Glen Willow

Very Weird. In a word or two, that's how I'd describe finally closing on our first rental property.

Exciting.

But weird.

I did my usual multi-state commute: leaving Virginia around 2am Wednesday morning for a 9am meeting in South Carolina. Traffic was phenomenal, and so I made it with about 30 minutes to spare. I met Jesse the Realtor at the house for the final walk-thru before closing. Everything was in tiptop shape (the sellers had agreed to do ALL repairs), and so we proceeded to the 10am closing without a complaint. In all, the house was a done deal by 11:15am; and V and I were officially homeowners twice-over. Signing 10,000 forms during the closing not only once, but twice (for me, and also for the absentee and very pregnant V) was not exactly fun, but once a few hours passed and I realized that the numbness in my fingers and hand was not permanent damage, I got over it.

The absolute great news was that this house needed next to nothing else to be done to it in order to prepare for the first tenants. They could've moved in the next day. Even I had to laugh at the shopping list required to get the house move-in ready:

1) a double-A battery for the downstairs thermostat, and
2) a 4-pack of toilet paper

All for a whopping $3.65... a world of difference from the $18,000 we'll have to borrow to get the PA property repaired and ready for resale. With that done, I still managed to spend a good amount of the next 2 days just finalizing minor stuff around the house (tidying up the garage and the backyard, mainly). And of course, the cleaning services came and left the place absolutely spotless. I was thoroughly impressed... except for the part when they rounded 2 hours and 12 minutes to 2 1/2 hours for billing purposes. But after that is where the weirdness began.



It got weird when everything was done, and there was nothing left for me to do but to walk away. I don't think I can capture it in words (especially 3 days later, with the weirdness worn off)... but to buy such a beautiful home, invest so much time and energy into it over two-months time, get it 100% clean, sanitized, and totally ready to move into... and then to lock the doors behind you, walk away and never see it again until who knows when... man, that was just a very awkward feeling. I felt like I was abandoning a baby or something.

I'm sure that as investors, people who do this get to the point to where the emotional attachment is zero, and it all becomes business. But as a person who bought his first home only 2 years ago, and wouldn't mind swapping my own primary home for this one... it just felt weird to leave it behind and drive home to VA empty handed, so to speak, as if nothing ever happened. All day Thursday & Friday, I kept feeling like I wanted to go back to the house before hitting the highway... thinking to myself that there *had* to be something more to do (it just felt incomplete)... but nope that was it. Totally anticlimactic, I guess... and indescribably bizarre.

Maybe you had to be there.

But either way you slice it, our first investment property is officially in the books! It cost me my entire spring break, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that ultimately it was well worth the sacrifice. Now, we just have two major things on our plate: finding a tenant for the SC property, and closing on the PA property that we plan to flip by summertime (closing is a week from Tuesday). For every minute that I wasn't in the SC property this week, I was either on the phone sorting out the details of the PA property, or discussing the prospect of renting the SC property. In addition to the ad in the paper, we also set up a website, which only cost us 10 bucks, but has been priceless in the response that it has gotten so far. In all the week was tiresome, to say the least... but I continue to keep in mind that these are definitely good problems to have. I'm not 100% sure where V and I are ultimately headed career-wise, financially, etc... but I'm starting to at least feel pretty confident that we're well on our way to someplace good.

And speaking of someplace good, it's great to be home. Didn't quite get things done around the home front like I wanted to, in terms of carving out an easy path to a worthwhile second 1/2 of the semester... but the usual routine of taking it day-by-day, getting on top when and where I can, will just have to suffice once again. For now I'm just enjoying these last few non-work related moments of the weekend before I'm required to hit the ground running at work tomorrow.

In other news, V had to go to her first Ob/Gyn appointment without me since the pregnancy began (so much for my streak), and no news is good news; so things continue to go great with the pregnancy. I got V to commit to taking some more maternity pictures on Wednesday in the "studio", so look out for that in a few days.

Also, we did get the car back before I left for SC and everything looks great. Well... almost everything. The only comical thing is that now I have to contend with having mismatched headlights since the one on the passenger (accident) side of the car is spankin brand new, while the other looks like it needs some tartar control crest. I didn't realize how totally awful it looked until I had something to compare it to (kinda like replacing old sneakers... they never seem quite that bad until you get new ones). It's no wonder we couldn't see anything when driving at night. I'm guessing that very little light was getting thru that layer of dirt. In fact, I'll probably look like a motorcycle coming down the road at night now. But anyway, I bought some stuff that is supposed to shine it up like new, so we'll see how it goes.



Never enough hours in the day. And I guess that's especially true today; shortest day of the year with the clocks being turned forward an hour, giving us a total of only 23 ticks on the clock today. And I can't say that this has ever made a difference before, but this might be the first year that I can truthfully say... after a non-stop not-so-restful spring break... I'm gonna miss that 24th hour.