A Beginners Real Estate Infancy

I've had interest in RE since the late 90's, when Carlton Sheets was doing his late night commercials. I had completely remodeled my house, and was looking for the next project. I bought that course, and went looking for my first flip. Found a realtor, and started looking. I came very close to buying "the brown house" named because it was on Brown street. A total rehab, and would have required ripping out the construction the owners had done because it was horrible.

One of my employees was looking for a house to buy at the time. He said one day, "We can't find a house we like. We want a house like yours, and just can't find it. Why don't you sell me yours?" So I thought about for a couple of days, and told him If I could find a house we liked more than our current house, I would do a deal.

Well, my wife already had her eye on a neighborhood she liked, and there was only one house available there at the time. So in the next 3 weeks, we had sold our house (by owner) bought a new house and moved. Thirty days before we hadn't even considered moving! Lesson learned... don't finish all the projects in your house, you might just move soon thereafter!

That moved and the new house consumed all our remodeling and investing efforts for the next 10+ years.

In 2013, I ran across an old friend (Mike), who had changed his career. When I quizzed him on what he was doing, the answer was real estate investing. Hmmm, that sparked my interest again. I told him I wanted to learn more, but had to get through a few business projects before I could get to it.

2014, Rich Dad came to town, and I drank the Koolaid. After three days of the brainwashing, I was convinced this was the time to act. So, I dumped $25K into their program, and started the classes. (Note to self... don't do that again) While there is some value in their courses, it is way overpriced, and somewhat antiquated. Online classes were painfully slow, but a bit overwhelming at times. Kind of like drinking from a fire hose, there is a lot to comprehend. 

I took several other courses during 2014, which in my opinion had much more value than the Rich Dad courses. Some courses are available for $100 to $1000, and give great info, and better support. I found a few that really helped me, but I'll share that in another post. The point I want to make here is, don't spend $25k getting started! My buddy Mike told me... go to every meeting and network, learn, and study there. That was great advice, as when I started following that advice my learning curve started to accelerate.

I decided to start small, but the Denver market had very few opportunities for small deals. So after going through a Larry Goins course on small deals (Filthy Riches), I figured I should look out of state for the deals. Going to the computer, I started looking for the $20k deals. I started in Florida and worked my way until I ran across an area near St. Louis, which looked good on paper. After researching the area, I flew out there to scope the lay of the land. It took a couple of trips to develop some relationships out there, but I was finally ready to do some deals.

Next post... "My First Deal"