Be careful. You just might fall in love…… My husband and I decided to look for an investment property earlier this year. We found a darling older neighborhood in Kansas City that rarely has a home on the market for more than a few days. Being a REAL-tor, I kept my eye on this neighborhood on the chance something might come on the market that would fit what we were looking for in a rental property. Well it happened. We purchased our first rental. It is all of 1400 sq. ft. and in good shape with good bones. 90 days of sweat equity and $25,000 remodeling dollars later, we have our first tenants.
The fever got to us, the investment fever. In September of this year I took a moment to see if there were any new houses on the market in that same darling neighborhood. There was. By chance my step-daughter had a doctor appointment that same day just down the street from this newly listed house so my husband agreed to go take a look at it with me.
At first glance, as I walked into this 1940’s, well-maintained, 1030 sq. ft. home, all I could see is how lovely my antique dining table would look sitting there in the vacant, well kept, hard wood floored dining room. This two bedroom one bath ‘cottage’ gave me a good feeling.
The house where my husband and I live presently is over 5000 sq. ft. and it has three lovely gas fireplaces. Flip the switch, boom, you’re done. But no wood, no smell, no sound. This house had a wood burning fireplace. As I took another step I thought, masonry fireplace BIG plus! There is nothing sexier than my husband chopping wood. The house I lived in before we got married had a wood burning fireplace. Jack and I so enjoy our time sitting by a crackling fire sharing a glass or two of vino. Growing up in western Pennsylvania, wood burning fireplaces were practically a way of life, a place where the fire burned from fall through late spring. I anxiously anticipated what I might find around the next corner.
Needless to say, I wrote a contract on the house that night. My husband wanted to talk about what we might do to the house before we rented it. I said, ‘rent it? No, I intend on playing house here’.
