Earning money from Real Estate Flipping vs. Renting

I bought my first rental condo around 2002 and since then have added another.  Along the way I started a real estate company with my best friend in Texas where we have flipped and house, bought quite a few pieces of real estate and added more rentals.

I’ve always liked the thought of owning a lot of land and still check what is for sale most days.  Zillow.com is one of my favorite resources.

I share what has worked and what has not worked for us.  As always you will learn if you take action.  We sure have and have survived to buy another day.

Topics covered:

  • Flipping a home and getting rich quick
  • Rentals – condo’s vs. homes and can you get 1% or 2%+ for rent? All about cash flow
  • Buying tax foreclosures or any real estate in this market – it is all about your purchase price (we like 50% of tax value)
  • Paying year 2000 or previous prices in today’s market
  • HOAs – the draw backs (the positive they cover things like insurance and maintenance on the structure)
  • Leverage – getting a loan to cover most of the purchase amount
  • Selling your home every couple of years if it appreciates because you can keep $250,000 (single person)or $500,000 (married) TAX free.
  • Using Zillow.com to track pricing
  • Diversifying by adding real estate to your holdings

At this point we are focused on property we can rent vs. property we can flip – very much like “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” recommends.

Repeat after me “Rental income is Residual income”, “Rental income is Residual income”….

How to compare complex web hosting

I co-founded and have run a web hosting company (RiptideHosting.com) for more than 10 years.  Today I cover some of the topics of how to compare web hosting.  I do not cover shared hosting but rather how to ensure you are getting the redundancy necessary to ensure your site/application is up and running all the time.

Today I review how you compare complex web hosting options such as:

  • Data center comparison (redundancy N+1) Power,Internet Connectivity, Cooling
  • Monitoring – are you monitoring to make sure your website is online and available?
  • Backup – do you have your files backed up, what if the data center or web hosting company disappeared?
  • And much more

I forgot to talk about support – depending on your level of expertise you may need technical help but at a minimum I suggest you look for the following

  • 24/7 onsite support – is someone there at all times to physically look at your server in case there is an issue with the hardware and something needs to be replaced or maybe your server needs to be turned back on.
  • Does someone answer the phone when you call?  With smaller companies like ours the customers get to talk with the same people for sales and for support.

Once you find a data center / web hosting company that can keep your server online it is up to you to secure it so as a hacker does not take your server off line.