By LEAH WEATHERSBY

Some people turn a dislike of yard work into nothing more than a sloppy lawn. Over the last three decades, Green Lake resident Andris Virsnieks has become a part-time real estate investor and an author- his first book. "How to Invest in Condominiums," hits store shelves in January- and he owes is all to being fed up with the garden.

Well, sort of. Virsnieks did buy a house, and a yard, in Wedgwood in 1972 and after a few years he did realize that the rigorous work schedule that house imposed wasn't for him. However, as a former economics major at the University of Washington, Virsnieks also knew that going back to the apartment life and paying rent would be like throwing money away. He arrived at the same conclusion that many others have come to: condominium ownership was the answer. He purchased his first condo in the U-District in 1975 for just over $30,000.

It didn't take Virsnieks long to see that condos, like other real estate in the area, were a good investment. He also figured that it was safer, and offered and better return, than the stock market. Over the next decades, Virsnieks acquired a total of six more condominiums in Washington state (though he later sold two of them) and rented them out, eventually eliminating even more trials of real estate ownership by hiring a property management company to deal directly with the tenants themselves.

Virsnieks said that his investments were so successful that he was able to retire early from his career as a cost analyst with the Department of Defense. Although he had to move out of that first condo in 1981 when he took an extended business trip out of the country, Virsnieks still owns that first unit and has no plans to let it go.

"There's never a good reason - unless there's a personal reason - to get rid of real estate," said Virsnieks, repeating what seems to be his mantra as an investor.

By 1996 Virsnieks had learned a lot about the business of investing in condos and decided to write it all down - not as a book but as a letter to relatives on the other side of the world.

Virsnieks was born in Latvia, a former Soviet republic, in the 1940s. As a child he immigrated with his family first to Western Europe and then the United States, eventually setting in Seattle. In the mid-1990s, some of Virsnieks' relatives who still live in Latvia acquired an apartment building and he began writing them a letter advising them on how best to manage the property. As the pages piled up, Virsnieks realized that his experience could fill a book, and he decided to to do just that. He completed a manuscript, originally entitled "Condominium Manifesto," in 1998. Then, armed with not so much as an agent, Virsnieks headed out into the world (specifically to the Green Lake Library) to research publishers for his text. After changing the title of his book to "How to Invest in Condominiums"- a name with fewer negative connotations-Virsnieks was able to sell the manuscript to John Wiley & Sons publishers in New York in 2001.

Now that he's about to be published for the first time, Virsnieks isn't sure what his next step will be. If his book is successful, he would like to see it translated into Latvian and Russian. (Yes, they do have condos in Latvia, Virsnieks even considered buying one in the early 1990s.) He may also expand his collection of condominiums in the coming months.

"I haven't bought (a condo) in a long time because prices are so high," Virsnieks said, adding that if prices start falling it will be a good time for investors to get into the market. With the help of his book, of course. b