Where it all started....

Blogs are always posted in reverse-chronological order.   This is done so that the daily reader doesn't have to scroll to the end to find out what's new.   I've never liked that - I think blogs should be more friendly to the first time visitor.   So, here is our first post from October 2011.  If you'd like to read things as we did them, you'll need to start at the end and work your way up.

October 11th, 2011

Lets get ready to rubble.

Well, its official.   We close on the house tomorrow.  

To back up a little bit and give an idea of what this blog is all about:   Effie and I have been living in Thailand for the past 7 years.   We know we want to settle in the US someday, but not just yet.   However, we have no credit history and nothing established in the US.   So we decided that we'd come to the US for 5 months and buy a house to renovate and then rent it out while we hop around the planet for a little bit and builds credit while we're away.  

We wanted to get something like a single-family house in the burbs, but we can't get financed for that.  So we've got to buy what we can afford to purchase and rehab with our savings, and then finance the property once its appraised.   Which leads us to this place.   

Its a 3-story duplex located in Norristown (that's just outside of Philadelphia).  The first unit is a 1-bedroom and the second unit is a 3-bedroom. Effie has put up a few "before" photos of the place, which can be seen here at this link.  

What we're going to do here with our blog is post the progress, as well as some before and after photos.   

Our purchase price for this property is $40,000.   Our total renovation budget is $28,000.    Our projected total rents are $1700/mo and we hope to have everything finished and ready to go in 6 weeks.   We'll see how close we can stick to that.   This is our first rehab.   So if you've ever thought about doing it yourself, come check out our progress and see how it goes.