Single Family Homes Inside Nancy’s Self-Directed IRA
It all started back in 2006. I was reading the business section of the newspaper and came across an article about self-directed IRAs. I was intrigued about the concept. And as more time passed, I found myself clipping these types of articles from the paper and creating a file I could reference back to.
Lots of articles later and I switched from clipping newspapers to doing internet research. That’s when I discovered uDirect IRA Services.
Not only did they seem to have great qualifications, they were reasonably priced and they just happened to be in Orange County, California. I was excited and didn’t waste any time.
I went right into purchasing property. Well, not in Orange County. The prices here were a bit out of reach for the typical investor. So, we went out of state. We ended up purchasing several properties in Arizona and one in Las Vegas. All residential. And, all through the IRA.
The prices ranged from $45-$70k. One of single family properties which we paid $65k for we recently sold for $177k. That profit was used to buy a house priced at $210k. Had, we decided to buy property in California our nest egg would have had to have been larger. Or we might have only had enough resources to buy one property instead of what we did.
Yes, price was a big attraction to buying out of state. But, the rules in buying properties in other states seemed to be more simplified than in our local area, and uDirect IRA Services was there every step of the way. Kaaren and her team were very instrumental in guiding us through all the processes.
What we did, my husband and I, was transfer our traditional IRAs into Roth IRAs. Sure, we took a little hit on doing that but it better prepared us for the long term…our retirement. So yes, all our properties are in Roth’s, which is really nice.
But you probably want to know about the rules, the regulations and the guidelines, right? And, yes, some have changed since we started buying properties seven years ago. I actually think they’ve gotten better, a little clearer on what to do. The paperwork isn’t so confusing anymore. Although, having a trusted team makes all the difference. Especially for buying and selling and keeping our portfolio compliant.
What we buy is single family homes that generate a monthly rental income, which as we get older will help supplement our retirement. We currently have 4 properties and have a goal to add a fifth property soon.
The question we get asked is why self-directed IRAs? Why not invest in something else? And, honestly after years and years of losing money in the stock markets and getting burned, the idea of losing more money was not something we could afford to continue to do. Years of research lead me to Kaaren and her team. I’ve given her name out to so many people. Most are very receptive. But there was one businessman who completely dismissed the idea that self-directed IRA’s were beneficial in anyway. He just kept saying, “Oh no, you can’t do that.” And, I replied, “Well, yes you can.” And I would show him my newspaper clippings.
People have their misconceptions. They just don’t know how it all fits together. There are so many ways of doing things that it’s good to know that people like Kaaren are constantly educating consumers about self-directed IRAs.
When we sold one of our properties, Kaaren became our advocate bulldog. She made sure that the title was vested correctly. The escrow people aren’t used to doing that and without Kaaren on our side guiding us, our status as a self-directed IRA could have been jeopardized. I’ve made the team at uDirect IRA Services the gatekeepers of our IRA. I feel it’s protected us from doing things that we aren’t supposed to be doing.
I find that a lot of times people that invest in properties without a gatekeeper to keep them in check spend more money or write checks on stuff that is outside the boundaries of their IRA and then their self-directed IRA gets disqualified by the IRS.
So being that we don’t want to be disqualified in any way…we follow the advice of Kaaren and her wonderful team at uDirect IRA Services, LLC.
(And we thank you, Nancy!)
