Our rental investments are moving to Minnesota. We bought property there last year to build our own house in the next couple years. Now, we are in the process of moving Rhyolight LLC out of Reno, NV and into Duluth, MN.
What’s Going on and Why Move?
We are moving to Duluth because the summers are too difficult in the RV. After six summers in the RV we know there are very few areas of the country that have temperature highs in the 80s and free places to call home for a couple weeks at a time. We love areas in Oregon and Washington for this – but we are seeing an uptick in people staying in Sno parks, on forest land, and national preserves. The additional people in their new RVs makes finding space away from others rather difficult. Although, we did love our stop this summer near Laramie, Wyoming.
Why Move Rhyolight LLC to Duluth?
As temperatures heated up, last summer, I started looking at average summer temperatures all over the lower 48. I discovered there were a few small towns near Lake Superior in Minnesota with perfect summer temperatures. On our way there, I started my research about the area. What’s the industry? Are there good hospitals and healthcare? What are home prices? I quickly realized there was a potential for rental home investments.
We Searched in Duluth
I reached out to a realtor and he started looking at the houses we flagged as we rested at our layover near Laramie, Wyoming. The realtor, Cody Oakland, saw a few places and took videos for us. He was a great resource to start the process. When we arrived we began our search and realized that we could afford land for the first time ever!
One of Andrew’s Dreams
Cash or a building loan is required to purchase land. We bought land with a loan when we lived in northern Virginia and it was an exciting process. This time we decided to let Andrew follow his dream 100%. He wants to build our house himself! With his own hands. More posts on that to come!
Property for Ourselves
We switched gears and began looking at every single property that was for sale within 60 miles of Duluth. That’s a lot of driving! We made a spreadsheet with all the essential information from the size and location of the property to the views and sounds we heard when there. We put bids on a couple properties and we were outbid and flat out rejected.
Finally, we circled back to one of the very first properties we saw and liked. We were able to purchase it about $20k over what Zillow and our realtor said it was worth. The difficulty in the Duluth area is zoning. Each community has a minimum number of acres the land can be because the communities want to keep it rural and allow for wildlife. We love that idea; although I do have some concerns about the lack of density and who is able to afford to live there. More thoughts on that in the future, too.
Good-bye, Reno
We love Reno. Reno was an excellent opportunity for rentals as I describe in this post. But, we have a lot of equity tied up in the two houses that we are unable to access. Having a very small business in real estate means banks don’t want to give us second mortgages without very high interest rates. So, it’s time to sell and make our move to Duluth.
We are half way through moving Rhyolight LLC out of Reno. This winter we’re making improvements and repairs (thank you, tenants) and have a great realtor to sell the homes. After Chris listed the smaller house we had an offer $10k over asking. We are expecting to close early in March. The tenants moved out of the larger house at the end of January and we finished the work of painting, making repairs, and replacing the floor with luxury vinyl. We got lucky and the new deck doors from Lowes were installed and the house is ready to go on the market tonight!
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