Business and Blessings

I started this blog post a long time ago but I got distracted and busy in great ways, I was also kind of waiting to see what was in store for us

On January 9th Max was informed that he would no longer be working at his current employment and that it would be his last day. There are a lot of details that went into this decision by his boss and Max wasn't totally surprised. Just over a week earlier, on New Year's Eve we had written a goal that this year Max would quit his job sometime in the year 2016. We had plans of getting our real estate business going and then he would be able to leave his job and do real estate investing full-time. It is something he has wanted to do for years and we finally found a route to go about it last September. Our goal was to have enough steady income by the fall of 2016 that he could leave his job.

Something about Max is that he is a hard honest worker. He takes on a lot of responsibility that benefits his family and he becomes so busy with good intentions that it can be completely overwhelming, and it is challenging to determine what needs to be dropped because they are all good things. Max had some big projects here on the property with a significant remodel of one house and a vacancy in another house. Max completely took over his parents finances to get them in a better spot and he has worked miracles for them. He serves diligently in his church callings, and was working a full time job. He is an amazing father and husband and takes time to be with us. Along with working a full time job, and creating a new business (which will eventually allow us to be in charge of our time)  he became completely stressed. He had been praying to know what to let go of so he could better focus on the things that matter most. We didn't think that him dropping his full time job was an option yet. We were working hard to make that an option later in the year but he couldn't just walk away from our family's main source of income just yet (or so we thought). But I must tell you, that I know our dear, loving, and aware Heavenly Father knows exactly the struggles we were facing. And Max being laid off was a complete blessing. In the days that followed Max mainly felt relief. He was able to let go of a whole huge chunk of his life that was causing a lot of stress. Within the first week of him being home, he was able to get renters in one of our units (the main money-maker one) We also had our first offer accepted for a distressed house that we are planning on fixing and selling.Then in the days that followed we had 2 more offers accepted on other distressed properties and then another. We were able to dive into our business and focus on building it up and learning a ton. It helps that we feel strongly that that this is the right direction for our family. Max is thrilled that we are finally making it happen and that he is able to spend the time on it.
Out of our 4 houses we let 3 of them go because they were slightly riskier investments and we want to really focus on the process for one house and get all our systems in place. But we do plan on doing multiple flips at the same time and we feel so grateful that we have 40 extra hours a week to focus on it.

And a couple weeks ago we closed on our first house and construction started shortly after and it's going to be amazing.
Here are some before photos...

It is a beautiful house in a high demand area with a scarcity of houses, we've analyzed it a ton and we shouldn't have a problem selling it.

The kitchen was all torn out so we get to start fresh! there will be white cabinets and gray quartz counter tops!

We will be finishing the basement and it will look something like this.

We are thrilled to be taking our family down this route. We wanted to get our boys involved, so on one of the demolition days we took them over to the house with hammers, hardhats, and goggles. Oh man, it was a dream come true for them. Free reign of the hammer! Before our kids were born we always wanted to have some sort of real estate business or investment. We hoped that our kids could take care of a rental property to help pay for college or a mission Eventually we want to accumulate rental properties as well but this here is where we're starting. It makes me so happy to be on this path. And feel completely guided by the Holy Spirit.

Here are the boys doing some demolition...











The basement is being dug out so we can have higher ceilings. (in case you were wondering why there is dirt in our house)

And it's only been a little over a week and it's amazing to see the progress that the cnotractors have made! I will try to keep you all posted!