Profitable Rental Property Investing By an Old Pro: Plus Mobile Homes and House Flipping

My name is Rod Lloyd. I was born in Southport, England in 1954 which makes me 68 years old as I write this book. This book is written as a hands-on landlord. I am not an English major or represent to be a literary specialist, just an average Joe that owns rental property.

My grandfather [on my mother’s side] was a gentleman farmer and a shrewd business man. He died at age 92 when I was seven. He had purchased about a handful of modest single-family rental houses over the years. My working-class family lived in one of the rentals and paid my grandfather rent. My dad was a shipping clerk in Liverpool. My mother was a homemaker and I had two older sisters.

After my grandfather died, my mother and her sister inherited the rentals and his home. Our house and my grandfather’s house were sold and we bought a larger home for our growing family. That left about 5 rentals to be managed.  These were kept and managed by my mother, mainly because her sister lived out of town. So I grew up with the landlord in my blood and property management in my face.

In England in those days, kids could leave school at 15 years old. When I turned 15, I was offered an apprenticeship by a family friend who was a self-employed Carpenter and Joiner. A Carpenter does rough framing woodwork while a Joiner does finish woodwork and cabinet making. In those days, power tools were rare. My boss had NO power tools. Wood was cut with various hand saws, holes drilled by a brace and bit, wood was smoothed and profiled by all manner of planes and chisels.

The apprenticeship was a day-release program where I worked 4 days a week on the job and attended the local trade school one day and evening per week. 

This was a three-year trade school program to attain the City and Guild qualification, but no one ever told me that. At the end of each year I signed up for the next until after 10 years, I sat and passed the Higher National Diploma in Building, which was administered by the Royal Institute of British Architecture in London.

After completing my 5-year work apprenticeship, I consider myself a Classicly Trained Carpenter and Joiner. I continued as a journeyman Carpenter and Joiner but my feet were itchy with all that education. I landed a job as an assistant Building Inspector in Liverpool, about 20 miles away. I was making good money and was getting ambitious. I asked my mother if I could buy one of her rentals. We worked out a deal with my mother and her sister and I became a landlord. I sold it a few years later for a tidy profit.

I moved to the USA in 1981 at the age of 27. I had put an ad in the LA times, looking for a place to stay in exchange for work around the house. Merry answered my ad and I moved to the US into Merry’s spare bedroom. I remodeled her kitchen with ease and she was impressed with my skills.

I quickly got a job as a carpenter for a property company. One man owned 462 rental units in LA in 13 buildings all within a few blocks of each other in the Wilshire district. I was the only carpenter on a team with 4 painters, 1 plumber/electrician, and one handyman. Take note of the staff ratio and I will discuss this later on. I soon became familiar with US rental property and their maintenance.

I had moved on from Merry’s spare bedroom into my own apartment but Merry kept in touch with me. She offered to a partnership with me on a house flip. Her father put up the money and we purchased an odd looking home in the fancy Studio City area and turned it into the best on the block. When sold, there was enough profit to make a down payment on a home.  Oh by the way, by then Merry and I were married. I guess I did not read the fine print in our partnership agreement.

I moved on from my Carpenter position to start a Home Inspection service. In those days, Home Inspections were a new industry in the US in the 80s but I was familiar with the concept from England and I had a lot of inspection experience. I got in on the ground floor.

The realtor that handled the house flip found a duplex foreclosure. The bank wanted 10% down and provided the financing and a 20-day escrow.  We bought it, I got it into shape and we rented it out for a nice little cash flow. That was followed by a tri-plex foreclosure. We scraped the money together for the down payment. I got it into shape and rented them out. 

We were next offered a fourplex foreclosure. We went to look at it and it was a super deal, but Merry pointed out a small detail, we had no more money for the down payment.

Merry called a friend who was impressed with what we had been doing. The bottom line is they became 50-50 partners. They borrowed the money for the down payment and fix up costs. A couple of years later we sold the property. Our friends had enough to put a down payment on a condo and we had enough to put a down payment on 11 crappy units.

From there we decided LA was not the place to raise my young family and we decided to liquidate and move to Kelseyville on the banks of Clear Lake in Northern California.

We bought 24 apartment units and ran them for a while then liquidated and bought a 24 space mobile home park with 545 ft. of lake front property. We lived on that glorious property as the kids grew up. When our 3 kids turned 18, there was no sign of them moving out so we moved out. We moved again north to Rainier Oregon and eventually liquidated the mobile home park.

I now am buying rental property nearby. I manage the property and do all the maintenance.