The Brockmanns have resisted all such newfangled products, as well as the advice of their 55-year-old daughter. "Take out a line of credit and go travel," Sandi Bandfield said she had suggested. "Interest rates are so low, your payments would be next to nothing. You'd be enjoying life."
They already do. The couple's four-bedroom house is about four miles from the ocean, in a section of Huntington Beach just off the Beach Boulevard commercial strip. They bought it in 1964, using their accumulated savings from three previous houses to make a down payment. The purchase price: $26,500.
After 30 years, when the loan was paid off, they got a home equity loan to help their four children buy their own properties. That's it for debt.
"I don't know of any bills we have," said Bill Brockmann, who spent most of his career in the electrical industry. "My pension and Social Security aren't huge, but between them we do nicely. We don't require a whole lot."
As neighbors have come and gone, the couple stayed put. Late last year, the house next door was listed for $595,000, a high-water mark for the neighborhood. Everyone said the sellers were never going to get it, and then they did.
But even this couple has felt the lure of being a landlord. "We had good luck with a rental in Bellflower for five years," Bill Brockmann said. "After that couple moved out, the next was there only two or three months and kind of wrecked the place. I had to keep going back and forth. The upkeep!"
They sold the rental a decade ago. No regrets.
For their eldest daughter, the more houses the better. Bandfield was a medical transcriptionist until recently; her husband Bud, 49, is an independent electrical contractor. They bought their home in Boulder Creek, Calif., near Santa Cruz, for $157,000 in 1989. Substantially remodeled, it's now worth at least four times that.
Last year, the couple began talking about retirement. "We don't want to work forever, and someone's got to pay for this house," Bandfield said. "We have a nice life, but nothing in savings to speak of. I saw us relegated to a dinky gray condo in Las Vegas if we didn't do something."
Stocks? "I dabbled. I think I made $26 last year." Social Security? "It's piddly. Who wants to live like that?"
Real estate seemed the obvious, and only, answer. The couple attended seminars, began to educate themselves. They remortgaged their home to buy a three-bedroom in Visalia, then a two-bedroom cabin near Lake Arrowhead. More recently, they bought two houses in Colorado.
Buying houses to rent them out is a popular strategy. The National Association of Realtors estimates that as many as a quarter of all homes were purchased last year by investors, drawn by the lure of immediate rental income and long-term appreciation.
Bandfield's goal is 10 properties, each yielding $1,000 a month above the mortgage and upkeep. That would nicely fund their retirement. "If we don't do anything," she said, "we're going to have nothing."
