Thanks for sharing that! Everyone in that article sounds like the absolute nicest people. 
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I truly do not even understand how, from a self-interested perspective, some people can live in such conditions year and year!
I hate to say it, but I have a friend who rents…and when I visit her place, it’s literally wall-to-wall stuff. Like you can hardly open up doors. She’s not there enough for the bathroom to be a biohazard, but it has that “never been cleaned” musty odor. And she’s a lovely person, makes a good income, great credit score…there’s no way to “screen” for whether someone minds living in a dump, just as long as they don’t own it.
And obviously, someone who is a deadbeat has even more of an incentive to take revenge in the only way they know how, by trashing the place.
I mean, even in my own house, there are “surprises” and I’m constantly looking for them.
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I too moved to a lower cost of living city. There were some other factors too that encouraged a move from Portland, OR to Indianapolis, but finances were a major factor. I’ve worked so hard to have the money to be a modest amateur competitor, but it was becoming more and more out of touch on the west coast.
Thanks for the newsy response. I laughed out loud at the “luxury sport pet forum” line both for its accuracy and irony. I meant to tone down the seductive power of the Rugged Individual as a solution, not to say it has never worked. We’re well trained to think, whether it’s true or not, that we are where and who we are, for good or ill, because of our own choices. There’s not a lot of data to demonstrate that, and way more that shows otherwise.
Money does seem to follow the brave and you chose (or were lucky to fall into – there’s the rub) the best option for increasing cash flow in the US. This has been true for the last 45 years, since the 1980s Savings and Loan debacles that you’re certainly too young to have experienced. The deregulation of real estate development, banking, and reforming of RE loan procedures were conscious decisions that changed financial institutions fundamentally. So, yes, you were born at the right time in the right place for this opportunity.
And, yes, you’re right, so was I. My failure to execute my good fortune was indeed hampered by motherhood. However, it was my choice in husband that really messed with my scene. The story is too far out of this luxury pet forum’s wheelhouse, though. Suffice to say, he had a ruthless lawyer and together they nearly accomplished their goal of ruining me financially. I kept my little house and barn by the skin of my teeth and certainly lost years of my life in the process.
It might be this brush with the loss of my house and my horse of ten years – had her since she was four – that convinced me that for some of us, horses are significantly more than luxury pets. I envy anyone who can treat them like investments, seriously.
As for sustainability, I meant that as a general comment about the current US real estate universe. We live in strange times, suffering the consequences of the Shrink Government Until it’s Small Enough to Drown in a Bathtub deregulators of the late 20th Century who created the situation that provides you with a bit of largesse as well as the unhoused human crisis in this country.
Again, I admire your bravery and if you’re committed to acting against the authoritarians at the local, national and international level, we are sisters in more than horses. Because I cannot wrap my head around using real estate to accrue wealth except as a last resort right now that does separate us. My internal and external struggle to find tenants who could both appreciate and afford my only home in the world proved to me that I could not do what you do and sleep at night. (I barely sleep as it is, so that’s no critique of you.) Have a tale of woe and intrigue about a duplex my dad left my sister and me, too. Should’ve been great. We failed to execute because we wanted to help a dude out and held his paper. You can guess the rest.
I’m glad you made good use of your own experience of time and place. I did not and likely don’t have the temperament for it. And yes, we breathe rarified air here in CoTHland.
When I have a few minutes I’m going to do some math to see how accurate your “99 percent of the rest world” claim is. 
Though the US is great in many way, other countries’ state sponsored studs and national athletic programs seem to produce plenty of happy healthy athletes, both equids and hominids.
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The house I live in now was inhabited by 20 year long tenants who were related to the owner and paying practically zero rent. I got the house because I was the only investor willing to deal with their ridiculous access issues and the fact that they were on these terrible leases for the next year. Covid happened a month after I bought it and I didnt get into housing to raise rents during a pandemic, so hand to god I never said boo to them about raising rent and still they opted to break their leases early and leave on their own.
When downstairs cleaned out all her stuff I called the realtor in shock, saying “PATRICK. The new house is a 3 BR downstairs.”
No it’s not it’s a 2BR, he says.
“Patrick I swear to God that room we thought was a closet bc it was so full of crap is actually an additional bedroom.”
Several rooms upstairs and down were completely gutted, I cleaned cat hair out of the light switches, pulled down ceilings with a crow bar, sanded floors and hydrogen peroxided years of cat pee out of the floors. Thankfully property values are continuing to climb, so even though I had to put another $70k in (thank you, additional financing and 0% interest credit card promotions!), with the improvements the house is still worth more than I have in it, and more than paying off its notes from the rental upstairs.
Once you get a critical mass of houses and have sifted through a few bad contractors, you have enough work to keep a good one or two on hand. In that sense having houses is like having horses: you need to build relationships with barn owners, farriers, vets, haulers, the hay guy, etc etc, learn who’s good and who’s a headache, but once you do that and after you’ve taken a lump or three you’re a lot better off and have your system and network in place.
Now if I discover on a Friday afternoon that I need to replace an entire bathroom floor down to the subfloor (this was February 2022’s enrichment activity), I can write a couple texts to the right people, order materials from HomeDepot, and have it done by Wednesday afternoon for $1300 all in, while I am 1500 miles away hanging out watching the hunter rings at WEF with an R judge friend.
Now I am in an airport lounge with my mother texting a tenant and uploading videos to an insurance portal about the latest situation where upstairs’s kid flooded the toilet and caused Niagara falls in downstair’s bathroom. Annoying, but solveable, and the house is well-insured and makes good enough margins that coughing up the insurance deductible (which I will be trying to recover from the tenant) is not a problem.
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I really cannot fathom having had the ability to buy a home while in college. I worked the night-shift in a food truck that visited a military base, on top of ‘work study’ labor in the college cafeteria during the day, to pay for college classes. I remember a day where I had to decide if the last fistful of loose change in my car went towards gas or food. I chose gas. I wasn’t the exception either - I remember a lot of kids my age in college struggled as well to pay for their classes.
I don’t think for many it’s even possible to buy a house while in college unless they have parents and/or connections that can fund them the money. I think it’s amazing that Dan did that, and he clearly worked his ass off to get to where he is, but this isn’t the reality for many people.
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Moving to a lower COL neighborhood, buying a small farmette with a tiny farmhouse and choosing not to have children are a sampling of the choices I’ve made to stay in horses.
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I’m shocked a college student could get a loan for this, but I think the loan rules in Canada are much much more difficult.
I also think Dan is probably not your average guy. It would be great if everyone was as motivated and smart, but they aren’t lol
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I can fully appreciate your POV. There’s ‘broke college kid’ and there’s ‘not so broke college kid’ and every stripe in between.
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I’m shocked a college student could get a sizeable loan at all. Under 21? Credit record? Most students I’ve known of that had to take out loans used the money to pay tuition, not buy real restate. Who paid this guy’s tuition and living expenses? Who co-signed the loan.?
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Could you provide some resources to read up on this?
I don’t disbelieve you, I want to read everything I can about it so I can pass it on in digestible form to my clients.
(Who I always advise to never get adjustable rates unless they have the money backed up six ways from Sunday. Leverage is great but let’s not completely blow ourselves up…)
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We’re currently trying to follow the same path as @meupatdoes (and a few others here) by growing our rental portfolio. We bought one student rental 8 years ago as we watched my BIL do it quite successfully, and decided very recently to put that equity to work and buy another. It has been nothing short of a struggle to find something a) affordable or b) rent-able:
It is an utter wonder. We toured a house this weekend where a tenant occupied the main floor and basement. The main floor, you could hardly walk down the hallway it was so full of clutter. The basement was also so cluttered you could hardly see any of the features down there, and ALSO housed the litter box which clearly hadn’t been cleaned in awhile 
There were puppy pee pads in front of the toilet (for what reason, I’m still not sure) in a bathroom that seemed to have no walls. It was beyond repulsive. Do these tenants have no standards?!
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Yet, the income that these properties will eventually generate is what’s going to cover the widening gap between our credits and debits as inflation increases, as our kids pick-up new hobbies or need to be enrolled in lessons for important life skills, and to cover expenses associated with our own personal interests (spoiler alert: one of them is horses). I’d love to be able to afford another driving pony one day, and it’s just not gonna happen on one salary!
But as has already been stated, it’s not all rainbows and butterflies. We have a nice rental which means we get to choose which tenants live there as they all want it. This year, however, we renovated a bathroom ($9,000) and have another list as long as my arm of other miscellaneous improvements that we just don’t have the time and/or skillset to complete (another $4,000 - $5,000+). The group we had in there for the last three years just left so we also ended up with a $2,100 bill just to CLEAN the place for the next group moving in (I could hardly bear to look at that invoice). Many months we see a healthy cash flow, but then there are times like this where it can all hit you at once. (Thank goodness for home equity lines of credit!)
As has already been said upthread, it’s not easy but what’s the alternative to affording the lifestyle you want?
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I live in a semi high COL area but I don’t think it’s as high as Boston, and I unfortunately had to euthanize my horse this past weekend due to colic. I had insurance but it wasn’t enough. I have already decided that I’ll never own a horse around here again until I move somewhere else, if that ever happens. It’s so painful to think about your life without horses but its hard not to feel defeated about it after spending every spare penny on the horse that could break at any moment and if you literally don’t have like $15,000 lying around for emergency vet bills you won’t be able to save them. I’m sure I won’t be the only one basically giving it all up in favor of an easier life, because oftentimes they can bring you much more pain than joy, every single thing that can go wrong will go wrong, and that’s just the reality of horses. Life is hard enough as it is
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So I’m just catching up on the last couple days of posts. You give a lot to think about and I hear you on making choices etc. I can’t and won’t speak for others, but for my particular situation, your solutions probably will not work- at least not at this moment in time.
First- I have my animals at home. I do not board. So my costs for my horse and 2 donkeys are well under 20k annually, even when I was lessoning and showing. The showing I was doing was all achooling shows; I have never competed in a USEA sanctioned event, because $$ (my annual “show” budget was $600). I have 1 saddle, and it cost me $900. My helmet is a Troxel, under $100. You get the idea of my finances here. Yes, we are more well off than someone in min wage, but I’m not someone spending $25k+ on a horse(s) annually. Literally my post was how does anyone spend this much because I cannot.
I’m glad investing in real estate works well for you and others. I don’t think it’s a magic bullet for everyone. We have neither the time, know-how, extra cash, nor desire to buy additional properties and be landlords.
Moving at this point is not an option, because my marriage is a partnership, not a dictatorship. My (non-horsey but supportive) husband gives up a lot so I can have my farm, so I’m not going to make him leave an area he loves so I can get everything I want at the expense of his happiness (and really aside from cost of horse things and not having trails directly off my property, I love where we live also).
I was looking to see if anyone else had any magic solutions or if others were experiencing similar struggles, and sadly it looks like I’m very much not alone.
I think for the next few years, I’ll probably step away from eventing (maybe volunteer at events but not compete myself) and then reassess my situation with regards to the ability to buy or lease and get back in the game. Lots to ponder here, I appreciate everyone’s willingness to share their experiences, successes, and struggles.
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I’m so very sorry about your horse.
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Can you please say more about these lessons? I have never heard of any lessons like this for kids. IME, parents, the school, and church teach life skills, so I’m interested to think that this has changed.
I was largely referring to swimming lessons, and because we live in Canada and are covered under snow for several months of the year, was throwing skating and skiing in there too (more so skating, because even at their young age, they’ve been invited to birthday parties where skating was a required skill in order to participate fully).
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I had to pay to take driver’s ed 25 years ago so I’m not sure this is a new phenomenon. Activities like scouts and pretty much any rec level sports generally aren’t free either unless you are below a certain income level and I think they can be quite important for kids’ development.
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Here is a professional explanation of the process and benefits: https://hoganblog.com/2021/04/29/using-a-margin-loan-to-buy-a-home/
Here is a Motley Fool overview: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/11/19/wall-streets-hottest-loan-product-borrowing-agains.aspx
Here is an obviously paid for post by a blogger that I think does a very good job of showing the many, many ways it is a bad idea for 99% of people to do almost anything he says they should do, no appraisal, no inspection, assumption that property can easily be re-mortgaged by a bank, and that price of stocks and housing do not drop at once etc. https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/01/29/margin-loan-ibkr-review/
I stay away from these kinds of investments so I am not completely intimate with the details but it is clearly alarming. Now I also know where all the cash buyer come from at least.
ETA: this is a smart way to handle business money and investments of course. But not your only personal savings and only personal family home. That is madness!!
I am so sorry to hear this. You must be heartbroken
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