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I'm now 27 years old, I have been landlording for 4.5 years. I bought my 4 unit property (originally 3, re-zoned to 4) back in 2005 when I was 22. I got into the landlording business by choice. In the Western New York Area, taxes are extremely high for property and school. Currently, my mortgage itself is only about $450 a month, but my property and school taxes and insurance costs are over $700 a month. I got into the business in order to afford moving out of my parents' home without breaking myself financially. Over the last 4.5 years, I have had a few vacancies. When I started, I had a unit empty for over a year while I did some minor remodeling and painting. Since then, I have been vacant in one unit for 5 months and one unit for 1 month. My latest turn over was last week. Tenant left a week early, I did $2k in remodeling the bathroom and kitchen and had it turned over by the 31st. I manage my property by a lot of the rules and advice from this site. I use all of the LPA forms (modified a little) and have the LPA lease modified with comments from a few lawyer friends. I am a full time Federal Government employee. I work as an auditor for the Department of Defense, have a Bachelors and Masters in Accounting and am a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). I hope to use this property to help manage some of my significant debts, so that I can purchase either another investment property in the next 5-10 years, or a single family home for myself. My investment in this property is one of the smartest investments I have made to date. In addition to the property, I maintain roughly $50k in other retirement/personal investments. My goals overall are to have a net worth near $1 million by the age of 40 and closer to $10 million by the age of 60. In a depressed area like Western New York, I do not know how likely that will be, but that won't stop me from trying.
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