First Time Buyer & Investor -- Save or Spend

[Kelechi Ukonu Nwankwoala]

Hello everyone

I’m 23 years old, currently working full-time. I’ve been educating myself on real estate through books, YouTube, and podcasts for the past few weeks. As I haven’t been saving for long, I’m wondering if it’s worth it to save more money before I start pursuing deals. I’m afraid that if I start pursuing deals now, I will have trouble finding funding.

Here are the details of my situation:

• * Because I plan to invest out of state and need to stay in my current area for work, a FHA loan won't be an option for me. I'll be looking at 20% down payments.
• * I have enough saved up for a 7k down payment right now, but by the end of the year I’ll have enough for a 20k down payment.

Given this information, does it make sense to start now or wait until I have more saved up? If I was to start now, what’s the next concrete action I should take, besides just reading books and listening to podcasts? How do the benefits compare to the opportunity cost?

Really appreciate the advice. Thanks in advance!

[Sam McCormack]

@Kelechi Ukonu Nwankwoala

Highly recommend saving up 50k before investing. This way you have a solid DP on a house that is about 200k, money for closing costs, maybe 4k. And you still have 6k for whatever may happen when you buy it. HVAC? You're good. Water Heater? Covered. You know what I mean. 

I recommend 50k before investing OOS