 I just got confirmation that my real estate sale for $345,000 is complete, which means it became reality, and I made $164,000 post-tax, which is a $250,000 pre-tax gain. Hello, my name is Johannes Bodlin. I recently started documenting my financial freedom journey on YouTube. I love math and I love finances, at least my finances. I'm a huge fan of passive income or income sources when managed properly can generate income while you sleep. Since having money stacked away in your bank account doesn't do anything for you, I started investing in real estate when I turned 23 years old. This particular story about these two apartments that I recently sold is a little bit emotional because these two apartments were part reason why I was able to leave Austria and fulfill or chase my dream to live in the United States. I'll try to stick to the numbers and don't involve too many emotional information, but yeah, let's get started. Since all the numbers are in euro, I will make sure that we have the exchange rate as well, so you have the dollar value in here on the video as well. So 10 years ago, I found two apartments in an apartment complex about 10 minutes away from where I grew up. As my first investment property, I chose two apartments in a very small town, each worth 80,000 euros. With lawyer fees and agent fees, it was roughly about 90,000 euros each. So my total investment was about 180,000 euros. I always want to say dollars, it's euros. And no, I wasn't smart enough to take out a loan, you know, invest my money elsewhere, make more money that way and just pay it back like that. It never happened. I paid in cash, yeah. I grew up in an environment where I thought debt was bad and credit card is for people who don't have money and cash is king. I know it's hard to believe, but it is what it is. Anyways, let's jump back to the two apartments that I now own. The feeling when I signed the contract, knowing that my 180,000 euro will now generate me a monthly income of roughly 800 euros was phenomenal. I knew my money was just sitting in the bank account generating absolutely no money. And now putting it into this property or these two properties, I was now able to get 800 euros, roughly 800 euros each month. That's a 5.5% return on my investment pre-tax. So with me running my business out of Austria, I was able to deduct a lot of things like my phone bills, my internet, my car in general, a small room out of my apartment because that's where I had my office. This obviously reduced my tax burden and increased my income. So for the past 10 years for those two apartments, I received a monthly income of roughly 800 euros. And believe it or not, these two apartments were only vacant for two months out of 10 years. That's insane. And in those two months, I renovated both of the apartments to make sure they are up to date. And I always have good tenants in my apartments. Turned out to be the best decision ever because yeah, it was a brilliant, beautiful investment. So needless to say, this investment was awesome. So fast forward to 2014 when I moved to the US and studied acting and English. At that time, by the way, my English wasn't perfect, it's still not, but it got better over time. At that time, while I was studying, I was on a student visa, which means I wasn't allowed to work at all. I was not allowed to make any kind of money in the United States. I was well prepared for that because I knew on a student visa, I'm not allowed to work. So I have to make sure that I have passive income before I make the move. Again, I was well prepared at that point. I had five properties generating income for me that basically helped me pay my bills while studying. That way I was able to fully focus on my studies instead of worrying about money. Fast forward even further when I got my old one visa in 2017. And oh, one is a talent visa where you need a sponsor to sponsor you to be in the United States. So you need a special talent or you need something that a company needs. So they were willing to say, yeah, we need this guy or this girl and we're willing to pay for that. So after receiving my old one visa, I was able to or allowed to start businesses in the United States. And of course I was allowed to pay taxes taxes. Yeah, that's another reason why I sold my two apartments in Austria. Now when I explain why I sold them in this environment where we are where there's a lot of fun and like hindflation, apparently a stock market crash around the corner. Because I live in the United States now, Austria does not let me deduct anything. No phone bill because I don't have a phone there. No car because I don't have a car that I literally cannot deduct anything. Instead, they penalize me with a 9,000 euro income increase just because I don't live there and I don't spend money there. What does that mean? I basically just put $9,000 on my yearly income on top of it and I have to pay taxes on those additional $9,000. This can bring me into another tax bracket, which is bad because now I have to pay more taxes on money that I didn't even make. To say it one more time, I have to pay taxes on money that I didn't make. To be very specific, I have to pay taxes on 9,000 euros every year just because I don't live there. This is very frustrating when you look at it and you see your money melt away for absolutely no reason. Another reason why I'm selling these apartments is because when I lived in California, I also had to pay an additional 10% taxes on my worldwide income, meaning all the money that I generated from passive income from my real estate investment portfolio in Austria, I had to pay taxes there and then on top of that an additional 10% in California. Yeah, California is like, I want a piece of that. So I got penalized twice just because I moved to California. Austria was like, mm-mm, you don't live here. You make money here. We penalize you. California said, you live here in this beautiful estate. Cool. We penalize you. Give us more money. Now saying it out loud, that's painful. Do I have to give you more reasons why I sold these two apartments? I'll give you one more. Since I'm not in Austria, I need somebody there to take care of my properties. This can be very costly if you're not there and you need to fix something, you know, very quickly. Luckily, I have a smart, beautiful mom that helps me right now with the property management out there, but at the current situation, I just don't want her to have that burden on her shoulders. And on top of that, she wants to move to the States. So right now it's just the perfect timing for me to get rid of those two apartments because they don't serve me anymore. Now it became more work for me and it's costing me more than it's actually making. Does that make sense? To make it easier, I could use the money somewhere else and make more with it. So why should I hold on to something that's clearly not efficient anymore? With us being in this crazy sellers market, I wanted to take advantage of the situation and just put those two apartments up for sale. I thought it was a really good time to just see what people are willing to pay for my apartments because everybody's scared. Everybody wants to buy, buy, buy, buy, even though the prices go up in value to a point where people are like, that's way overpriced. People are still buying it. And I know what I'm talking about because I've been trying to purchase houses in California and within 17, 18 and 22 hours, houses sold for 25 to 30 percent over asking price after listing at 17 hours after they listed the house gone. And then I asked my agent, I was like, how much did it go for it? And he said 30 percent over asking price. What the house is worth? Anyways. Okay. Back to the story. As you can see, it's a very emotional, stressful topic. So let's jump back to my beautiful apartments in Austria. I put them up for sale with a solid price and I wanted to get a really good deal on it. And I did. So I did the math on this investment over the past 10 years and I was able to generate 7.8 percent every year for 10 years. And that's post tax, post tax. Beautiful. So what am I going to do with that money? So first of all, I'm going to bring all the money over into my US bank accounts and just hold it in cash. I'm still looking for a good deal in the real estate market, but currently I think it's not the best time. So I'll just hold on and just keep looking until I find the perfect fit for me. Since I'm a permanent resident of the United States now, I'm able to really focus on, you know, starting a real estate business or investment portfolio for myself here. I'm not starting a business, but just invest into real estate and basically start from scratch, sell everything in Austria and start from scratch over here and build my real estate portfolio. I'm super excited about that. Nevertheless, I'm a bit emotional because these two apartments were part reason why I was able to move to the United States and chase my dream or actually fulfill my dream to become a permanent resident in the United States. I'm extremely thankful that 10 years ago I found those two apartments. I got a really good deal on them. I was scared because it was my first investment property. I wasn't sure if I'm doing everything right. It turned out to be a great lesson for me. I made obviously small mistakes, but over the long run, it turned out to be a phenomenal investment. 7.8% post-tax is incredible. Yeah, I'm ready to say goodbye to those two apartments and reinvest the money in the US market now. If you're interested to see my first US property, make sure to subscribe. I will definitely keep you guys in the loop as soon as I found something, signed it and have the key in my hand. If you're still watching this video, thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Have a great day.