Updated over 2 years ago on . Most recent reply
eager to learn
Hello I am 17 and I am eager to learn more about real estate. I have read and watched many videos and books about investing and one reoccurring thing I have realized is that most young successful investors had a mentor that help them through their journey. I really want to have a future in real estate. I am going to college for engineering for free and I have around $5000 cash and $30-40k in assets. I want to shadow and learn from someone successful in person. Also once I have the value to offer them where do I go to meet them? I want to start investing as early as possible so I want to start learning from now so that by the time I can afford it I can make smart investments. Thank you
Most Popular Reply
Welcome to Bigger Pockets!
You are in a great place to learn. My first suggestion is to keep trolling along in these forums. Read questions you find interesting and you will definitely pick up a lot! Second, track down a local real estate investing club / group. They usually meet once a month and just start hanging out. Sure, you are young, but that doesn't mean you aren't just as eager and interested as the older folks! There, you will likely run into people who are actively flipping houses. One way to really get your feet wet is to volunteer to 'swing a hammer' for someone on a project they are working on. This is true immersion in the business. You might be working for free, but you will be learning a lot!
Finally, I would recommend checking out the book "Rich Dad - Poor Dad". When I was first starting out (age 47) I found this to be a pretty profound book. It is older... and frankly a little sappy in how it is written... but there is a lot of good content on just how real estate can position you for success, and taking the right viewpoint on real estate investing, etc. If you go to your local library it is highly possible they are a part of Hoopla... which is a service that lets you check out books online and download them to your device... so you could read it for free... but is usually in bookstores too.
I can tell you it usually takes about 20% -25% down to buy a rental property that you won't live in. So for us, buying $100,000 rentals, that meant needing about $25,000 to get into one. Your first will be the hardest... because after. you have one, you can use the income from the first to help drive you to your next one. In 6 years we hav acquired 37 "doors"... about 25 properties and now live entirely off the net income from those rentals (after working 25 years in other fields). We used money we had saved along the way to make that happen... so had that advantage... but one at a time you can take steps to achieve a similar result.
Wish you all the best!
Randy