Rental property investment is a business more and more people are getting into as a second, or even retirement, career. But Port Charlotte, Fla., might have the youngest landlord in the U.S. Fourteen-year-old Willow Tufano bought a house in a short sale in Port Charlotte for $12,000. The three-bedroom house is now rented out for $700 a month.
According
to news reports, the home had been on the market for $100,000 at the peak of
the housing bubble. It was listed at $16,000 but Willow (and her mom) got it
for $12,000. Willow put down $6,000 cash and her mom, a real estate agent,
ponied up another $6,000 for the house.
The
teenager, who recently appeared on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” said she earned
her money primarily from offering a service where she clears out foreclosed
houses on behalf of the new investors, picking through the stuff and reselling
any goods or appliances that she can. She also spends her weekends looking for
deals from garage sales and reselling them for a profit on Craigslist. She
started buying and selling things at age 12 and had $6,000 saved in a year and
a half.
After
closing on the house, she made a few improvements and turned it around to rent,
becoming a new landlord at the ripe
old age of 14. Not a bad start to what surely will be a career in rental
property investment.
