We Finally Closed!

After years of quiet thinking, then idle talk, followed by wishing without working, we moved to learning without doing and on to trying without success. We finally made some progress in our real estate business completely on our own. We closed on a house in Riverside yesterday. Sure, we've done lots of little things here and there. Some stuff has fallen in our laps and we've played along, but this one is all us. Feels good. We made upwards of twenty or thirty offers on foreclosed houses out in California. Never saw most of them but by random luck, we did actually get inside this one. We only drove past it because my brother owned the other half of the duplex like single family home. There was a sign in the yard so we went in. It was in "great" shape relatively speaking for a rental, though certainly nothing delux about the place. We put in an offer like we had done so many times before and it was eventually accepted. Dealing with the bank and a foreclosure was slow and tedious. I know I signed the same form three times, I think it was four. It all was less stressful because we went in knowing it would be slow and painful. Going in with that type of expectation made it easier to roll our eyes and comply with silly requests to negotiate around imaginary problems the bank dreamed up. Closing was delayed several times and we had to pay for some minor repairs before we owned it which we didn't like, but it wasn't a major repair so whatever. Real estate is a risk anyway, right? Just like the stock market. Now we fix it up (via email and phone calls to our highly capable property manager). Then rent it out. Yeah!