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Max M.
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Palatine, IL
22
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What's up guys? Mom's Basement Loser from Palatine, Illinois (TLDR alert)

Max M.
  • Real Estate Investor
  • Palatine, IL
Posted Nov 22 2014, 08:51

With my burgeoning interest in real estate I decided to join Bigger Pockets to hopefully surround myself with people with whom I can talk about this business and maybe even work with in the future. In real life I'm surrounded by what I call "financial losers" who's entire model of reality is trading time for money working for a boss and "you can't do that" about everything, or even worse, failing to even achieve that (kind of like me). I like my closest friends very much, but I can't really talk about topics germane to my current endeavors with them (or anyone else I know in real life). They say you are who you hang out with, so I think it's about time I spend a little more of my time hanging out with people who actually do useful things in this realm of business. Maybe some of the success-oriented thinking will rub off on me.

**TLDR alert, vapid socialites be warned... I tried to keep it short. I really did. I just couldn't do it. Sorry. Just not my cup of tea. I'm here to build potential long term relationships so I want everyone to have an opportunity to know where I'm coming from. If you wanna skip this intro for now, go ahead. I'll link it in my profile in case you ever see me elsewhere on the site and become curious. If you're looking for something that could be mildly entertaining, keep reading**

Basic Intro

Hi I'm Max. I'm 30 years old. I've been basically a World of Warcraft playing mom's basement loser for the past 7-8 years after I was fired from my last job working as a janitor for $12 an hour. (I was sleeping in a dark office on the floor for an hour for my lunch break and a corporate drone spotted me walking out of it and decided to tell his boss)

I actually don't even have a basement to live in, or even my own room. I live with my mom in a 1 bedroom section 8 apartment. I sleep on the floor between a dining table and the apartment entrance door. (floors can be pretty comfortable sometimes!) While I ultimately have nothing against her, we do not get along, and never will so long as we have to be around each other. Basically my life is hell.

All of my immediate family are financial losers. Both of my parents were financial losers. I was raised by losers to be a loser. Nobody taught me to be a winner, not in life, not in finances, not in anything. I had no such mentors. I am estranged from my relatives (partly my fault) and have no interest in trying to get their help. My 2 closest friends are losers just like me, except they have no interest in changing their situations, no real interest anyway.

I have no money. Nobody I know has any money. I have no connections. But I'm lucky enough to have a warm place to sleep at night, my own desk with a computer and internet, and food to eat. For now, anyway.

How I Got Into Real Estate

How did I decide real estate investing was right for me? I'll try not to make this story too long, because I could probably write a book. But it will be verbose.

Several months ago during the springtime I was taking a walk through my usual route in the suburbs. Across the street from my relatively fancy looking apartment complex (which is 30-40% section 8 in reality) there's an ugly looking apartment complex full of gang-bangers. Walking 1 block past this complex the neighborhood suddenly turns into a crime free suburban utopia: a beautiful place full of trees, nice middle class houses, and virtually no cars parked on the road. The air always smells amazing in this neighborhood. I recently did a Zillow search of these blocks, and found the reported house prices to be in the low to mid 200's range with some of the nicer houses pricing at $300-400K.

Childhood Flashbacks - Apartments, Houses & Semi-Homelessness

Pay attention to the types of real estate I lived in, and the varying conditions of poverty and helplessness in terms of living situations. These are key factors that lead to where I am mentally today in regards to real estate.

All my life I lived in apartments, except for once. My mom landed a six figure computer consulting (programming) job and at the age of 9 I moved into my first (and only) house in suburbia. It was a 1 story brick house with a finished basement. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths. Central air/heat duct-work. Mostly hardwood on the main floor, 2 carpeted rooms. Carpeted basement. Not what I'd call the nicest house, but living there was amazing compared to any apartment. It was a dream come true. Living in apartments just does not compare. You can hear the other tenants and they can hear you, or at the very least you hear them come and go. People are always driving up in front of your windows and standing there in their cars. Headlights in your windows. No peace. Too crowded.

My mom spent a lot of time in the backyard putting down stone paths and planting all sorts of trees and plants. The backyard was surrounded by 7-8 foot tall bushes creating an impenetrable layer of privacy (and a mighty fine looking one at that). Some of my best memories were falling asleep back there on a warm summer afternoon and waking up at night with the warm breeze still blowing. Coincidentally my bedroom window happened to be about 10 feet above and directly behind where I was lounging in the backyard, overlooking the yard (sometimes I even climbed into and out of my bedroom by getting on top of the storage shed).

Apartment living just doesn't compare. I could sleep in my bedroom with the window open without worrying about people seeing into it, or having to hear cars and people walking past. Just the sounds of nature. I now know that there's a certain ambient level of anxiety involved in living in an apartment, particularly a basement/ground-level apartment. You constantly hear strangers coming and going, and they can often see you through the windows or disrupt you with sounds or headlights. Being that I am sometimes introverted and greatly value my times of solitude, it's impossible to feel at home in this type of environment. I've tried both.

Anyway, fast forward to the age of 16, my mom is having trouble finding work that's less than a 2 hour drive away. If I knew just how good I had it for those 7 years I would have been a much happier child living in that house. But I was spoiled and always found something to be upset about. Next thing I knew we were moving everything into storage and moved from a house straight to a homeless shelter in Chicago, where we would reside for the next 2-3 months. I was commuting 30+ minutes 1 way to my $6/hr job bagging groceries, or riding a bike nearly 1 hour each way. My mom ended up getting a job at the same Jewel/Osco.

When my mom got financially back on her feet to some extent we moved back to the suburbs into a 2 bedroom apartment on the third floor of a large building. As far as I was concerned it was a pretty crappy apartment, but it wasn't bad since my bedroom was on the top floor. Unfortunately there were lots of problems with noise complaints. There were other issues as well which made living there a less than ideal situation.

1.5 years passed. Pretty soon money became thin for my mom again. Her profession was a dying one and the nearest work required moving potentially hundreds of miles away. Back to a homeless shelter we went. After a couple months there I ended up moving in with my dad and stepmother into an apartment of theirs along with their two children. I didn't have my own room per se, but there was a tiny little attachment to the kids' room which became my place to sleep. This turned out to be even worse than any previous living arrangement. I could not get quality sleep because I was constantly hearing children crying, screaming, or just playing very loudly. I also had no privacy since my little room had a window looking directly into the kids room. Much of my time in bed involved me curled up trying to cover my head with as much pillow/blanket as possible to mitigate the sounds coming at me, with no success.

After a couple years living there my dad's heart condition came to a head and he had to be hospitalized for a long time. My stepmother's mother took this opportunity to steal my keys while I was sleeping, lock me out of the apartment, and then threaten to smash my electronics if I did not move everything of mine out immediately. This of course happened before and during my janitorial work shift. I even had to take my break time at the job to come back and move all my stuff out to sit waiting outside for further moving at some undefined later time or date! As soon as I moved out, she moved in. They were not expecting my dad to come back, but rather for him to die in the hospital. They got their wish, though it came a few years later than would have been convenient for them. Fortunately for them, they were able to keep him out of the apartment the entire time. I wonder if they're satisfied. My stepmother's mother had a boyfriend at the time. I wonder if he moved in.

Meanwhile my mom who was now in her 50s, in very poor health, and who's career was completely finished (not retirement, the profession became obsolete), had found a section 8 apartment: The one I currently reside in now, and have resided in for nearly 10 years. Since then I've suffered a profound depression and have been feeling my energy slip away further and further into oblivion. Every day that passed I felt more dead inside. Everywhere I turned I saw nothing but more misery. My only prospects in life being either working myself into an early grave doing something I hate just to make a decent living, or possibly even doing the same for a poverty level income that I couldn't even afford to live alone with. Every potential avenue of "doing what you love and the money will follow" was ******** and filled me with pure misery, ruining many of my favorite hobbies to the point I lost interest in doing them for fun! At a certain point I began to feel like I'd be much happier just working as a janitor or stocking shelves in a grocery store, if only I could be paid a decent wage for it. It's actually not a bad job. But it was too late. I had slipped so far into loserdome I could not convince myself to get off my *** to work all my life for pittance, struggling against thousands of other desperate people for humiliatingly low paid honest work. The life of a desperate job seeker with no business sense. It's a dirty game yall.

Back To A Few Months Ago (real estate inspirations)

Continued from the beginning, I was taking one of my many walks through my favorite part of town: suburban utopia. One of the few things in my life that brings me any real joy or peace. This was several months ago during the springtime. As usual I was admiring the different houses and properties, comparing them to each other, the pros and cons, wondering what their differences meant in terms of monetary worth. It was during this walk in the wee hours of dawn on a Saturday or Sunday morning that I suddenly knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that I wanted to make my living with suburban houses. I had no idea in what capacity, but it had to be related to the houses and properties. Perhaps landscaping or design. Perhaps being a real estate agent, someone putting together deals? Maybe working for a contractor? While I didn't know exactly in what capacity I wanted to work with suburban real estate, what I did know was that I wanted to learn the whole business inside and out, to the point that I could be buying and selling properties so I could choose where I wanted to live, and get the best deal on it, as well as sell it at any time and move somewhere else if I so chose. I wanted to be able to move into the perfect house in the perfect neighborhood, according to my own criteria, or build one and landscape the perfect property. My work would involve any or all the things related to this. Master the business, reap the rewards. Making calls, driving around the suburbs, checking out properties, talking to people, putting together deals, whatever. Make my favorite playground my business ground.

However, my conception of the real estate business was so amorphous that I was simply paralyzed. I knew nothing. I could do no more than continue my neighborhood walks and fantasize about a future where my line of work was suburbia.

Discovering Real Estate Investing

Perhaps 3-4 months ago I was doing some research regarding the apartment complex I lived in. We had endured an entire month of 8am to 6pm inspection time ranges during subzero winter days months back, and just when I thought it was over, in the springtime there were yet more inspections and it was stressing me out like crazy. There was even an apartment entry attempt without a 24 hour notice. It was stressing my mom out even worse. I scoured the internet for information relating to section 8, inspections, and the laws relating to that.

I ended up spending many hours learning about section 8 laws and the business around section 8. I didn't realize section 8 was such a big business for people that owned real estate. I became very angry because the management of this apartment complex was making everyone's lives hell including non-section 8 tenants. What's worse, I eventually learned that this complex was part of a MASSIVE real estate investment portfolio of a corporation located across the country in California. Basically my hell was making some fat-cat across the country rich. I'd rather all government charity programs ended immediately and had all section 8 tenants nation-wide on the street, but since that would never happen I'll just try to avoid freezing to death for now.

So I was randomly watching a YouTube video about how to screen tenants for landlords, which made me even more angry, because basically any smart landlord worth their salt will only take tenants who are perfect little angels. Basically the opposite of some impoverished scumbag such as myself with ruined credit, regardless of my lack of criminal nature (I was arrested once because I failed to pay a $35 traffic fine a few months prior to that!). I WAS POSITIVELY FUMING.

I became obsessed and watched a few other videos about making money as a landlord, not because I was interested in doing so, but out of SHEER DISGUST. I learned pretty quickly that for most landlords it's actually quite a challenge to make it profitable and there are many pitfalls. As angry as I was I had to admit that it's a legitimate business and not an automatic easy street, especially when hearing about all the crazy and cheating types of tenants they could deal with. I mean, some of these stories about common problem tenants I couldn't even believe so many people acted this way. Wow. No wonder landlords are so picky about tenants.

AND THEN, THE MAGICAL MOMENT... I BUMPED INTO A VIDEO BY PHIL PUSTEJOVSKY. It had to do with section 8 and investing in the ghetto. This guy sounded like he really knew what he was talking about. I liked him. For some reason he didn't annoy me as much as some of the other people on videos regarding land-lording. He just seemed to be shooting straight and not putting a spin on things. (I eventually learned he started out in a situation even worse than me, in some ways, which made me like him even more)

This was not actually the moment I became turned on to real estate investing. After watching a couple of his videos I actually forgot about it for a while. But over the next few weeks as I was using YouTube from time to time, I would notice his videos being recommended to me by YouTube, so eventually one caught my eye and I watched more it it. I soon learned about the concept of creative real estate investing, learned his story, and since then I was hooked. I realized I had found the answer I was looking for. I found out in what capacity I would be entering the real estate business!

Back To The Present (getting started with real estate)

So I've been reading and watching videos about real estate investing, particularly on the creative side, for perhaps 3 months now. During this time my emotions were all over the place. As I passively learned more about the creative real estate investing business, I reached the heights of inspiration and the depths of hopelessness and sorrow. Eventually I reached the place that I am now, a healthy middle point that no longer changes based on my current emotional state. I know that getting started will probably require a little bit of cash, probably anywhere from $300-$2000, which means I will have to do something I find very alien now, which is get a job. I'm not worried about how much work or learning curve there is to deal with. What bothers me is having to wait months, even years, because I can't perform basic operations due to being short a couple hundred dollars, be it for a good cell phone (probably a full-on smart phone), or marketing, or all the misc. services I may have to pay for to close deals, not to mention gas money for my mom's car.

I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is the business I want to be in. I've become very unhealthy and depressed over the years, and developed many bad habits which drain my energy. Even getting a part time job will be a big challenge for me, but none of that is an issue for me. I'll do what it takes to get started, even if it takes me 2 years to close my first deal.

Unlike many people here I'm way behind the starting line. I'm completely broke, I'm a total loser in every sense of the word. I have no prospects or professional career whatsoever. All I have is my desire and a market full of opportunity. I'm lucky enough that my situation isn't worse though. Honestly I probably deserve to be huddled under some blankets in a tent in the woods, or in a cardboard box on the side of the road. I'm a 30 year old white male in the United States who feels sorry for himself and who would consider getting a job at Taco Bell an accomplishment right now. L-O-S-E-R. But maybe that will be an advantage later on. Who knows.

What I'm Doing Here At BiggerPockets

TBH I'm not really expecting much here. My loser vibes will probably repulse a lot of successful people. However, as I slowly struggle to fix up my current state of affairs, I want to focus more on constructive things involving this business. I'd like to start making a chunk of each of my day spent talking with people in the business who have more successful mindsets. I assume some of you successful people get your jollies talking to newbies :) I'm trying to get my head on straight with regards to attitude and mindset. My time is better spent here than arguing with some random person about some random topic, or watching/reading random junk on the internet. Or playing World of Warcraft even though I can't even enjoy it anymore in my current living situation.

I literally cannot even afford a paid account here at BiggerPockets, but that's fine, because for now I probably couldn't be useful to anyone in any marketable respect, outside of labor. I'll buy it when I get some money coming in. The cost is trivial compared to the benefit.

My Current Plan

1. Take care of some basic health and energy related stuff until I'm ready to actually go outside regularly and find work. This may take as long as 1-3 months if things get really bad, or as short as a couple weeks.

2. Bring in a bit of income from random jobs, $1,000 to $2,000 starting capital, possibly try my hand at bird dogging the local markets

3. Start actively learning the non-traditional real estate business and making contacts while continuing to maintain the poverty level jobs to keep income flowing for any necessary expenses

What I'm Looking For Right Now Business Wise

For now I'm just looking for some interaction with others here. A better way to spend my down time. That's all I can promise at this exact moment.

Why I'm Anonymous & Have No Picture

I'm trying to keep my full name hidden for now because I do not want my family/friends tracking what I'm doing in this business until I've already succeeded at it, and even then I'm not going to be trying to share it with my family. I really don't want anyone who knows me to interfere with my efforts. In the future I will be more open about it once I've actually succeeded and can't be sabotaged or distracted anymore (it's especially important that my living situation isn't threatened, so once I move out that won't be an issue)

Also, the last photo I have of myself is from ~8-9 years ago, not that I'd use any on this site yet (trying to hide from those that know me until I succeed). I ended up selling my camera years ago. I can't even take pictures now :)

I'm just not close with my family at all, and while I do intend on sending the more poor ones money, and sending money to those I am in debt to (and doubling it), I'd rather not have other people's hands directly in my affairs unless we're in business together on a deal.

If I'm Very Successful Who Would I Help First?

1. Anyone who helped me get started in real estate first and foremost. I will tabulate a list of those who put their time and energy into helping me out (anything beyond random opinion pontification, or same as everybody else social tidbits). They deserve to be compensated.

2. Pay off all my debts to family and double/triple their money.

3. Give each of my close friends thousands of dollars at least. They have helped me out a lot over the years in their own funny ways.

4. After that I would send a small portion of my income to certain family members continuously over time. I don't want to be entangled in their affairs, though.

5. I would buy computer hardware for and possibly give money to my closest and most trusted World of Warcraft associates.

6. After that, if I really wanna keep at it, my next focus would be finding homeless men of good character with absolutely nothing and nobody in the winter chill and making them my employees and possible business partners. (nobody gives a **** about homeless men, and giving them food/shelter for a day isn't exactly my idea of helping, it's more like perpetuating their misery)

7. If I become even more wealthy and have enough time on my hands or interest, I will fund scientific research that focuses specifically on health as it relates to natural hygiene, since most money is being wasted on counter-productive medical research that makes the sick-care industry rich perpetuating 95% of the problems it's supposed to solve. This research will not only be focused on actual health solutions but on building a body of knowledge of the finer workings of the body's various detoxification/excretion pathways and mechanisms for substances of all kinds, to bring scientific attention to the most reliable methods of healing and staying disease free. I'm sick of seeing everyone get sick and die around me, getting financially shafted by the medical industry, while I use simple methods to avoid disease and nobody wants to hear about it because it's not mainstream. I will work directly with scientists who want to learn more about these subjects and bolster man's scientific knowledge of these areas. All funding of research will be dependent on only one outcome: truthful seeking of knowledge. If the results defy my opinions or aims, and were accurately obtained, the job was done properly, and my opinions and aims may perhaps end up being altered by this. Paying someone to confirm your biases is not scientific.

*Don't be fooled. I'm greedy and selfish, but that doesn't mean I don't like to occasionally help out if it doesn't affect me negatively too much. I don't necessarily aim to achieve high levels of philanthropy, but that's probably what my priority list would be if I actually started pulling in huge amounts of money beyond my interest in spending on myself. I think at some point every successful person gets bored with success and wants to share in whatever field they're in.

In Closing

Thank you for taking the time to read this. It means a lot to me. Thanks for accepting me into this community. I'll try not to be too annoying/useless, but as a thirsty newbie I probably won't have much to offer. I'll see what I can do.

I have a massive headache so I better hit post. (caffeine habits will do that to ya!)

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