Patience is a virtue

This whole story started over two years ago when I was on the verge of graduating from college at Ohio State. Every time that I returned home to Cincinnati it seemed like something had changed and that the pace of that change was picking up day by day. I felt like I was rediscovering a city that I'd taken for granted throughout my childhood and the epicenter for most of that change was in the urban downtown basin. Places that I had never experienced as a kid, other than through stories about how I'd be shot for even thinking about going to the place, were suddenly a place for me to explore. Even though I moved in with my parents after college, I wouldn't let myself be confined to the same old places that I knew too well from growing up.  During the summers after many of my first working days downtown, I took to the roads on my bike by going home after work and then doing a 20+ mile loop from the westside to the urban basin to explore until the sunlight started to fade. In those days of wandering down streets that time had forgotten, I found the remnants of how great our city used to be and bought into the idea that it could be that great again. I saw the potential that was only starting to be cleaned up and rediscovered. And I wanted to be a part of it.

So naturally as a real estate & finance major, I had some intent from the start to buy my own income property. However, the Great Recession and accompanying real estate collapse started out as more of a curse with 9 months of part-time employment before I could find a "real" job (very luckily in my chosen profession), but I knew how much of a blessing this downturn could be to someone with the capital to invest. So I bit the bullet and dug in at home living with my parents in order to save. I thought things would turn around quicker than they did and that this opportune time would pass me by as I sat by and watched. I spend my free time searching for opportunities, and they were many for anyone with enough cash to take advantage. But I knew my limits and my conservative westside roots kept me from gambling it all too early on something that was too big for me to handle and with more work and expertise than I possessed. So I waited and hoped. 

I took many different routes trying to squeeze my small savings far enough to make a project viable. For over 6 months I watched the delinquent real estate tax auctions at the courthouse hoping to snag a cheap property that I could flip fast and turn around for what I really was trying to do. But as it turns out, there are people who do that for a living and they protect their turf. I cost one of them over 8 thousand dollars in bidding up the price of a bargain property before reaching the limit of my savings. 

But after diligently searching and building my cash, I found a deal on the MLS and scheduled a tour right away to see if it was as good as advertised. It fell exactly into the category of what I had been looking for; a fixer-upper in the urban basin that was livable from the start and with income potential. Many that I had seen prior needed substantial amounts of fixing before they'd be livable and others that were more in line with what I wanted were in the upper price ranges. This was a bargain that was the result of a landlord that didn't know what they were doing (only putting a For Rent sign in the window to advertise and charging below market rates) and a location that was on the fringe of the redevelopment efforts(crime was nearby and drug deals happened on the corner two buildings down). There are no guarantees that this will be a home run, but after crunching the numbers (like I do at work for my job) I feel pretty confident that I can sustain the property even in the event that it is only myself living there.