Couple Shares
Passion for Investing

No one understands how much time being a real-estate entrepreneur requires better than Angela Sourapas.

Buying real estate has preoccupied Jeff Jones, her 33-year-old boyfriend, for more than a year -- first as he researched vacation properties on the Olympic Peninsula west of Seattle, then as he investigated other nearby areas and made his initial purchases. He met with lawyers about forming a limited-liability corporation, attended seminars, made at least five failed offers and rethought his tax-filing strategy -- all while pursuing his full-time career as a sales executive for Microsoft Corp., a job which requires frequent business trips. He's a type-A personality, he confesses.

When her new boyfriend started researching investment properties, Ms. Sourapas, 36, thought his purchases would be limited to one or two rentals. Mr. Jones bought his first investment property in April 2004, and Ms. Sourapas expected him to take a break from shopping for more.

"When he said, 'I want to look for another place,' I thought it would involve looking casually," she says.

Within a few months, Mr. Jones began bidding on properties, finally landing a single-family home in nearby Leschi in April 2004. Somewhere along the way, Ms. Sourapas heard about his "20 by 2020" plan -- his goal of acquiring 20 investment properties by 2020.

But Ms. Sourapas says she isn't a "real-estate widow." She has been a part-time landlord and, in March, left her information-technology analyst job at Starbucks Corp. to help run her family's small property-management company.

Ms. Sourapas has traveled out of town with Mr. Jones to investigate property, was with him when he spotted his second purchase and often visits houses for sale with him on weekends.

"He works during the day and squeezes in a workout after we have dinner," she says. "I'll read, and he'll sit next to me with the laptop and search properties. That's every night -- except on weekends."

Ms. Sourapas says Mr. Jones's experiences as a landlord would make her "white knuckled." Since the August weekend when Mr. Jones had to get a leaking roof and plumbing problems fixed in his first property, there have been other trials: The city recently shut off utilities at his second rental property. When he called the utility company, he was told that the shutoff occurred because the residence was scheduled for demolition. After some heart palpitations, he and utility employees realized that his property's address had been confused with another.

Finding renters also has been tough. When showing his second rental property, he interviewed several renters before selecting a tenant. The ad for the home, located in a popular waterfront neighborhood, drew about 10 times as many people as for the ad for his first rental, he says. But he had to turn down callers who wanted only a six-month lease. Many were well-heeled "corporate types" who needed temporary quarters because they were either new to town or were renovating their own luxury homes. Others liked the house, but not the laundry facilities, accessible only through an outside basement door.

Mr. Jones ultimately rented the property to a divorced mother whose credit rating was lower than he had wanted in a tenant. 

"I had an upfront conversation with her," he says. He agreed to rent the home if she paid an extra security deposit along with the $1,465 monthly rent.

He used a two-step process to check her references. First, he called her landlord references, posing as a prospective renter, to verify that they were property owners and managers -- not personal friends. He then called back and made inquiries about her, learning that she is a solid renter.

These day-to-day landlord tasks aren't glamorous and are often time-consuming. For Ms. Sourapas, they can be nerve-wracking to watch, she says. Given her new career in real estate, they'll likely spend even more time talking about potential deals. "Since I'm into it, it's OK," she says. "We can talk shop and compare notes."

-- Ms. Hodges is a free-lance writer in Seattle and writes the Investor Profile and Landlord Chronicles columns for RealEstateJournal.com.

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