You might as well know that I’ve mostly avoided rental properties.  Yes, I have had (and do currently have) a large number of single family homes, however, I’ve tried to justify my fleet of empty houses as “pending disposition.” 

While that might be accurate, it’s not the entire truth.  Fact is, while I had rental homes going back to the early 1980’s, I found myself a less-than-skillful landlord.  Combined with my early reluctance to spend money on them and lack of willingness to turn them over to a professional manager, I ultimately got out of the rental business some twenty years ago.  I’ve have a number of investment-grade apartments, as well as some D property units in Long Beach, CA, those were professionally managed and I was mostly passive in the day-to-day activities. 

However, I found that I enjoyed the probate money lending and buy-sell business models much more, and mostly stayed away from opportunities to acquire great little rental houses. (more…)