Can you believe it was almost seven and a half years ago that Karen and I started this adventure in Real Estate? We made the decision to start investing in Real Estate in early spring 2003, attended a phenomenal Ron LeGrand seminar in Edmonton in June, bought our first investment house as part of our plan in August, then had four more purchased within a few more months and were well on our way.
It was also during 2003 that we joined the Real Estate Investment Network or REIN as it’s referred to usually, which helped evolve our mindset into buying and holding property. I remember attending that first meeting in October of 2003 full of excitement and optimism, not quite sure what was going to unfold before us during the next seven years, but definitely looking forward to it with nervous apprehension. This was back when rumours were circulating that they were capping the membership at 500 members!
We made some great friends through the organization, learned systems that Karen tweaked and modified to fit our needs and learned more than we ever thought possible. It helped push us to that next level that so many people talk about all the time. Partially by seeing people “just like us” taking action, buying property and succeeding.
Since that time using REIN systems and our own modified versions, we have bought almost 50 properties and at one time were holding and actively managing around 25 properties. We lived through the early years where we were just scraping by and taking advances on credit cards to cover mortgage payments, knowing we had a goal and ceaselessly moving towards it. We also had the crazy times during 2006 and 2007 when at one point we were able to buy five properties within a four month time frame (that was a crazy summer!).
There have been some incredibly wonderful things happen for us during these times, from being able to leave a very good paying job and being able to work from home. I had freedom from financial worries and job stresses to spend time with my ailing mother as she was going through the later stages of cancer. We also had the ability to move into a great home in a great neighbourhood that was much more ideal for my family.
There have also been some less wonderful events. The sudden loss of my father, the loss of a friendship due to a business partnership, the recent hardships we have seen during the downturn of the economy and the foreclosure I have recently been writing about.
When we initially joined REIN, we rarely missed a meeting; usually both Karen and I would try to attend. We have attended what used to be their Quickstart Weekends half a dozen times bringing friends, relatives, anyone we thought who could benefit from learning what we had. I even attended Quickstart twice in Toronto (once with Karen!).
Then as time passed, some of the information became a bit repetitive as it had to be brought up again every couple of years as new people joined. While it was always refreshed and presented from slightly new angles, once you had seen it two or three times, it wasn’t quite as exciting. This eventually lead us to missing more and more meetings, which wasn’t a truly bad thing, as we would receive audio CD’s of the meeting a couple weeks later, but even these became repetitive over time. It’s now been a year and a half since I attended a live meeting and probably six months since I listened to one of the CD’s which brings us to an end of an era.
With all the other activities in our lives, Karen’s art and her Jazzercise and my steadily growing internet marketing business, we know that Real Estate isn’t quite center stage for us anymore. While we are continuing with our current portfolio and I will be keeping up with my postings and information about what is happening in the Real Estate market here, we have made the decision to end our REIN membership.
We still have nothing but good to say about REIN, we love how Don Campbell was able to educate us and to help us reach many of the goals we set, but some things have to end eventually. I’m not even sure what the current membership numbers are for REIN, last I heard bandied about, was around 6,000 members now which is phenomenal.
So, we raise our glass to Don and the REIN group and say thank you for everything you have helped us accomplish!
Pingback: Landlord Challenges | The Investors Housez – Your Calgary Real Estate Information Site