So Cal Real Estate News

The old country veteran looked me in the eye.  “It’s like wrestlin’ a bear, Dave!”

“You either give it your all, and keep wrestlin’ him ’til you finally got him down on the ground & whopped,” he continued,

“Or you just give up and die!”

With those words, spoken to me just a few hours ago in the living room of our model unit deep in the green hills of McMinnville, Tennessee, we resume our adventures in out of state investing (see “What I learned about investing out of state” for the first installment).

Hmmm, I thought to myself.  He sure didn’t use that analogy two and a half years ago when he sold me those two apartment complexes.

About two weeks ago I sent “Brother James” and his associate an e-mail exploring the possibility of disposing of the two rural Tennessee complexes Barb and I acquired two long years ago.  Tired of investing too much time and money trying to turn them around, I’ve begun exploring the option of unloading them sooner rather than later.

This afternoon, after pondering the numbers I sent him and then inspecting both properties, the investment Realtor and his partner were supposed to give me their conclusions about what sort of selling price I could expect.

Instead, it seemed to be turning into a lecture on fighting on in the gallant, life-and-death struggle to turn these properties around.

As a veteran agent myself, it’s always both interesting and educational to have the tables turned and be acting as the seller or buyer.

I’m still in the process of gathering data and evaluating how badly I really want to fight on or if I’m just ready to die, which may be better than the alternative in this case.   We have made a lot of progress, but we’ve still got a lot of “challenges” ahead (in real estate, we never have “problems,” only “challenges”).

At this point, if I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t.  But I think we’ve all had trials that helped us grow, and looking back later, we appreciate the process.  It’s had some fun moments, but they’d be a lot more fun if the cash was flowing in the opposite direction.

So I still say, keep your investments close to home.

And if you do venture far, resist the temptation to leverage yourself beyond what you’re already successful at.  In my case, I bought a complex in rural Tennessee that had three times as many units as our largest California complex, even though it cost less than half what that California complex was worth.  I should have started out with a smaller complex, and I should have at least stayed in a more urban setting at first, such as greater Nashville.

Buying several houses in Franklin might have been a smarter 1031 exchange, in hindsight, as my bar-wrasslin’ realtor suggested.

Or maybe just being content with what I had.  The pursuit of expansion for expansion’s sake does add a layer of complexity which may not be worth it.

I may add more thoughts to this post later.  But right now, I’ve got to go wrestle a bear.

Tags: apartments, Business, investing out of state, multi family real estate investing, real estate investing, rural Tennessee real estate, Southern California Real Estate

This entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Investing in Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.