgage. This was my first house hacking experience. I recently joined Bigger Pockets, where they discuss this strategy. 

After two years, I sold the house and bought a duplex in Vergennes Vermont. I have had that property since 2003 or 2004. I have made many landlording mistakes with that property, but I have just turned it over to a property manager. I will tell you about some of my mistakes in the next post as well as bring you up to date on my current activity.