Our latest adventure

I know, I know, I know. I have been lax on my blogging duties. To be honest, with work and my class for my Master's program, my ass has been downright kicked. I have decided to take a break with the classes for next semester, I've been so stressed out, not eating, insomnia, it's all I can do to get through the day some days. So what do I do to add to that mess? I decide to embark on real estate adventures. Perfect timing.....NOT! For those who are not in the loop, we own (the bank actually owns) a couple buildings and we have 7 apartments that we rent out. The purpose of this is to have some kind of retirement plan, once the buildings are paid off, we'll have a steady income. Since neither of us will have much of a pension and I have never done well in the stock market, real estate is our plan. So we live in a fiveplex and we have another triplex. We bought the triplex ten years ago and it has provided a steady cash flow which helps us with our monthly nut. However, the building has appreciated quite a lot, so that the return on our equity is like 3 percent. A little better than the bank, but not great.

So I decided to look at numbers south of the border. Average home prices in Canada are about double what they are in the states. The numbers up here suck. What I am seeing down in New Hampshire are numbers similar to what they were here when we bought the triplex ten years ago. This property was the one that got me so excited about selling the triplex and investing down south. I'm sure that will not be the one that we buy, but when I checked out rents vs. prices of rental property, there are some really good investment opportunities. My goal is to get a 10% return on investment, which, from my observations, seems totally doable. Yay!

So last week, we called up our favorite real estate agent, put the triplex up for sale and in less than a week we had an offer. After countering, counter countering and counter counter countering, we had a deal. If all goes well with the inspection and financing, we'll close in January and I will start probing properties in the states. I have always done well with real estate and am very excited about this new venture. But there is no rush. We have our amazing Asia vacation coming up in March for our 20th anniversary and with a few extra bucks in the bank account, it's gonna be all that much more fun.

So now you are all caught up with me. I know y'all want a little Georgie porn, so here ya go. Mwah!