This is a small success story, but it makes me happy.

12 years ago I bought a duplex. I lived in one side and rented the other. This began my foray into the world of real estate investing.

The house has nearly tripled in value since I bought it. No, I'm not selling soon. I'd rather hold it and collect rent. We are at the point of having a very nice cash flow now.

I had a similar situation. We re-fied the house a couple of years ago and used it to buy 2 more houses. Hold onto it, would be my advise. That is a wise investment.

I have another story, while it is not a huge or mind blowing success, we learned a lot from it and built some equity as well so that is a success in my mind.

We bought a house in foreclosure for about $80K. After $25K or so in repairs, much of which we did ourselves and which took several months, we refinanced it for $135K. Appraisal was about $175K. So, assuming we can sell it for something approximating the appraisal value, we'll make a nice profit.

I know the general advice is to contract out these repairs, and ordinarily that's what I would do, but in this situation with its being our first major rehab, we felt it was best to do much of the work ourselves so we would truly understand the nature of it. I think this was the way to handle things in this situation, and in the future we may hire out more of it. We gained a lot of invaluable skills during this experience.

Nice congrats r8rpwr... i'm in the midst of starting to look at some investments myself... hope to have the same luck.

Great find I hope that I can find one like this I hope that you sell it really fast and for the Appraisal price.