My next hurdle is to refinance the house before my $110K baloon is due in December. In today’s tight credit market, I am worried all available cash has dried up. I have a very good relationship with my banker, but it can only go so far.

Once that is done, it’s on to find my next deal.

I will compose and post my first entry in the series on my rental in the next few days.

In other news, my rental property is now on the market.  I have been getting nibbles, but no big bites yet. I have to get a tenant into the house before December so I can refinance it. I have a balloon payment due then and the pressure is on.

My general strategy is to get multiple streams of income coming in to initally supplement my salary, but to eventually have it replace my salary. So, with my rental, my Internet Marketing activity, and soon, my freelance Web Design work (and content writing), I hope to generate enough revenue to go independent.

Stay tuned…

So, I went out and got an account with Blue Host. Blue Host has CPanel and Fantastico, both allow you to install packages, such as Joomla and Wordpress, very easily. What’s nice about Blue Host is that they also allow you to host an unlimited number of websites, each as subdirectories under your main site and each appearing as their own site.

So I am in the process of migrating this site over to my new site…it is a work in progress. My new main site is FreelanceWisdom.com if you go there now, you will see the Joomla main page. Little by little I will be adding to it. If you go to FreelanceWisdom.com/projectnomad you will see my first attempt at migrating Project:Nomad to the site. I am not crazy about the wordpress template I am currently using; I’m still looking for a better one (let me know if you like it or not – I may just change the pictures). I will continue to contribute to this site while I am building my new site.

I have also created a site to rent my house. There are several components for Joomla sites, including slide carousels. I will use this to display pictures of the house and provide rental information.

Stay tuned…

Oh…and it’s tax time…need I say more?

I am trying to apply 4HWW to my situation though. I am working on a proposal to outsource the website design to market my house. It is just taking too much time to do it on my own, and really, it is something perfect to have someone else to do for me. I will post my experiences here on how it goes.

Now, before I get into my favorite sites (yeah, you’ll need to wait a little while more, but it will be worth it…) I want you to imagine the following situation.

Say you have a laptop. On the laptop, you have a basic operating system, and a web browser. That’s it.

No utilities, No applications (other than the browser), No suites…nothing… Basically you have what is known as a “Thin Client”.

The challenge is, can you run a business from the laptop?

Sure ya can, Sparky… just go here.

It is pretty cool. Everything you need, via Web 2.0 hosted applications. This is perfect for a freelancer on the move. I hope you find it useful.

I am also toying with the idea of moving this blog over to the new host. The host allows for multiple sites, and even though I don’t have a major following, it will give me the chance to experiment a little more, and eventually try to sell ad space. I am actually considering splitting the blog up into two parts, one continuing on with the 4HWW theme, and the second with my experiences as a real estate investor. This is a ways off, but I am looking forward to it.

On another note…tomorrow, the house will have new garage doors, and the landscaping will be complete. All that is needed is a new oven and a good cleaning and it will be ready to rent. I will then be free to move on to other projects. I want to get back to my goal of forming a virtual company…

In my next post I am going to list some excellent resources that I always turn to for freelance advice and ideas.

I apologize to the three or four of you that hang on my every word waiting for my next wacky adventure…

Seriously, I have been swamped…

The major rehab on the house has been complete, now comes the little details that need to be finished so I can get the house ready to rent. Today, I went to a local appliance store to get a stove top for the kitchen (I still need a new wall mounted oven and range hood); I also hung the fire alarms and started cleaning EVERYTHING!

The big to-do is getting the garage doors to work. My contractor could not do it, but gave me the name of someone who might. They have yet to get back to me…

I also have to get my “process” formalized. I know what the Georgia Landlord – Tenant law is, and I have a good lease. I now need to get a voice mail service to handle the calls from prospective renters and a way to run credit checks and criminal checks on any applicants. The devil is always in the details.

Still, I am excited. So far (knock on wood) I have been able to handle any problems that I have encountered. It has been crazy leading a double life, programmer by day, real estate rehab project manager by night, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course, that doesn’t mean that life as a landlord isn’t going to cause headaches, but financially, it will ease a lot of pressure having someone else pay the mortgage – assuming I find a tenant. Then comes the next house…

Keeping productive given my situation has been a challenge, and I have been surfing the net for productivity tips. I have found a really good article here. I hope you find it helpful.

Work on the house is coming along nicely. It is about at the midway point. I have some additional stuff that I decided needed to be done – there is no insulation in the crawlspace, and those leaks I mention earlier. It will cost, but it will save my tenants a lot in energy bills – happy tenants = good tenants; plus it will have to be done eventually anyway. In a day or two, I will meet with my lawyer, who himself is a landlord, and I will take a crash-course in Georgia Landlord-Tenant Law, and soak up as much knowledge as possible.

My Day Job, on the other hand, has been driving me crazy. I find myself in a situation where I am getting pulled from many different directions, and it is causing a lot of stress.  This has given me renewed motivation to get away, if only for a while. I am still working on a way to move to a freelance position.

While planning my escape, I found this great article on living long term and rent free. The travelzine itself is a great resource, so I have added it to my blogroll.

As I mentioned in my last post, I got the house. In the last week or so, when I was not with my wife and kids celebrating the holidays, I was in the process of getting the house ready for rehabbing. This meant getting the utilities squared away, and, as of today, getting a new furnace installed (Since turning on the water, I have already found four leaks!). We have had sub-freezing weather here in the Atlanta suburbs and ice was forming in my toilets and water lines. I have started insulating the pipes as a precaution. When they installed the furnace, I installed a programmable thermostat to help save money.

So now the house is ready for repair. My crew starts tomorrow and the work should be done before the end of the month. During this time, I am going to meet with my lawyer who is also a landlord and pay for an hour of his time to get me up to speed on what to expect, and how to handle it. Yeah, I’d rather be on some tropical beach, laptop in hand, slinging code, working remotely, but this opportunity came up and I had to take it. I have a one year interest-only mortgage. At the end of the year, I’ll either re-fi or sell the house. Either way, I did it right and made the profit going in, so I should be ok.

I still intend to find a way to become location-independent; it’s just going to be a little harder.

Now, keeping in line with my goal of making this a good resource for people, I have found a really good article entitled “The Ultimate Guide To Not Choking Under Pressure“. It was written with software developers in mind, but the principles are universal, especially for freelancers.

I have been really busy coordinating the closing for my house. The lender I am using wants to use their lawyer to do the closing, this after my lawyer has already done a title search. So now I have to pay both lawyers for two title searches on the same house; plus two appraisals! Don’t even get me started on my insurance!

What I thought the house was worth: $135,000

Look on my face after getting the news from the appraiser that the house is really worth $156,000: Priceless…

Ok…so I have to put in about $15,000 in repairs & closing costs, but still a sweet deal….