Last Saturday we had an excellent session of Wealth School.  Many of the participants shared the break throughs they had experienced since beginning the course in August. 

We reviewed the repair estimating exercise for the REO properties we looked at during the prior session.  Some of the important lessons were as follows:

• You must balance the money you spend on renovations with the return you will get from those renovation dollars.  For example, adding an additional bedroom from a second living area can boost the cash flow.  However, tearing out kitchen cabinets just to have an updated kitchen will probably not add anything to your cash flow. 
• Elimanate features that are an expensive nuisance to maintain.  For example, if you have an old cook top – oven combination, remove them and replace them with a free-standing range. 
• The biggest drags on cash flow result from turn over.  Take pre-emprive steps to reduce turn over.  For example, whenever you buy a house that was built prior to 1970, plan on adding some insulation to the attick.  If you have a house that is expensive to heat and cool, you will have high rates of turn over.  You not only have the expense of cleaning up between tenants, you may have to paint and change out the carpet.  Add this to the loss of revenue while it’s vacant, and you can see how critical it is to minimize turn over.