With the upcoming tax season comes the inevitable reckoning with our numbers and seeing how we are doing with our businesses, mutual fund accounts and investing in real estate. We had no new acquisitions but still had six real estate closings in 2019! We did a cash-out refinance on our Florida duplex to pay back a private loan we took from a friend. We also sold our entire portfolio in [...]
We received this reader question about whether to buy a small condo for a first investment: Hi guys, Thanks for all the really useful info! I'm thinking of buying a small condo as an income property. I am a single mum living in Vancouver, Canada at the moment. Do you think this would be a good idea. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!- Gillian We are not financial advisers, real [...]
Costa Rica real estate represents over 20% of our portfolio. While we are still bullish on the area, we prioritize diversification in our portfolio, including geographic diversification. While we continually view real estate listings in Costa Rica to stay informed about the market, we are looking for a new area to invest in. We have written before about how we picked Costa Rica and why we selected it for our [...]
One of our most frequent reader questions is how we picked our real estate investments, and how we are investing in real estate in today’s market. To start answering this question, I will first focus on what we are NOT doing – i.e., real estate investment options we considered but ruled out. We are not financial advisers, so this isn’t about ruling out these investments for others. This post is [...]
Three new tax and corporation laws were introduced in Costa Rica in 2019. We weren’t planning on covering these because they are so new that it’s premature to measure the impact on our real estate. And more importantly, we’re not lawyers or accountants so didn’t want even the appearance of giving official advice. But that said, a reader asked a slew of questions about these new laws, so it’s clearly [...]
About one year ago, we started exploring selling our Indianapolis portfolio. You can see the property details on all five rentals here, and our sell v. hold analysis here. In a nutshell, this was our highest cash-flowing geography (compared to Asheville, Jacksonville and Tamarindo), which is why we bought in this market. But it was also our biggest management headache – while we worked with local property managers in Indy, [...]
Scott and I took a work/ play road trip to Cleveland for the 2019 Real Wealth Eastern Income Property Showcase Event. Real Wealth Network is a real estate education and referral network that partners with turnkey providers in various markets. Based in California, they do most of their conferences out west, but once a year they go further east to capture investors on our side of the country. This post [...]
This reader is thinking of making a real estate investment in Costa Rica but is also considering options closer to home: I LOVE what you guys are doing! I stumbled across your blog a couple weeks back and have been reading various articles that you've published. You two are my heroes!My wife and I are in a similar situation to you (although we met and had kids a bit later [...]
Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. We may receive compensation if you click one of those links and purchase a product. This reader is choosing between a real estate investment in Alabama or Costa Rica: My wife and I (both born and raised in the US) are looking into buying our first rental property. I'm looking at a condo in Gulf Shores, Alabama, but she wants [...]
While we have sold off real estate before, we have done far more buying than selling (19 purchases, 3 sales). However, we have a rental condo in our Jacksonville Florida portfolio that we are thinking of selling. We have made the mistake before of selling prematurely, and we have good reasons to keep this place. We similarly considered selling our Indianapolis turnkey portfolio recently, but instead opted to hold it [...]
