A flooded house and $9,500
The first one
We found it on Facebook Marketplace, sold by a Marine. It had taken five feet of floodwater, sat empty for years, and the neighbors had a less polite name for it.
We paid about $9,500 in cash — some of it from selling silver — and signed the papers with an attorney in a Waffle House booth. We were living in an RV at the time, with three dogs.
Then we did it properly. Every permit pulled. The rehab ran roughly $50,000, done on a shoestring out of Facebook Marketplace, yard sales, Goodwill and eBay, with a friend's military discount at Lowe's doing a lot of heavy lifting.
That house is paid off. A financed shed in the back yard became the first warehouse, which became storage units, which became the warehouse we run today.
We tell you this for one reason: when we say we are not scared of a house that took water, we are speaking from the inside of one.
That was the first. There are three properties now — houses in New Bern and a place in Kinston — bought one at a time, the slow way, out of cash flow rather than hype. Three houses. In Monopoly, one more and you get the hotel.