Re: William Nickerson - Posted by GL(ON)
Posted by GL(ON) on July 04, 2002 at 21:21:08:
William Nickerson wrote the first book on real estate investing for the amateur. It was published in 1959 and remained in print until 1982.
He bought his first house about 1934.Two years later he made his first investment in rentals. He traded the house for a run down duplex.
The thing that sparked this venture was an experience he had when he was first married.He and his wife rented a cheap, shabby apartment from a widow who couldn’t afford to maintain her building. With the help of his wife’s brother they redecorated and made such an improvement that the landlady hired the brother, a painter, to decorate all her apartments. She then raised the rent from $6 a month to $12. When she went to raise the Nickerson’s rent to $10 (after all they had done their own work, and given her an idea that more than doubled her net income) they rebelled and bought their own place.
This put the idea in his head that real estate was a good investment, especially if you could increase the value by improvements.
It took 3 years to save up $1000 to buy their own home. They traded it 2 years later for a duplex.After they fixed up the duplex they traded it for a bigger aparment house. They went on this way for some years, trading up to bigger (but shabbier) buildings, fixing them up to increase the value, then doing it again.
All this time he worked for the phone company. He recalls discussing his investments with a co-worker and saying “I’m shooting for a side income of $100 a month when I retire”.
In fact he retired when he realized his income from his rentals was so much greater than his job that he didn’t need the job. This was 17 years after they started saving for that first house.
After a trip around the world, they returned to San Francisco. At this point a lot of friends and relatives wanted to be let in on the “big secret”. So he wrote a book.
No publisher would touch it. They said “You got lucky and rode inflation up from the depression. No one will ever be able to do that again”. (At this time apartments in California rented for $50 a month and a brand new house was $7000).
To prove the man wrong he went out and in 2 years bought enough undervalued real estate to double his net worth. This convinced the publisher, and also improved the title of the book:
“How I Turned $1000 Into A Million In Real Estate - In My Spare Time”