Tycoons in the making - Where are they now?

We profiled some real estate investors when the markets were hot. How are they doing as real estate has cooled?

Jaz Wray
Jaz Wray
Status: Holding

Stance: Wait and see

Jaz Wray just refuses to change his peripatetic ways. He rarely has lived in any one place more than a year and his travels have taken him to dozens of way stations from Oregon to Brazil.

Along the way, he bought some properties and has held onto them. When we talked to him in September 2005, he owned four properties in Dallas, Southern California and the Phoenix area.

Since then, his real estate gains have come strictly from appreciation. Busy with finishing up business school at Thunderbird in Phoenix and pursuing his career - he's taking an assignment with American Express in Sydney, Australia - he hasn't pursued any purchases lately.

But his investments have paid off. He figures that the value of his holdings has increased to about $600,000 today, up from $474,000 in the past year and a half. His cash flow has been positive all that time.

Best of all, tenant issues have been manageable.

"My life as a landlord has been relatively pain-free," he says. "Although in the Buena Park property, an ex-boyfriend showed up and threatened the tenant with a shotgun. There was a police helicopter overhead and the gunman took out a front window but no one got hurt. Otherwise it's been uneventful."

With the move to Australia, he doesn't expect to buy anything new for perhaps a year or more. After that, he'll probably keep an eye out for a bargain - wherever he's living at the time.

Jaz Wray

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Mary Buenaventura

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.