Steve D. Valentine walks through three ways to buy a second home: off-market fixer-uppers, on-market fixers, or fully renovated. He bought a Munds Park cabin below market, renovated it over 40 years, and split major costs like a $40,000 air-conditioning job with partners. Second homes are mostly personal expense, but partnerships and creative financing make them possible.
Questions this video answers
October 24, 2024
Three times over the course of 40 years.
$40,000 total; split two ways with the partner.
Two master suites, a large bunk room, and two guest rooms — able to sleep 15 kids and four couples.
Described as 100% personal expense with no tax write-off unless part-time rented and treated as an income-producing property.
Chapters
Dreaming about a second home. Don't think you can do it. Let me show you how you can do it through partnership strategy and an abundance mindset. Let's dive into this. Hey, I'm Steve Ballantine and I want to show you a strategy that we use to acquire second home when we absolutely didn't think it was possible. So I'm going to show you three simple ways to dive into purchasing a second home and how we stepped up from one home to the next. And we used our real estate strategies to increase our return on life and our return investment right here in Munds Park. All right, so the first part of this strategy is that if you're looking for a second home, there's two different ways to do it. You can either look for something that is in need of repair and off market, or you can look for something that's in need of repair on market or just find something that's been fully renovated. So it depends on what you're looking for and what your finances are. In our case, what we did is we found a home that, that needed to be renovated. This home you see behind us was a great home. It was added on to three times over the course of 40 years. I know this because our neighbor across the street has told us. And we went through and we renovated this for our two families. So we have two master suites, we have a large bunk room and then two other guest rooms so that we could sleep 15 kids and four couples at any given time. So that was our initial strategy. When we started to purchase this property, we bought it at a below discount. We over leveraged and then we remodeled the home and then we refinanced it. The second part of that is I kept referring to we and it's because we chose to do this with a partner. The reason being is with a partner that shares in your vision, you allow yourself to capitalize on the investment by somebody sharing in the expenses. So for instance, when we decided to put air conditioning on the house, you, it was $40,000, but it was split in two. So we both were able to invest in that convenience for us. And with a partner, you're also getting to utilize it in the times that you want to. So we had a schedule with the other couple that we used the property or we were able to use it together. Now as time goes on, we did find that owning a property with a partner when we all have kids tended to be a little bit, well, on the chaotic side. Because when you put two families together and 20 dogs and 95 kids. It tends to get a little messy around here. So we decided to part ways. We bought them out of the the property, they bought their own property. It worked out flawlessly. And now both of us have eventually graduated into a point that where we're not renting our cabins out and we're able to afford the second home. One of the pieces that you should understand about second homes is it is 100% expense. There's zero tax ramification or zero tax write off for owning a second home, unless you're doing it in a way where you're part time renting it out and part time utilizing it to where you can write it off as an income producing property. The goal in all of this is that you absolutely can own a second home. And there are stages that you start. You see some people look at like what we have here, but what you don't see is where we actually started in this little house on hillside that you see that we bought through creative financing. And a lot of times in the second home market, the question is, can you afford it? And if you can't afford it, can you afford it with somebody else? And then the other question is, is, is there creative financing available? Can you afford to create this return on life and return on investment just as we did? And I'm here to tell you that it's absolutely possible. So if you've been thinking about a second home, you're thinking or dreaming about maybe a mountain home or a beach home, I want to help you create a strategy that works for you. And what we do here is we look at different pieces of your current net worth. So, you know, what do you have in equity in your primary home? Maybe your investment properties, maybe your stock portfolio. And we look at a strategy that allows you to afford and maintain a second home and turn it into a long term family investment. So as we wrap this up in this strategy of being able to acquire a second home, there's a couple of things that I just want to mention and let you know that this is how it works. First, we got to work on the mindset that there's an abundance mindset and you need to learn to dream. If it's part of your vision, then make it part of your vision so that it's part of your focus. Second part is, is who can you do this with? I want to remind you that you can do more with other people than you can by yourself. And it's a way to step into an investment with somebody else, reducing the liabilities. The third part is, is understanding that a second home is two things. It's a return on life and a return on investment. Some people really want to look at it and go, there's no return on investment here. And I'm here to tell you that the return on life was the greatest investment in this property. Yes, it's appreciated. We've had some tax write offs from it. But the most important part is the family memories. The memories that I made with my kids, with my wife and my friends and my clients here at our second home is the most important thing because it's a massive return on life. And I hope to guide you through the process of showing you how to create a second home strategy for you and your family and your future. I'm Steve Valentine and I will see you later and I hope you'll join me here in Muns park where I can definitely help you with that strategy.
