Greetings BP!
I'm new to the real estate community and i'm looking to getting into real estate investing. From what i have concluded, real estate investing takes quite a long period of time before you start to see actual high profit returns. What did all you successful BP investors do for a living before you hit that success stage? I own a few restaurants and I can honestly say that I'm not use to seeing slow and timed cash flow every month.
I was an engineer. Masters degree and all that with over 15 years of experience. Mostly product design/development in big-corporate-world. I walked away from it in '07 to go full-time RE. That lasted for 3 years until the market crash caught up with me. Went back into cubicle-world full-time for two more years, until that company was nice enough to lay me off. For the last year I've been 1/2-time engineer with a small firm and 1/2-time RE.
Just starting out in the REI game. I'm a beekeeper currently and will most likely be doing that the rest of my life. But I like the idea of investing as a way to build wealth.
I started with my first job out of the US Marines with 3 years of college, did not finish my BA, at a Engineering Sales job (Johnson Controls), then got an offer to be an Acquisitions Manager for a 55+ yr old REI with 30 years in the REI business.
I worked for 500 a week, and made him millions.
He helped me start my own business in another town.
I credit his mentorship in REI to my success.
It surprises me how little of my college education I use in REI, all self taught. Dale Carnegie was instrumental, and Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins.
By the way, I went back to college and finished up my BA, at the ripe old age of 34, played NCAA lacrosse, oldest lacrosse player in the USA playing NCAA, at the time. Hell my lax coach was 32. :)
I picked fruit, swept floors in a packaging facility, sanded cars in a body shop, worked on car engines, build dune buggies, rebuilt VW engines, built oil drilling derricks, built bailers, compactors, and dumpsters, welded ornamental iron, remodeled and build houses, garages, and commercial buildings. Re-bricked and re-tubed industrial boilers. Made custom hard candy including the world's largest candy cane. Restored, refinished, and reupholstered furniture. Installation, service, repair, and rebuilding of A/C and refrigeration equipment from 1/4 horsepower deli cases to 1500 horsepower industrial chillers. Installation, repair, and modification of steam, gas, and drain piping of all sorts. Designed and built electrical control systems. Designed and built ultra low temp and specialty refrigeration equipment. Restored antique and exotic cars. Bought, repaired, sold, and rented houses. Bought shares in major companies.
Well as you can tell from these posts there is no standard point we leap into REI. I had just turned 16, was a college prep high school student with a 20 hour a week job on the side, a full time girlfriend and in love with that new car called a corvette. My dad was a contractor and I knew some people made money fixing and renting or selling real estate and thought that might get me that new corvette. Quickly found out I needed to be 21 years old to contract so talked my older brother who was 19 and married and could thus contract into joining me. And off we went by the seat of our pants, the year was 1955. It was a great ride, nothing like todays investment world, we were a rare breed then.
Over the first 10 years we build a group of real estate friends that became a circle of lifetime friends. We trusted each other completely, and would loan any extra money we had at the moment to each other with just a scribbled IOU. And the IOU was just so the wives would know what was due should something happen to us. We helped many others get started in REI and I can tell you there was no standard starting point. Some great investors we knew at the start. 1-a dishwasher bus boy. 2-a vice president of a fortune 500 company. 3- a service station attendant. 4-a new dentist. 5-a county social worker. 6-a frustrated accountant.
Plus a whole spectrum of people, you name a group, I knew one. And especially many newspaper drivers that I met when I quit my corporate management job for a major corporation and became a teamster, after basically saving a corporate division and getting my bosses major bonuses, working 70 to 90 hours a week, and being exempt there was no such thing as overtime. I asked for a $25 a month raise and was turned down because of the new austerity program. I created $4 million dollars a year in savings for our division and allowed headquarters to give my bosses over a $100k in bonuses and I couldn't have an extra $25. Say goodbye corporate world. Walked into the VP I reported to and told him I was going to lunch, he said you don't have to tell me your going to lunch and I told him I thought I should since I was never coming back from lunch. That was 1964. In 1965 I got my real estate license and real estate became my total world, investing and brokering.
Like Brian stated above, there is so much diversity in the art of RE investing/Trading. It shows you that anyone can do it with the right knowledge, persistence, patience, and work ethic. I started working for the Federal Gov't at 21 and quit my job as a Fed Air Marshal to pursue my dream of RE investing full time. I was lucky and had a couple of willing mentors to get me started. This was KEY! Back then we didn't have forums like this. I just sought them out by calling their billboards and bandit signs and became friends with them. Soon I was able to do my first deal. It was $1500.00! That's it. LOL. But that little check was more significant to me than ALL of the ones to follow. The reason is because it gave me confidence! I knew that I could do it now! Anyway, sorry for the rant! I am really liking this place so far. I'm only 1 hour as a member and I'm hooked!
I think this was a great comment:
"I think 'buy and hold' income would be a great complement to the less even/seasonal restaurant business."
Not only can it even out your income, but if your business is indeed seasonal, you can structure your buying and rehab projects in "bursts" during slow season if you time things right, and then take a bit of a real estate break during busy season.
USMC straight into technology. Worked for hospital, banking industries then ultimately CIO of a homeowner association management company. That has taught me how to treat real estate as a business and how to read financial statements and budgets. Also how to deal with difficult people. My REI portfolio almooooosts covers my basic basic expenses. The goal is for me is to replace my W2 income with rental income. But isn't that everybodys goal?
US Army recruiter soon to go back to working in the signal field. Working on my masters and my real estates license.
I'm a industrial-Organization Psychologist doing business and management consulting. I also recently got my real estate license. I previously worked in restaurant management, and will be opening several Jimmy John's. I use to be a construction project manager for a real estate investor managing 300 flips a year. Which gave me the experience to do my own flips.
My husband and I are in this together. We both have professional careers and invest in residential rental property on the side.
He is a professional entertainer - piano/vocal - and works for a cruise line as a piano bar entertainer. He also does dueling pianos for corporate gigs, charity fundraisers, private events, and works in local restaurants and nightclubs.
I am a professional interpreter - English/American Sign Language is my language pair - and work for a video relay service interpreting telephone calls on almost any topic you can imagine. I used to work full-time as the manager of Interpreter and Accessibility Services for a large hospital. I've done interpreting for colleges, social service agencies and other freelance interpreting, specializing in medical and mental health interpreting. I have taught in interpreter training programs at local colleges - specifically Health Care Interpreter Ethics and Standards of Practice.
Other than babysitting and housecleaning, My first job as a teenager was making cheese logs and cheese balls for a retail shop in a mall. After college (B.A. in Anthropology) I worked for many years as a cashier and customer service representative for a nationally known sporting goods company. Also worked briefly as an alpine ski instructor and later worked as a nordic ski instructor for a cross country ski center and even owned my own ski school program called Ski-n-Sign.
Electrical engineer, 25 years in hard drive design.
I'm really surprised how many other engineers are here.
Escrow Specialist for a Mortgage servicing company. The experience here has really helped with the terminology and breakdown of mortgages when I do deals. Also, the Asset Managers give me some help whenever I need it.
Civil Engineer currently and since 1984. REI since 2003 and growing.
finance bba and MBA. Started fighting commercial property tax values for a small ad Valorem consulting group. Went to work for an industrial RE developer as an analyst then project manager. Then took a job as a re acquisition rep for a large insurance company. Now I run a region buying all major product types and providing development capital. Building a buy and hold portfolio is a hobby. Ultimately I'd like to put together larger deals and developments. Same thing I do at my day job.
4th generation contractor and put myself through 9 years of college and grad school doing home repairs & flipping houses. My first two deals were purchased from a frustrated investor who had called me for some cheap repairs. He was about to get divorced over the nightmare these two "turnkey" properties had become. Like most 1st time investors pre-BP, he had no idea what he was doing. The repairs were more than he could afford so we made a deal for 100% financing and I fixed them both, one at a time. While he had tried to rent them to a single tenant, i turned them into shared housing with custom bunks in each bedroom. The profits paid for 2 years of college.
Left corporate real estate development in 2000 to pursue my own contracting firm full time. HandyANDY is still fixing homes in atlanta. I continue to work with HandyANDY, MyRENTEDroom and a small group of investors in private deals. Investing in real estate is one of the few ways to grow long term wealth available to the average person. I've been involved in 1,000s of flips at this point in my life and will continue doing them as long as i can. Thanks for sharing.
@Jason Lee @Andy Luick I'm also from Atlanta but grew up in eastern Kentucky. I worked summers as a coal miner while pursuing a double undergraduate major, a stint in Law School and an MBA. I moved to Atlanta in 1987 and began a 20 year career as a Financial Operations manager/exec at a large wholesale/reserve bank managing the derivatives, investment portfolio, and securities operations. After taking an early retirement (my mid 40s), I spent 5 years as a CFO for a local organization. A year ago this month I decided to leave and begin real estate investing full time. I spent the first six months educating myself and developing an idea of which directions and strategies I wanted to pursue and then decided to get my real estate sales license earlier this year. I have been working for the last few months developing partnership relationships and investing in several syndications and projects managed by others in order to further gain knowledge and insight on REI. I have several irons in the fire presently and am excited about a possibility in Nashville I'm evaluating this week. Very happy to be here!
I was working on an oil rig and bought my dads house that he had moved out of that was going into foreclosure. Later I sold it and bought a trailer house while going to college. I was about broke, and it was junky, had to duct tape the windows shut. I sold it when I moved to the university, I bought 2 acres of raw land and an old trailer and had a well drilled on it, septic installed, and I hand dug a line and installed electric and phone. I rented the trailer out after I graduated. It was trashed and the folks were about 4 months behind on payments. I bought a small house where I moved to for my first job. When I finally sold that trailer and land I was able to walk in and pay my house off. In hindsight I should have bought another house instead. After several years me and an acquaintance bought our first real rental. We gradually acquired a few more and I bought him out about 20 years later. I really had no clue what I was doing on a business basis until I found BiggerPockets a couple of years ago. Even inexperienced investors can do well if they work hard and use a little common sense. It also helps if they can team up with someone with experience.