The search for the 1st

I always wanted to get into real estate investing. Around 2009 I started looking into it, but everyone told me "nah nah you don't wanna do that". I regret listening to them now. Then around 2013 my wife (G/F at the time) convinced me that buying at my duty station, Marine recruiter in BFE corner of Missouri, was a bad idea, so again I let myself be talked out of it. 

Bring on 2017! I finally convince the wife that having a ton of savings just sitting there when we both have steady jobs, and no huge upcoming issues was pointless. Also, we were planning on starting a family soon and needed some extra income if we wanted to continue to live the life we like. So it was time to put my money (and hers) to work finally! Starting in mid-November I found bigger pockets while trying to research real estate investing and man am I happy I did! I think it was Branden Turner's "8 Tips to Tenant Screening" that led me to the site. 

With that I found the podcast and started devouring it, listening to 1-2 episodes almost everyday, it's Feb 27th 2018 now and I've gone from 1-131 in 3 1/2 months. That got me doing even more research and finally around my birthday (Thanksgiving 2017) I told my cousin that I wanted to look for investment properties. 

I didn't really know what niche I wanted to get into yet, so we started looking at SFH's that were in my old neighborhood of St. Louis, Bevo Mill. Eventually through research and talking with tons of people, going to as many meetups and REIA's I could get to, I decided I wanted to get into apartment buildings. Unfortunately I didn't have that kind of Capital, so I figured I'd start with small multi's and work my way up. 

I started my search for my first property in early December 2017. My agent (my cousin) is really great and we went to probably 25 properties over the next month. Over all we looked at (went inside) about 35 properties, and I probably analyzed 75 or so on my computer and using the BP calculators from Nov to mid-January. Of course my agent loved me because we always seemed to go check out properties when it was below freezing, freezing rain, or snow, but hey not a lot of Competition in that time! 

I finally got pre-approval from the lender I used on my primary residence purchase and shotgunned 4 offers out to properties I was interested in. 2 Duplex's, a Triplex, and a 4plex. One Duplex came back already under contract to a cash buyer (on market 3? days), that hurt because he was asking 87k for a 180k property that needed very little work. I know that because I know the guy who bought it lol. The 4plex came back and said they wouldn't budge from their 165k asking price because they had an appraisal done before the last contract fell through and didn't want to go below the appraisal (as of today 2 months later it's still on the market for the same 165k). The triplex came back and said he wouldn't budge from the 140k since it was a "cash-cow" for the owner, only reason he was selling was to retire, he owned it outright and wanted his money! lol

But low and behold the other duplex came back and we negotiated a price, original asking 102k, final agreed price 87k, ARV 120k, repairs 20k. Not a smoking deal, but not a bad one. We entered escrow and started the due diligence phase....