Nevada Real Estate >> Las Vegas Real Estate Specialist: Free Webinar! How I Achieved Wealth Through Buying & Selling Real Estate & How You Can Too!

Let me give you a small background on where I came from. I came from a middle, upper class family with a semi-strict upbringing and I never had anything handed to me on a silver platter, although my friends that I attended high school with did. I have three siblings one that is 13 months younger than me and one that is 11 years younger than me and one that is 15 years younger than me. I was very close with my brother, the one who is just a year younger than me. We learned how to scrape and survive on our own. We both had jobs when I we were 15. Can I say my parents NEVER HANDED me anything? Not really. I got handed some of the best tools to succeed in my little adult world, even though I struggled on what I wanted to do when I grew up.

My dad always had a fantastic work ethic and almost everyone knows him where I come from. He always had a penchant for real estate but wasn't involved in it career wise. I always suspected that is what he wanted to do when he grew up! He was lucky with almost every real estate deal he touched (save one, early 80's, you figure it out!) and pushed me early in my married life to own, buy and sell. He is very very clever with real estate and flips homes without very little help from a Realtor. My brother and I grasped that taste and have careers in real estate. He is a custom home builder in the midwest and he isn't as conservative as I am with the way he views real estate so his success is quintuple (or more) of mine. We both were taught the same concepts and values but used different means to achieve our goals/dreams.

I personally feel I am attracted to the Profession of Real Estate because everyone needs a home and everyone who practices the virtues of building wealth through real estate can attain wealth.

In my eyes, there is no way to "Get Rich Quick" in real estate. If anyone tells you that, they are making a quick buck off of you and getting rich quick off of a person being naive.  But you can attain wealth throughout a lifetime of owning real estate. The virtues to gain this wealth are: patience, perseverance, delayed gratification and a good eye:

• Patience: You must be prepared to be patient while your home appreciates in value.
• Perseverance: Outline your goals and develop a long term plan. You must understand that it takes time, money and a plan to achieve your goals.
• Delayed Gratification: You must understand that you cannot continually cash out or use your home as an ATM as it appreciates if you want to stay in check with your plan. Be prepared to live a different lifestyle & sacrifice. Be careful with buying fancy cars, clothes and accessories and things that you really don't need, that don't appreciate in value and don't coincide with long term goals.
• Good Eye: Choose your home in a neighborhood with good appreciation value. Buy the smallest home in the neighborhood (as a rule of thumb larger homes are priced at lower prices per square feet.) Go to "the sticks" and find a home, check your local planning department. With growth comes jobs, with jobs comes the need for housing. Trust your gut instincts when you do your research.

I want to share how I accidentally applied these virtues and goals, without realizing it, and combined luck with success to make money I had never dreamed of! Here is my story:

I married at the very young age of 19 - and I am still married to the same man - 18 years on May 20^th. Save four months of living with his mom when we moved to Las Vegas and found jobs and housing & another four months of living in an apartment between a house sale and severely delayed new construction build, my husband and I have always owned our own homes.

Our first home was a 10x60 single wide trailer that we bought in February 1989 for $5000. Our monthly payment was $200 and lot rent was $150. The birth of our first child made it too small and we decided to buy a bigger home a year and a half later. My favorite memory in that house was rocking my lil boy on our swing and having a lovely view of the freeway right from my front porch. We ended up selling it for $2000 more than we bought it a year earlier! This does not happen with manufactured homes. We realized this appreciation because we bought on the smaller, older and low end and did some minor repairs and put new carpet and paint and surface work into it totaling less than a couple hundred dollars. I did have a "hook-up" with the carpeting, that is why it was so cheap.

Our second home was bought for sale by owner with an FHA loan and the sellers paid closing costs. We paid 54,999 for it and closed July 1989. It was a great 3 BR, 1 BA ranch with an unfinished basement on a lot that was close to 1/3 of an acre. I wasn't even 21 years old and was so appreciative of this opportunity! Our monthly payment was $434 and some change. My husband and I had another baby in this home and my favorite memories are of their early childhood: batman meets curly haired girl and the both of them playing without a care in the world on their huge play gym and sand pit. I also opened an in home daycare immediately when we moved in. This allowed us so much: Me to stay at home with my children, income to help my husband have a job where he could mostly concentrate on school and I could go to school through correspondence. I can't tell you how many nights I passed out cold within 1 minute of shutting my eyes laying on my bed! I worked so many 60 hour weeks running a business, studied, raised my kids while my husband worked/went to school! I dreamt for the big payoff to happen and maybe to spend time with my husband alone some day! In the mid nineties when my husband finished school, I went back to school and then finished up with a shiny real estate license in the end! Our big goal was to end up in Las Vegas some day. I didn't realize how quick that day was coming! My husband landed his first job in electronics which (after a series of layoffs) landed him one of the very slot electronics jobs in Council Bluffs, IA. He was #12 out of 12 hired with over 300 applicants! He worked that job for several years before we decided to do something very risky and take the plunge in 1997. Our house sold for $84,500 in December 1997. We owned the second to smallest home in the neighborhood, finished the basement for less than $5000 and saw appreciation mostly due to development of major retail centers/medical corridors within only a couple of miles in all directions. We struggled so much in this home with money (which was always nonexistent) that most repairs and improvements were made by us. Did you know I can plumb a toilet and finish drywall? Through all of the pain, sacrifice & struggle my husband and I had in our early years in this home we learned all of the virtues of building wealth through buying and selling real estate and that would be practiced through our later purchases!

We moved to Las Vegas on December 27, 1997. We moved in with my husband's mother in order to find suitable jobs/area and housing. We found our third home in April 1998. It was another FHA loan, closing costs paid by seller and we bought it for $124,000. It was 3 BR and 3 BA. What was I ever to do with 3 baths? Our monthly payment was $995 and it was still cheaper than renting something comparable! My favorite memories include my kids playing roller hockey and riding their bikes in this neighborhood that was so full of life and other children their age! My husband worked with a large slot machine vendor when we started out in Las Vegas and then he switched jobs and moved to a casino just a couple of blocks from our house. Literally two right turns, and then two lefts. We struggled during this time too as the casino he worked for filed bankruptcy and we played it out waiting and worrying if he would lose his job some day. Several years and management companies later, he landed himself some job stability when someone bought the company on the same property! He started to move up the ladder and our house was growing small for our growing children and the cranky neighbor behind us was making me lose my sanity. I also wanted to get the kids in a different high school than what we were zoned for. The search was on! We sold our third home for $166,900 in August 2002. We realized large appreciation because we bought the medium sized home in the neighborhood and it was in an area that had large growth in a short amount of time. Where there was once desert there was now large shopping/retail and restaurant areas (Called Boca Park) and 2 casinos Suncoast and Rampart (the one where my husband works!)

We lived in an apartment between the time our house sold and was being built and finally closed on our Fourth and present home on December 23, 2002.  4 Bedrooms/3 Full baths. I don't know why I am a glutton for punishment with December closes! We bought it for $235,000 and our house payment is $1800. We struggled with the purchase as we saw the area growth potential but weren't exactly sure if we would achieve quick appreciation with this home like we did the other. We saw comparable homes in our neighborhood for rent and wondered if the rental return would ever come close any time soon. In one year (Jan 2004), our house was appraised for $45,000 more and we spent $20,000 putting in a pool as our appreciation could justify the expense. What we didn't know that would lie in the year ahead is that we would watch our house triple in value and be able to refinance our second into a fixed product that would be cheaper than our first (flippin 3 year pre-payment penalty!) In this home, I have watched my beautiful children blossom into adults and we are in the twilight of them getting ready to fly the coop. I decided I wanted to be a real estate agent when I grow up and my husband has moved up the ladder quickly. My home is currently worth $450,000, but to me, this is my forever home so it is priceless!  The views we get of the mountains & Red Rock Canyon from our porch swing of our master bedroom balcony, the relaxation we get from  our own pool and backyard (that we designed ourselves, but the picture shows all of the plants that died this year from the cold) is also something money cannot buy.  Rental value on it has gone from $1200 in 2002 to $2000 presently. All of our initial worries were justified in less than four years. Our goal is to have this paid off around the time we turn 60 (before would be better but I don't like to stress myself out over it!) so we can enjoy our lives and retirement together!  Oh yes, and I will never forget where I come from!  I remember and appreciate it each and every night when I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and that bathroom is in my bedroom!  When we moved here, the directions to get to our home were "go to the edge of the earth and take a left".  Now there is a huge medical corridor and TWO hospitals within two miles along with an abundance of retail/restaurants.  We don't have to go "to town" anymore to get groceries!

Advice for buying your first home:

•  Set Goals!
• Start saving
• Buy young, you can do it!
• Learn how to do your own home improvements to save money. Local hardware stores hold seminars on how to faux paint, set tile, basic plumbing, etc and they are mostly FREE!
• Do not buy more than you can afford. Entry level housing is just that. When you start buying young you appreciate small and it being yours. You appreciate every move up.
• Be patient for the value to rise
• Wait for your stars to align to move up
• Learn how to sacrifice
• Align yourself with a good Realtor/Lender & Tax Professional who will keep you up to speed on when it is a good time to buy or sell, refinance, and if the tax benefits of owning outweigh renting
• Do your own homework and research the area and it's potential
• Stay focused on your goals!

You must also view your home as an investment vehicle: knowing when your stars are aligned and buy and sell at the right time. This should coincide with your goals. Your stars are aligned when you:

• Have the need for a housing change
• Your Home has appreciated in value enough that you have enough equity to provide for a reasonable down payment on a new property
• You have had a change in job status that forces you to consider a relocation, upsize or downsize.

My best advice that I can give you to achieve wealth: Celebrate Success, Stay Humble and Learn from Your Failures. Use Your Successes and Failures to Teach Yourself How to Become Resourceful.

If you are an AR member with a similar story:  please post about it and link it here!

copyright 2006-2011 Renee Burrows, REALTOR®, The Force Realty  702-966-2494

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