On Wed, 23 Jan 2008 10:09:02 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
.. .


If I had to do it over again, I would have gotten involved in
renovating properties, holding them as rentals and sold on a six year
cycle when I first retired.

It's an amazing money maker.

One of the best "investments" we've made is holding the mortgage on a house
we bought a few years back then sold it to a young, but very responsible
couple who were looking for their first house purchase. They didn't have a
credit track record sufficient to qualify for a mortgage loan from a bank at
the time, but we knew them well and trusted their commitment to make the
monthly payments. It's been over five years now and they have never been
even a day late with the monthly payments.

Works out good for both parties. They get to build equity in a house and we
make the interest that a bank would normally get (plus the difference
between what we paid for the house and what we sold it to them for). We
wrote the agreement such that they can elect to re-mortgage at any time with
a bank (outstanding principle paid to us), or we can "sell" the mortgage to
a commercial lender at any time.

The last time we talked about this, I looked into it, convinced Mrs.
Wave because we had a similar situation with one of our tenants.

It's been six months and it's working out just fine. Frankly, I was
surprised, but there's really no risk (other than being a bank that
is), they had a good deposit and we're getting 1 1/2 payments every
month - sometimes twice a month.

They are really serious about paying it down quickly so they can
refinance in a couple of years with some built in equity.

Good for them.