As a first-time owner of commercial property, I’ve had to learn a lot of different things.  Instead of starting out with a simple residential property, I bought a strip mall that was at such a deep discount I couldn’t pass it up.

Even though it was a good deal, there were some problems that needed to be attended to.  We needed to pave the parking lot and the roof of the building required immediate attention.

Having never hired a contractor to replace the roof on a building, I decided turn to the Internet for the solution.  I went on my favorite search engine and typed in "roofing Barrington RI".  This gave me some results but there were lots of residential companies-it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

I took a search one step further and typed in "flat roofing Barrington RI".  This is closer but still not exactly what I was looking for.  When I finally typed in "commercial roofing Barrington RI", I found what I was looking for.  After looking through the website that were listed and making a couple phone calls, as someone coming out to fix our roof next week.

When my husband and I decided that it was time to purchase our first home, it was a really exciting experience for us. We took our time and looked through several houses before making a final decision on the one that would best suit our family.

As we had never been through the process before, we did not know what to expect. We were pleasantly surprised to walk into our home on the day that we took possession to find a gourmet gift basket and a beautiful plant, as gifts from the realtor.

It was a lot of fun decorating out home the way we wanted to, knowing that we could paint the walls whatever color we chose to and that every decision about the house was completely up to us.

We eventually had to upgrade to a larger house and I did feel sad to leave the very first place that we were ever able to call home.

It has been a number of years since I started to buy rental properties and so far the experience has been very profitable.  Sure, there have been some bumps along the way, but that is the way it goes with any business, right?

Since I have been doing so well over here, I thought that I might expand my horizons, and invest overseas - specifically in the UK.  The reason that the UK interests me is that I have some relatives over there and this would give me an opportunity to visit them and write off the expenses.

One of the biggest hurdles of this will be overcoming the jargon.  For example, no one understood me when I was looking for properties that I would buy to rent - instead they use "buy to let".  Even though the intention is the same, I will have to learn how things work over there as I am sure some of the details are different.

But, I love the fact that this is a new challenge for me - if it goes well, I will be looking at other countries as well.

After many years of investing in real estate properties in North America, I thought that it was time to expand my horizons.  You see, I had been doing research for land investment deals in other countries and I wanted to take that first step.

After doing some checking online, and with my team of advisors, I think that I have found the perfect place to invest for the first time - the UK.  You see, the UK land deals that I have looked at are very lucrative compared to some of the investments I have purchased over here.

So, we have been going over the land for sale listings online, I think that we have found a couple of good potential properties to invest in - now all we have to do is go out there and do our due diligence.  Once we have narrowed it down to a good one, we will make our first purchase - I am excited.

I have been working in a joint venture partnership for awhile where we are renovating and flipping homes.  It is an "easy" way to make money, though there is definitely some labor involved.

Part of my role as a partner in the operation is to line up contractors to do the work for us.  It was our biggest realization and definitely something that we should have done sooner.  Not only has this allowed us to do more deals, but we can spend the time looking for the next project, instead of missing deals.

Today, I will be looking for a General Contractor, Clearwater.  We have a house there that we would like to get started on - the sooner the better.  We have been sitting on this one for two weeks already, and we should have already started the work.  Once I have the contractor lined up, hopefully we can get the work done quickly and smoothly to sell the home promptly.

We are looking into getting several quotes on different types of renters insurance. We have not rented in a long time, so we are a little bit uninformed and out of practice. We are having a house built and it will be several months before we can move into it, but we already sold our condo, so we need to rent for a little while.

The last time we had a condo insurance quote, it was substantially higher than the quotes we are getting for renters insurance. I suppose it is because we also had to insure our building and in this case, the building is already insured. We are basically just buying insurance to cover our possessions.

We have calculated all of our payments, including mortgage, insurance and various other bills and we are still managing to stay ahead somehow (mostly thanks to an annuity we have). We will be very happy when the house is finished and we are not paying both a mortgage and rent. Until then, things will be tight, but we will manage.

I know that I should be winding down the day but I wanted to get things in order for tomorrow.  For me, it helps to make a list of things to do for the next day, so that I can think about it while sleeping.  No, I don’t dream about work, but it gives my brain a chance to prioritize tasks so that I can proceed with my day tomorrow in a more organized fashion.

Lately, I have been sitting on a couple of vacant units in a four-plex that I own.  I just got around to putting an ad in the paper a few days ago, and I have already had about five people come and look at it - with four of them interested in renting.

So, my big task for tomorrow will be to do tenant credit checks and make sure that they will be able to pay rent.  This is one of the two tasks I do to check if I want a person to rent from me or not.

The second task that will have to wait until tomorrow evening will be to check tenant referencing and see what the references of these applicants say.  I am hoping that things go well and that I can rent out these two units in the next couple of days, but who knows…. maybe the people that looked at the units are not the right match for me.  I’ll just have to wait to see how tomorrow turns out.

We are moving to a new home, as our last one was completely destroyed by a flash flood. The city’s sewers all overflowed in our area and there were many houses that were destroyed. We have decided to move on to higher ground, in hopes of avoiding this tragedy ever again. All I can say is thank goodness for private mortgage insurance.

The house that we are buying is worth more than the last one we lived in, so we have to take out a new and larger mortgage. We have been figuring different prices out on the mortgage calculator and have decided that we can afford this new one. It is also a lot bigger, so that is nice.

We are so fortunate that we had extra flood insurance on our last house, or we would not have got the full value for our house when it was destroyed. We are on higher ground now, but the flood insurance is not something that I am willing to skimp on. I love my new house, and although I am sad over everything that we lost, I am glad some good has been able to come out of the tragedy.

As some of you know, I have been looking for a new home.  Tired of renting, I thought it was time to get a place of my own.  Now, I am not made out of money, so I started looking at alternatives to traditional houses in a price range I could afford.

After a bit of searching, I found some mobile homes for sale that were in my price range.  They offered the same square footage as a traditional house, but at a lower price.

Before I was going to make any offers, I headed down to the bank to inquire about how a manufactured home mortgage worked.  The loan officer was very good at explaining the reason why I wouldn’t need a traditional mortgage and why there were specialized mortgages for mobile homes.

I filled out a loan application there to get pre-approved for a mortgage - that way I knew what I could look at for mobile home prices.  He also mentioned that depending on the amount I would be putting down as a down payment, I may need to purchase PMI for my loan.

Now that I know what I can afford, I will have a better idea of what to look for.  I have found a couple that I am going to take a look at on the weekend, now, all I need to do is find a realtor….

A buddy of mine runs a successful online business that doesn’t require a fancy office.  In fact, he doesn’t even need to be anywhere in particular to get his work done - all he needs is a computer and a connection to the Internet.  So, he has been house hunting for a nice place to live, that caters to his active lifestyle and where he can work once in awhile.

There have been many places that he has looked with mixed results.  Some of them are nice but out of his price range, and other more affordable places just don’t have much to offer.  But he did come across a jewel of a place when he found a site dedicated to Greenville SC real estate.

You see, price wise, the homes there were within his budget.  He showed me a few online, and they were pretty nice.  Also, there were plenty of opportunities for boating, hiking, and snowboarding.  It definitely seemed like the perfect location for him.

So, he will be getting in touch with a realtor there next week so that he can fly down and check some of them out.  I have never seen him this excited for as long as I have known him.