BiggerPockets

Welcome Angela,

What type of real estate are you going after?

At this point strongly leaning towards rentals, considering flipping.

Welcome,

Make sure you get familiar with Minnesota Real Estate laws
( flipping , wholesaling, buy and hold , etc )

Jenkins - absolutely and thank you for the reminder. I have a legal background and have quite a few practicing lawyer friends - that portion of my "team" so to speak is great.

I should clarify my current position. I truly am in the educating myself phase. Real estate is something both my husband and I have been passionate about for the last 8+ years. I currently have the time and resources to get involved. My initial thought is to buy and hold multi-family rentals to build a portfolio. He thinks flipping would be more "fun". After reading more (and more and more and more!) I am intrigued by both wholesaling and subject to purchases. Looking to learn a lot more, solidify a plan and move forward in the next few months.

Robby - I have not gotten to the serious looking phase yet, just browsing available listings in Minneapolis (passively). Where are you focusing?

Angela, Joshua makes a critical point. When I started out, my wife did not share my passion/vision and it ended up being a constant source of tension. Flips are basically second jobs. It sounds glamorous, like day trading stocks, but it's requires a large time commitment and the risk are greater. The tax aspects are onerous compared to buy and hold. Flippers are taxed at the dealer rate while investors are taxed at the lower capital gain rate. Worse, you can't benefit from depreciation deductions that can lower your personal tax liability. It's the difference between earned income and unearned income. Bottom line, begin with the end in mind and work backwards from there. Keep building a team and make sure your values are aligned with your financial goals. For example, if you value free time, you would try to create a passive income stream of buy and hold investments that are near your work or residence. Correctly positioned, you could retire in ten years or leas. If you value generating fast cash and don't want to deal with tenants, toilets and turnover, you would focus on flips. Just some thought as you get started. Good luck in MPLS. My favorite area is Uptown.

I'm very much in the learning/education phase myself as I work on fixing up my own personal residence with the intention to sell this year. Once I free up the equity (and hopefully profit) from the sale, I will be a lot more serious about making offers on investment-oriented properties.

For now, I'm familiarizing myself with the types of properties that are available and what they tend to sell for using the MLS. I've been looking around pretty much anywhere in Mpls with the exception of North Mpls. I'm less familiar with the desirable locations in St. Paul, but I'm learning that as well so as to expand my potential search.

I've also been attending the MNREIA meetings to learn about our market and to meet other investors. This also seems to be a decent place to find non-MLS listed properties for sale by local wholesalers and other investors.

Joshua & Cory - agreed 100%! We will absolutely be on the same page before jumping in. And I am confident we will get there.

Tarun - congrats on your purchase! Though I appreciate the offer to collectively approach an agent, I am not comfortable yet. I need a greater understanding of financing options, contracts, tax implications, and also want to fully explore wholesaling and subject to's. Once I do that and have a focused plan I would be interested in meeting and helping each other.

Welcome to BP @Angela Maurer Green! I am originally from Minnesota - but couldn't handle the snow so I moved West :)

Originally posted by Tarun Kapoor:

Hi Robby, did you have to pay the annual membership of $179 to attend the MNREIA meetings ? Have the meetings been helpful ? (Not in terms of RE knowledge but in terms of finding deals that havent made it to MLS)

The first meeting is free, so I went last month to see what it was all about. When I went, they gave me an additional free pass, so I went again this month.

I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on an additional property yet, so I haven't really analyzed many of the deals that have come up. That said, none of the deals presented by wholesalers piqued my interest enough to look into them any further either.

I'm not sold on paying the $180/yearly fee yet, but it's definitely worth going to one of the meetings (for free) to see for yourself. Additionally, they also offer an online-only subscription for $50/yr that allows you to listen to the entire meeting (including the member haves/wants) and download any presentation files.