Buying my Second Property

[Nathan Galvez]

Hi,

Before doing any real research I purchased a two flat in Chicago. We’ve been renting out the downstairs unit and living in/ slowly renovating the upstairs unit. The first couple months were hell, we had to evict the downstairs tenant, and redo some of the plumbing for the second floor bathroom. I can say that while these were terrible experiences, I am now a fully qualified plumber and electrician and much better at selecting tenants. We have since managed to add two bedrooms and a bathroom to the previously unfinished attic, and the house is getting really comfortable/ becoming a lot of fun to work on and we have good tenants. So things are finally getting on track. When I’m done renovating the house I believe we can sell the place for 550k, (we purchased it for 325K). This has been a multi-year full gut rehab and addition primarily done by myself, My fiancé is in her last year of her residency, so we will likely be moving next year. The following is my loose game plan for the next couple years.

I’m totally new at this and I would really appreciate any advice or thoughts from you guys on this loose outline. If I’m making any idiotic assumptions please call me out.

• 1.Sell our current house for 550k (purchase price 325K) lose 50k to 75k to fees and taxes and start with a down payment of around 200k.

• 2.Purchase a multifamily unit with the with the sale earnings from our first place. Preferably as many units as possible but with hidden value in making improvements (the unfinished attic in our current house was a goldmine)

• a.My feeling is auctions are good place to go for this but I don’t know anything about auctions.

• 3.Rent a property to live in for the first year I can’t subject my fiancé to living in a gut rehab again

• 4.Use the cash generated from the property and work during that first year to put together a down payment for a house for us.

• 5.Re finance the rental property and buy more property.

These are my other day one questions:

• 1.I’m an architect, does anyone have any advice for actively leveraging my skills to help me do this real estate investing thing full time/ what career change could help me ease into this while still having a salary?

• 2.My brother is a lawyer and he wants to team up. How do I actively bring him into the fold outside of the obvious stuff?

Thanks everyone! I’m really excited about this forum