Okay, so I have to apologize everyone. I have not been keeping up with this blog as well as I had hoped and planned for 2019. Life happened and there’s going to be some big changes going on! This post is primarily just going to be filled with updates on my life as well as the real estate. Happy reading!
First. The Big Change.
I’m moving to Maine!!!!
I honestly can’t believe I’m saying that. A couple months ago I posted about my trip to Portland, ME (at least I posted the beginning of the trip. I still have more to write). I took the trip there because 1) I was frustrated/stressed at work and needed a break and 2) they have amazing breweries and beer. I wasn’t really expecting anything out of the trip other than to just enjoy my time and relax. Little did I know though how much I would fall in love with the city.
I was only there for a couple days and I went at a really good time of the year, but it truly felt like I was supposed to be there and as though I was home. From that experience, I knew that at some point in my life I’d like to live in Maine, I just had no idea it’d be so soon!.
So, how did this all come to be?
Well, I got a new job in the Air Force as a Recruiter! I’ve been wanting to do something different from my current career for a few years now so in 2018 I started to be more vocal about wanting to do something new and I expressed my interest in taking on a special duty position. Luckily, I’ve been fortunate to have some awesome leadership that listened and put my name in for the job. I wasn’t sure if I’d get it or not because it’s a very selective process, but I least wanted to give it a shot. I hadn’t put much thought into it after that since I was busy with life; getting used to the new responsibilities of being a Staff Sergeant and taking care of my Airmen.
Fast forward to January of this year, I got the email stating that my name was being considered to be a recruiter! To say I was excited would be an understatement. I had to keep my cool though because I still had to get through the application process to officially be accepted. I turned in everything that was required over the next couple of weeks and in February it was official, I would be a United State Air Force Recruiter!
Now, at this point I wasn’t expecting to head to training to learn the job for another couple of months, like May timeframe at the earliest. That wasn’t the case though. As soon as I was accepted, I had roughly 2-3 weeks to get things ready because I’d be starting my training the first week of March!
The weeks sped by and next thing I knew I was off to Lackland Air Force Base where I’d spend the next 6.5 weeks learning the foundation and skills I’d need to be a successful Recruiter.
I’d love to go into more detail about the school, but for the sake of keeping this post on the shorter side, I’d just like to mention a couple things. I was 1 in a class of 14 and I honestly couldn’t have asked for better people to be with. It was a more relaxed learning environment which help in dealing with some of the more stressful periods of the course. Those in my class also helped by keeping it fun and lively and I wouldn’t have wanted to go through it all with anyone else! I really can’t express my appreciation for all of them, but if any of y’all are reading this, thank you for making class 19009 such a great time and I’ll be wishing you the best out there on the bag!!!
On April 17th, all 14 of us graduated and received our Recruiter badges. I gotta say, receiving my the badge has been one of the best moments so far in the seven years I’ve been in the Air Force.
With all that being said, I’m back in Georgia now, finishing out my final weeks of what has been a 5 year journey. I arrived in Georgia, May 2014 and now leaving May 2019. There’s mixed emotions going through me, but I’m going to save talking about that for another post.
That’s what’s been going on with the personal/career side. Let’s switch over to the business side of things!
I’ll start off my saying that I’m going to continue posting a monthly real estate report showing the numbers on my properties. However, I’m going to pick them back up starting with May, so I will not be posting numbers covering February – April.
The fact that I’m moving has made me rethink a few things when it comes to running/operating my real estate. Over the last three years, I’ve managed my properties by myself since. I live close to them so it was really never any trouble going to one if I needed to. Once I move though, I’ll be over 1,000 miles from my properties. Even though they are extremely low-maintenance and it’d honestly be possible to manage from afar, I’ve decided to take a step further into making it a legit business by hiring a property manager. Having a property manager will also lessen the daily stress on my plate each and every day while I’m focusing my attention on recruiting and also purchasing more properties.
I hired a manager before I left for my training in Texas and so far she’s been taking care of two out of the three properties that I have. Here in the next couple of weeks she’ll be taking over the management of my third house as I slowly move out. Once I have my things packed up, we’ll be hiring someone to come in and clean the place and then we can put the house on the rental market. The way the Augusta area has picked up, I really have no doubt that it will take long to find quality tenants for the house.
On top of all of that, I of course need a place to live while I’m in Maine. By now I’m sure you all know that I would never rent unless I absolutely had to, so of course that means I’ve been on the search to purchase a place up in Maine for me to live! (I’ll be coming out with a post later on talking about my home buying experience that I’ve had in Maine).
I’m happy to say that I’ll be reaching my real estate goal for 2019 by purchasing my first duplex! I submitted an offer on May 1st and after a couple days of negotiating it was finally accepted. Now pending anything that comes up during the home inspection I’ll be adding two more doors to my real estate portfolio. I’ll be able to live in one unit and rent the other out, having my tenant cover the cost of the mortgage and keeping my personal expenses low.
Once things run through and everything is final, I’ll also be writing up a post where I’ll take a deep dive into the numbers of the property.
I have a lot of content I plan on pushing out with the promise of posting at least once every Monday so keep your eyes peeled for Moore!
That’s all the updating for now. Hope you all enjoyed and as always I’d love to hear from you so if you have any questions, comments, or want me to talk about anything else, feel free to reach out to me!
Take care everyone!