Well, I never thought we would be the type to own “investment properties”, but here we are. We listed our house in July 2012, and by October we had only one showing. Going into winter, we knew that the traffic would not pick up. We had another realtor come look at the house and he told us that there were many people in our same situation, and that many had decided to rent their houses out. Because interest rates were so low, we decided to re-finance our mortgage and keep our house as a rental (we are living with family during the building process). We were able to lock in a rate of 3.375%, which was exactly half of our initial rate (6.75%) when we bought the house July 2007.

Looking back at the re-finance process, I can only laugh. We were supposed to close on 12/24 and that didn’t happen. Then we were going to close on 12/26 and the mobile notary didn’t show up. Then we were actually on our way to meet the notary and they called and changed the time. And then they did it again. I seriously thought I was being “Punk’d”. Good grief. Good news was that I got my loan application fee back because of all the ridiculousness ($350). So, all’s well that ends well.

Our tenants moved in on December 1st and it has been pretty smooth so far. We had a few issues with the rental management company we hired to manage the property, but it is worth it in order to move forward with the building process.