If you don't know me, a year and a half ago my wife and I bought our first Tri-Plex that we plan on holding for several years.  Every step of the way since then has been filled with headaches and drama. We've learned a ton from our first property and were excited to do more.

Except now we had no money.  The Tri-Plex took a ton more work to fix up than anticipated, including some frozen pipes last winter that caused a whole mess of damage.  We got through it all and re fairly proud of what we've accomplished.

About six months ago we wanted to start looking at more properties but didn't want to waste our agent's time since we had no money.  So, I read a few of those books about buying properties with no money down.  Only one idea really stuck out at me as universally feasible: getting a partner to bring the cash, while we brought the experience and labor.

Just as we began looking for partners, it so happened that the stock market began tanking and my Mom pulled a chunk of her money out after it had lost about 1/3 of its value.  She actually approached us about doing a deal together.

We hammered out a contract regarding our partnership and began looking at properties together.  It was interesting to see things with a little more experience under my belt.  My Mom was excited and anxious about getting a rental.  After looking at only a dozen she was ready to put in offers.  Having been through it once already, I urged patience and a dozen more properties came and went before we finally landed on a good deal.  However, we weren't the only ones and nearly five others put in offers higher than ours.

So now we were back to looking at properties.  We looked at probably another fifty before coming across another Tri-plex that was an even better deal.  We finally purchased it in early February after two and a half months of having it under contract.  At various points we were prepared to walk away from the deal but it all finally came together.  Now we're fixing it up in our spare time, but we should have the whole thing ready to rent in less than a month. 

I learned more about negotiating and OPM than before and I'm very glad we finally made it happen.