Lord of the Land! (or: why blog?)

So what is this blog and why make it?

Two years ago my best friend and I decided that while the stock market is a wonderful investment tool, real estate was where the real money was to be made. At the time I owned no property and my friend owned his own house. Other than his one buying experience, we knew absolutely nothing about houses. But I had just read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and the author had stressed repeatedly how simple real estate investing was. "Just buy it and pay someone else to fix the toilets" he proclaimed!

Two years later I'm shocked to look back and realize how naive I was to actually believe that it was that simple.

Through a series of happy accidents, fortunate mistakes, and sheer good luck my partner and I have been able to buy two houses and make them somewhat profitable. We've learned a lot along the way so far, and I intend to explore a lot of what we discovered in this blog. That covers everything from how to find good tenants to how to find good houses, and most importantly of all, how to keep track of the money.

I obviously don't know everything and I'm still learning every day. However you'll hear all true stories here and, possibly more importantly, you'll see all true numbers. By choosing to preserve my anonymity, I can feel comfortable publicly sharing the actual numbers that my company (the partnership consisting of my friend and I) deals with on a month to month basis. And, with any luck, I'll learn more from the you than you from me.