The Beginnings

I grew up in a working-class family where owning a home was a sign of God’s blessing and care for his children. My dad once told me that I should do what he had done, which was to buy a house for my future family. Dad had served in World War 2, and when he got back to our tiny village of Oxford, Michigan, he purchased 66 East Burdick Street for $8,000. That was in 1948. That same money today would be nearly $90,000. Dad’s house payment, if I remember correctly, was $60 bucks a month. He told me that he doubled his payments so that he could pay off his house sooner. 

As I heard him talk about this real estate deal, I didn't think about it too much because it sounded unrealistic. To my 14-year-old mind, I couldn’t imagine how it would be so hard to double a $60 buck a month house payment. His scenario was like when he told me that he could buy ten bags of groceries for 10 dollars in his early married days (the 1930s). Ridiculous. 

Ridiculous or not, that was to be my goal; not the "buying groceries" part but the "working and saving money to buy a house" part.“ "A house is a good investment,” they said. That was the mentality in my circles. If you bought a house you were investing in your future. You were being a good husband and Christian. Many people rented their homes but they were not being circumspect in the provision for their families.

At 16, when I got my driver's license, my older brother, out of the blue, said to me, "What are you going to do now that you have your license? Drive around town with fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror of your car, looking cool and trying to pick up girls?" I thought that was a rather brutal way of starting a conversation, and I said, "I don’t know, why do you ask?" I had no idea what I was going to be doing with my new license. I knew that it wouldn't be the fuzzy dice thing because I didn't even have a car.

My brother, who was twenty years older than me, hadn't lived at home in the years, so I don't even remember why we were together on this occasion, but there we were. Murray blurted out, "Why don't you invest in real estate?" That was random.  

At that moment, I didn't know that my big brother had recently gotten his real estate license, and I was to be his first attempt at a sale. If I was his guinea pig, he must have been really desperate because I don't believe that I had more than twelve hundred dollars to my name at the time. When I informed him of this minor inconvenience, he quickly said, “Why don't you go in haves with your friend Dan?”

I cannot remember my brother explaining the benefits of owning rental property, but he must have done so because this conversation made me think about this new possibility. As I said, I didn’t have much money at the time, so I talked to Dan and he liked the idea. We decided that we’d pool our funds and would put down $2,400 on an old duplex. It was 6255 Monrovia St in Waterford, MI. The year was 1973.

That first rental brought in a total of just over $330 a month. It was a sizeable turn-of-the-century house that had a two-bedroom apartment downstairs and a one-bedroom upstairs. It was in a newer subdivision and had a nice-sized backyard and a detached two-car garage. We didn't know anything about property managers at the time. So, we self-managed this behemoth. We had to put a roof on the place, deal with cranky tenants who always seemed to have problems that they couldn't fix, and in the end our dads, yes, our two old dads, dug a septic system. I think that we lost more money than we earned. However, something did happen when we sold the place. We made a small profit! That should have been a hint.

With the money I earned on that sale in 1975, I invested in a tiny two-bedroom one-bathroom place in Pontiac, on Putnam Ave. It was my future father-in-law’s childhood home. His mother had recently died and dad wanted to sell it to me for $13,000. We did a land contract and I paid $100 a month on that contract. It was Dawn and my first house.

A house is NOT a home unless it is built on a good foundation. In our experience we have discovered that God's Word and the principles found in that book are the best foundation. Jesus gave an illustration of this fact in Matthew 7 at the end of his longest recorded sermon. There he said this,

Matthew 7:24 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

You will notice that "hearing and doing" what Jesus said are of the utmost importance when dealing with the structure of your house (read "life"). We can think that we have it all together but if what we are doing doesn't follow what Jesus taught, then we are headed for ruin. We might accumulate a great portfolio and be making a lot of passive income each month, but if we don't have peace with God, our wealth is worthless. Think about this aspect and include Jesus Christ in your team. He's not an "add-on" member, he must be your focus.

Until tomorrow!