I started this business with a buy and hold philosophy which means I had tenants and I would purchase on the fringe area of town. When I was trying to figure this business out, I had to develop an idea of where I wanted to buy.

There are areas of Springfield, Ohio that I don’t want to buy in. It’s the property that’s rougher and run down. I try to avoid places where you can hear gunfire in the evenings and things like that. I came up with the strategy of not buying in the rough parts, but I would buy right at the edge of that area. This way, the area was still quiet and nice but I could get house at a seized property auction. Just about any city has a similar set up.

So I starting buying bank repossessed homes in the fringe areas and avoided the war zones. I had safe places that were less expensive. They offered great opportunity for me. I whipped them into rental shape and generated a positive cash flow through the renters. I found ways to approach the rehab that were more economical. For an example when Kevin and I rehab bank repo houses today and put carpet in, it costs me $4000 for carpet, $3000 to $4000 to carpet the place.

With these rentals I found somebody who was doing business with a hotel. They would sell me a roll of carpet for $20.00 and then I found somebody to lay it. So I started to look for opportunities like that and that saves a lot of money.

Now that I am in the selling mode, putting in $4000 of carpet helps because when somebody comes in to the place I get the wow effect. The wow effect is important in sales, but rental is a different story. With a rental, if somebody comes walking in the $4,000 carpet might be a little bright for them. I’d try to stay with like a neutral brown or something. Darker colors were also good because the renters didn’t mess them up.

This 20 dollar roll of dark carpet could be put in easily and if they tore it up in a year or so, I could put another one in with relative ease. I just pulled it out, put another one in.

To review, what I did was purchase bank repossessed homes that were safe at a low price and I fixed it up very inexpensively. This saved me a lot of time and was good for the bottom line.