Young and Ready to Invest in RE
Hello Bigger Pockets members. I've just recently found about the site and I love what I have seen so far. I'm hoping I can add value to as many fellow members as I can as well as soak up as much as I can.
I think I have a bit of a unique situation and would like some advice from anyone who thinks they can help. Let me explain my situation:
I am currently entering my junior in college. I live in the Chicagoland area (Northwest Indiana) and go to school in central Indiana (about 1.5 hours north of Indianapolis). I've had to make the difficult decision to go to and stay in college. Multiple times throughout my past 2 years I have seriously considered dropping out, but I continue to fall back on the idea that I have my entire life to work. I love hanging out with my friends and teammates. Most would agree college is a great time to enjoy life with little responsibility. Knowing I wouldn't "get ahead" by going to college, I know I have to do it on my own (and with a community like this). I never intend on working for someone again. My goal/dream is to be able to have income streams that don't require my time to make me money. With that money I want to do all I can to better this world with companies and organizations that make a huge impact in the world.
Shortly after my freshmen year started an internet company that has had some steady returns for me. I have put very little time into the business. About halfway through my sophomore year I started another company that branches off business #1. I have a great partner, but the time has come where a decision has to be made. Because I'm in college (and he's not), I'm not able to put the time in the business that is needed. To be brief, my partner is buying me out very soon. With this, I am going to have a pretty large sum of cash coming in for the next 10 months or so.
There are a variety of different ideas I've had to invest the money. I am going to first save what I need to save to pay off my future college expenses. Next I will invest some of the money in business #1 to get that ramping up. There is a lot of potential there. With the profits of business #1, I will look to invest in cash flowing assets.
I know that I want to get into real estate. I'm not 100% sure what my 'niche' will be, but I'm going to do it. Here are some of my thoughts:
1) Try to pick up a single family home or a 2-4 unit apartment building near my college campus. I'll manage it myself and try to learn the ropes. I could also try to keep it automated and hire a property management company. Keep in mind I'm 21. I'm assuming I could get the mortgage given my past income and all, but maybe not. I haven't looked into the difficulty in getting a mortgage. I would have about 50k cash to start investing.
If I go this route, I'd like to quickly get a couple more properties to start building a larger portfolio. I'm quite aggressive and happy to 'risk it'.
2) Invest it into something less 'risky' or time consuming like notes, stocks, etc. I know their are REIT's out there so maybe that's a better move for me? I don't want to swamp myself with stuff to do every day. I'm going to college to enjoy it, not to just work the entire time and be stressed out. If I invest in something that requires a ton of my time, I might as well drop out (which I'm not ready to do at this time).
3) I have another potential opportunity/business that I'm seriously considering if I can find a nice warehouse space. It really interests me because I could hire some of my college peers to help me out and make some money for themselves. I know this would require quite a bit of my time, but it would be a great way to learn a TON about running a large operation as well as make me some good money. I have some contacts who are pretty experienced in the area who could help me get going with the initial challenges. It also is related to businesses #1 and my current contacts for that business could become clients.
I hope that sums my situation up fairly nicely. Ultimately I want to create something that I can jump "all in" if/when I graduate college.
Any and all advice is much appreciated! Feel free to ask me any questions if I was unclear at any point.
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Have a good one
Jordan