There are 3 important aspects of a property you need to evaluate… these are the same for almost every investment property.  

Physical Characteristics

The first aspect of a property is its physical characteristics.  This includes things like:

• square footage,
• number of units/rooms/bathrooms/etc.
• amenities (stainless steel appliances, gym, pool, etc)
• architecture
• class of property
• property condition
• location, etc.
 
The size, characteristics, and location will determine who wants to be your tenant, how much they’re willing to pay, what kind of appreciation you’ll be able to get.  When you’re assessing a property you want to consider all of these characteristics and what it means for your rental price.  

You will also want to assess how you could improve the property to it’s highest and best use or to get the highest and best rents.  Sometimes the best...

"Take every opportunity to hang out with people who inspire and uplift you." - Monick Halm

If you’re a Mompreneur, you should be investing in real estate.  In this article, I’ll share 5 big reasons why.

But first, how would I know?

I am an entrepreneur, mom of three, and I have been a real estate investor for 14 years now.  I started with duplexes and single family home flips and my husband and I are now invested in apartment complexes and mobile home parks.  With our investors, we own over 1200 rental doors in 6 states.

Real estate investment has been great for my family’s finances and lifestyle.

Even though there are surprisingly few women in this space, real estate investment is a wonderful side-business for women.

As an avid investor and real estate investment mentor, I’m always striving to improve my skills and knowledge in this field, so I attend a lot of real estate conferences and seminars.  When I’m in these conferences, often less than 10% of the attendees are women.

It’s surprising because real estate is...

I have to admit I was scared.

I took a deep breath as I signed the check request for $75,000.  If we didn’t get the $3,075,000 we needed to purchase this 77-unit building plus the $500,000 to renovate it, we would lose the $75,000 earnest money.  

We had never bought an apartment building before.  Up to this date, the largest thing we’d ever managed was a duplex.  I looked at my husband.  He seemed a little pale.  I’m sure I did too.  I took his hand in mine.  “Let’s do this,”  I said.

A week later we put in an offer for another building – 51 units, selling for $1,800,000.

Three months later, we sat toasting at an elegant restaurant in Albuquerque on the day we closed escrow and became the owners. That week we bought two buildings in Albuquerque – 128 units total.  We raised over $2.2 million dollars from private investors and got bank loans totaling...

Since last year when Amazon announced it was searching for a second city to house its new headquarters, investors have been anxiously waiting to hear where they would choose.

Check out my previous post >>> Amazon Announced its 20 Finalists for HQ2 and Why You Should Care

 This week Amazon announced its final decision and there was not one, but two winners: Long Island City in Queens, New York City and Crystal City, Virginia (Northern Virginia city in the Washington, DC suburbs). 

As I discussed in January on the blog, Amazon is a game changing prize.  It's bringing 25,000 new jobs to each city (at an average salary of $100K per position - that's $2.5 Billion injection per year per city) PLUS a combined total of $5 Billion in new capital expenditures to these areas.  

And it’s not just what Amazon itself will do… there will be all sorts of secondary and tertiary businesses that will blossom to support this gigantic new...

Real estate investing can be very lucrative, but it's not always glamorous.

Last week highlighted that fact for me with an interesting series of contrasts. On Wednesday and Thursday I went to Albuquerque to check on our apartment buildings there and to meet with our property managers.  My hubby and I checked out every vacant apartment we have - many of which are in serious need of rehab.  We were setting a priority list for getting the work done (starting with the units least in need of work and working our way down).  

Click on this picture below to check out a little video I made showing off some of the units... good, bad and ugly.

That was the not-so-glamourous part of my week.  And then on Friday I got to enjoy something very glamourous... I was interviewed on TV!  I appeared on NBC Channel 24 Central Valley Today, in Fresno, California and got to speak about Real Estate Investor Goddesses and my upcoming event, Wealth Through Real...

Do you ever think "I'd love to invest in real estate, but I just don't have the money yet?" Well, it's possible you are actually sitting on tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars available for investing and you don't even know it!

That's how I was - I was pretty blown away when I found this out.

When my husband and I went to a real estate conference - the Real Estate Guys' Secrets of Successful Syndication seminar, we first learned that we had way more access to cash than we thought about - via our retirement accounts. 

Most people have IRAs or 401k's in plans offered through their employers or through one of the bigger financial institutions - Fidelity, Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, etc.  In these accounts is a set of options of what you can invest in - generally a somewhat limited menu of mutual funds and bonds.

I remember being very annoyed at one point because I wanted to put the bulk of my money in a low-fee...