How Jenny and Her Family Are Thinking About Real Estate As Part Of Their Retirement Plan

“As an educator, landscape construction worker, and nail technician, [Jenny and her family] wouldn’t have guessed that [they] would ever be investment homeowners.” As Khang and Thi (Jenny’s parents) enter retirement, they have become more aware of the importance of investing. They already had traditional investments like mutual funds and CDs but were seeing low-yield returns amidst a pandemic, volatile markets, and rising inflation. They started seeing friends and relatives buy, renovate and rent out affordable investment homes out of state, but the process was lengthy and cumbersome. Enter Doorvest.
“Doorvest made it possible for us to own a rental home entirely online – from purchasing the home to renovations, to finding residents and maintaining and managing the home. After submitting the deposit, it took [Jenny and her parents] about 2 weeks to select a home and then 3 weeks to close on our home in Houston and receive [their] first rental check.”
Now, families like Jenny’s can access a source of financial security and growth without jumping through the hurdles themselves. Read on to learn more about their Doorvest experience and the financial performance of their current investment!
Why did you want to invest in real estate?
My parents are Vietnam refugees who work 6 days a week as a landscape construction worker and as a nail technician. I don’t know how they did it, but they managed to raise five children in the Bay Area.
As they are entering retirement, they’ve become more aware of the importance of investing. In the last five years, they’ve leaned on me to invest in CDs, mutual funds, and to open their very first IRA account. Seeing the low-yield nature of these investments, carrying the burden of investing their life savings became more and more daunting in the backdrop of the pandemic, volatile markets, and rising inflation.
The incredible opportunity in real estate was obvious to us for a whilebut was never on the table because of the skyrocketing price of Bay Area homes and because of the complexity of the home buying process that was further exacerbated by language and technology barriers. Real estate felt out of reach for my parents who still waited for one of my siblings to visit to translate email exchanges and navigate their devices. Maybe that’s why they decided to have five children – less wait time ;).
We started to see friends and family relatives buy, renovate, and rent out affordable investment homes outside of the state, but the process was lengthy and cumbersome. Can I really fly out to another state to take care of renovations on top of a full-time job? Who would find residents and maintain the home? It didn’t seem feasible and we knew we were passing on a worthwhile opportunity.
So when a friend told me about Doorvest, it gave us so much relief and hope.Now families like us can finally access a source of financial security and growth without jumping through the hurdles ourselves. Doorvest addressed all the pain points of homeownership that deterred us from ever considering it.
Doorvest made it possible for us to own a rental home entirely online – from purchasing the home, to renovations, to finding residents and maintaining and managing the home. After submitting the deposit, it took us about 2 weeks to select a home and then 3 weeks to close on our home in Houston and receive our first rental check.
As an educator, a landscape construction worker, and a nail technician, we wouldn’t have guessed that we would ever be investment homeowners – thank you Doorvest for making this possible!
Why did you decide to invest in real estate through Doorvest?
Though real estate investments require more work up front, they are more stable, while having a higher potential for exponential appreciation. We saw the opportunity in buying and renovating affordable homes outside of the state of California but didn’t have the bandwidth to manage all the moving pieces on our own. Doorvest simplified the process on all fronts.
How did you save for the down payment?
We decided on a 20% down payment for $40,400. My parents and I split the cost of the down payment. As a rule of thumb, I have a practice of setting aside 20% of my monthly income for savings and investments. Half of my down payment came from my cash savings and the other half came from selling a few of my higher-risk investments. *Cryptocurrency cough* My parents reallocated money that was previously vested in CD’s into their down payment.
How was your experience working with Doorvest?
We reserved a 3Bed, 2Ba home in Houston, Texas at the price of $202,000 in March 2022 and the home was appraised for $210,000. Three months later, it is now estimated to be worth $228,500.
- Sale Price: $202,000 (3Bed, 2BA, 1478 sqft)
- Appraisal: $210,000
- Down Payment: $40,400
- Mortgage Interest Rate: 4.625%
- Rental Price: $1650
- Monthly Mortgage Payment: $1312.45 (Includes Taxes and Home Insurance)
- Doorvest Service Fee: $165 (10% of rent)
- HOA: $15/month
- Cash flow: +$157.55