Building Wealth As An Accidental Landlord

I thought my timing was perfect. It was 2006. The real estate bubble had burst and property values were plummeting in the D.C. area. After years of seeing other people make a killing off of real estate, it was finally my turn.

A few months earlier, I received a big raise at my job. My savings account topped $20,000 for the first time. I felt like I was rolling in the dough.

That’s when I bought my first property.

As we all know now, the bubble didn’t burst in 2006. It was only starting to deflate. My timing wasn’t so perfect after all as the bigger financial crisis was around the corner.

At the depths of the crisis, the value of my condo unit bottomed out at $50,000 below what I paid for it.

Not too long after the bottom, Mrs. RBD and I moved to a house in the suburbs to start a family. Instead of selling the condo at a major loss, we decided to make it a rental property.

Our former home became an investment and I became an accidental landlord.

For this week’s post, I’m sending you over to my friend Chad Carson’s site CoachCarson.com for an article I wrote for his Investor Profile series.

Chad is a real estate investor and blogger who owns 90 rental units! He’s an expert on using real estate strategies to become financially independent. He’s currently spending a year living in Ecuador with his family while his real estate business continues to flourish at home in South Carolina.

This is the first post in a new series profiling ordinary real estate investors. I’m no real estate mogul. Just a guy with a property who needed to rent it so I didn’t lose my shirt.

Five years after making it a rental, the property cash flows positively and is helping us build wealth. But that wasn’t always the case. I fought through a bad second mortgage and made big sacrifices to pay down additional principal. Then refinanced twice to make the cash flow numbers work.

I share all the numbers and a few pictures.

As an accidental landlord, I hope my rental story can help others in a similar situation. For anyone aspiring to become a home owner or investor, the piece contains many lessons learned about what not to do when buying a home or investment property.

To learn about successful real estate investing, be sure to subscribe to Coach Carson’s newsletter and follow his blog. Click the button below to check it out.

Visit Coach Carson to Read the Profile 

Over the life of this blog, I’ve written numerous articles about real estate investing and being an accidental landlord. It’s not my primary source of investment income, but real estate, in one form or another, is a solid asset that should play a part in building wealth.

In addition to the condo and traditional REITs, I’m investing on real estate crowdfunding platforms including Fundrise to build passive income. Check out these other articles for more.

A Beginners Guide to Real Estate Crowdfunding
Should I Refinance My Mortgage?
Should I Sell My Rental Property?
Why Buying A Condo Rental Is A Bad Idea
Rent Increase – An Easy Boost To Cash Flow
The Details Of My Rental Property

Please note: This is a testimonial in partnership with Fundrise. We earn a commission from partner links on RetireBeforeDad.com. All opinions are my own.

Photo credit Ján Jakub Naništa via Unsplash

Craig Stephens

Craig is a former IT professional who left his 19-year career to be a full-time finance writer. A DIY investor since 1995, he started Retire Before Dad in 2013 as a creative outlet to share his investment portfolios. Craig studied Finance at Michigan State University and lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and three children. Read more.