Unlocking Equity

byoscope

This was a week of major ups and downs. I unfortunately found out that I, once again, did not pass my final actuarial exam. This process has definitely made me a stronger and more resilient person but I continue to question if this is really what I want to be doing with my time. And of course I’m starting to question every little thing I did in the runup to that exam. But what if I were to tell you that my net worth went up almost 100k in the last ten days?

My studying and hard work two years back, in the acquisition of those three Michigan properties, has finally been recognized on Zillow, through the respective Zestimates, and on paper the equity has been unlocked! While I thought I got a deal originally it wasn’t really captured in my net worth tracker because Zestimates are, it seems to be, heavily influenced by the sale price. This doesn’t seem too mind bending as there aren’t a lot of single-family home transactions where buyers are getting them for steeply discounted prices.

I purchased those three houses in three different cities from a couple that had to sell, while unfortunately going through a divorce. I got the three houses for 60k total while they were bringing in about $2,200 in rent per month. When we wrote up the official contracts each house was sold for 20k, which I believe is a strong factor in determining the Zestimate on Zillow. After about two years I think the algorithm is weighting the comparables more than the the sale price, the Zestimates have dramatically gone up for two of the three houses, and the equity has been unlocked! So with that here are the financials for the past ten days.

10-day BS Refresh

Analysis Intelligence

The Opening NW in the 9/20/2020 column is the closing NW from the 9/10/2020 column. The green numbers represent estimated changes to my net worth in those categories (green numbers in 9/20 column are the changes that I estimated on 9/10). The white “Gain from” rows show how the actual numbers turned out compared to my original estimate, ten days prior. Two of my three Michigan properties’ Zestimates increased dramatically, almost 100k, which can be seen in the “Gain from Property App/Dep” row.

Real Estate has officially overtaken my retirement accounts and is now the majority of my net worth.

Crystal Ball


Ideas for increasing NW

  • I got some great ideas from the book Born to Blog (maybe I’ll even do a blog post on this)
  • Start analyzing how affiliate programs really work.
  • Didn’t reach out to 20 universities the past ten days but plan to reach out to at least 20 universities over the next ten days about the new book. Through a buddy I discovered Fiverr.com and have revamped the book cover with help from a talented cover designer. I think it looks much better (maybe I should have my prior book’s cover redesigned also):

Notes:

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