Florida’s housing bust yields 14-year-old landlord

A 14-year-old Florida girl is earning $700 per month renting out the Port Charlotte home she bought for $12,000 last year, NPR reported.

After the housing collapse, Willow Tufano’s real estate agent mother began working with foreclosures. She found that investors purchased homes and had no need for the existing furniture, so she asked if she could sell it on Craigslist. After months of earning an average of $500 in profit, Tufano had saved up $6,000.

In December she used the money to bid on a foreclosed home on the auction block, once valued at $100,000, with a starting bid of just $12,000. She split the house, at 21440 Holdernit with her mother, and plans to take title to it in a few years.

In the meantime she found a young family who rents it out from her for $700 per month. And when the family needed to furnish their new living space, Tufano found another buyer for pieces in her discarded furniture collection. [NPR]