MY REAL ESTATE CASH FLOW SYSTEM

                                                                KARL WALLACE                                  

Seventy years ago I began my career in real estate. After my dad passed away my mom remodeled our two story single family home in Ogden Utah. She decided to change some walls around in order to make two apartments upstairs and two apartments down stairs. She rented out three of the apartments and we lived in the upstairs front apartment. As young as I was, eight years old, I was still able to help do many of the changes. For the next twelve years I worked and learned the advantages of owning rentals. When I was sixteen my mom had three rental properties the one mentioned above and two duplexes in Salt Lake City. She was self-employed throughout those years. She lived off the income from the rentals and social security and had raised my two sisters and me.

She had lots of extra time and was using it to go to college, so as to gets a master’s degree, and earn more money. In the six years of going to college, while doing the above mentioned stuff, my mom graduated with Honors in 1952, obtaining a Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Utah. She was the oldest Masters Graduate in school history, being 68 years old at the time.

BACK TO THE FAMILY HOME

The family home was located at 1132 21st Street in Ogden, Utah. The remodeling took place in the early months of l942, shortly after Pearl Harbor. Ogden at that time was the railroad distribution and service training center for military personnel serving the Pacific area in the war against Japan.

Also located in Ogden was Hill Air Force Base and Second Street (a 500 acre railroad transfer and storage depot.) Sailors and soldiers immediately filled three rentals in our home.

I remember Pete DeHaultz, an elder in our church, and a wallpaper hanger by trade hadn’t been to our house yet, so we hung sheets between the bedrooms and the bathrooms both upstairs and downstairs for a time. Mom had me do several jobs during the next two years. One was digging out a basement, one bucket at a time, so as to make a “Root Cellar” for food storage. Another job was chopping down a huge soft maple tree in the front yard one branch at a time with a small axe.

I began learning renting, repairing, maintaining and growing a Victory Garden, and earning a monthly war bond from my paper route. I took full responsibility of the rental units until I was twenty-one at which time my mother sold them for more than three times what she had paid for them.

To be continued monthly...

To read more Karl Wallace writings go to:                               karlwallace.blogsdpot.com