The Journey of a Part-Time Real Estate Investor #2
WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT THIS BLOG?
I’ve been to a lot of real estate investing meetups and heard from a gazillion speakers. The good ones share meaningful knowledge and sometimes how they operate. I’ve struggled trying to emulate them because they do this full-time while I already have a demanding full-time job and do my investing during breaks, evenings, and weekends. Most investors I talk to have a goal to invest full-time. There is a knowledge gap on what to do to get there. I see evidence of this every time I go to a meetup and see people that have been attending for years and still have no rentals or investing income. This blog is designed for all of you part-time investors. Come join me in my journey!
For more details about myself and my goals, please read my first blog at .
ACCOMPLISHMENTS
I received much more positive feedback about this blog than I expected. Thank you readers for your interest! I thoroughly enjoyed your feedback and welcome it (good or bad).
I went to two great meetups this week. One was on assisted living homes and it was fascinating how the investor dove into his first one by turning a large home into a 10-bed assisted living facility. The other meetup had a national speaker - Mr. Landlord. If you _ever_ have the chance to listen to him speak, I highly encourage you to do it. In the 100’s of meetups I’ve been to, he is the most entertaining speaker I have ever seen. When I network with other investors, I focus on putting more time into learning who they are and what they do and sharing that about myself. I used to do a quick exchange of business cards to meet more people, but the mound of business cards I had without remembering what they do or where I met them proved that was not effective. I met 3 investors at the meetups. An experienced buy & hold investor, someone wrapping up their first rehab, and an agent that does property management near the 8-unit.
I created a process for tracking my mileage and expenses and filled it out from the start of the year. This is going into my list of daily activities along with deal analysis. I’m a big fan of excel and have a simple spreadsheet to track this. There are apps to track both of these but the majority of my trips are to a hand full of places so the spreadsheet is easy. I can see myself outgrowing this in the future.
My most exciting news is that I have a mutually signed purchase and sale agreement on the 8-unit property! That happened Friday evening. This will close in early December and I’ll share every step of the way with you. Earlier this week I called the 15 closest local banks to my house to talk about their commercial loan terms. I quickly narrowed that list down to 4 and have since had 2 other banks referred which I’ll follow-up within the next couple of days. One astute reader asked me why I didn’t put it under contract last week when I first met with the seller. The answer is … I should have! I had some anxiety on not having a lender lined up yet, but there’s a financing contingency for that. Fortunately I didn’t lose the opportunity.
I caught up on bookkeeping for the three rental homes I have with a partner. I use excel for this as well. I have heard great things about Quickbooks and will upgrade to that sometime but it is low priority for now. It is more important to analyze deals and take action!
I took too long to install my overhead garage shelves myself and hired it out. I’m nice and sore from rearranging everything in my garage but it looks great now.
Family time is important! Thursday evening was dedicated 1:1 time with my daughter, Friday evening was a family movie night, Saturday was a morning swim class with my daughter and we visited family that evening for dinner and a movie, and Sunday was church and lunch with family followed by some errands and ending with another family movie night.
THIS WEEK’S PRO TIP
I attend several meetups a month and some of the benefits are targeted networking like finding general contractors, general networking like meeting the person you sit next to, and exposure to new ideas from the speakers. The danger is that you will regularly learn the tip of a subject from a polished speaker and it almost always sounds amazing. It sounds like that’s what you should be doing instead of what you thought you should be doing last month. If you keep jumping to the next interesting topic then it is no different than watching tv. I just hope you aren’t dropping $$$$ on programs that turn dusty. This advice hits home for me. This was me for years around 2006 – 2009 and I have boxes of speaker’s products to show for it.
If you are brand new, it is ok to wait 3-6 months to pick your first investing strategy. The way to succeed is to pick one strategy, create a plan, and stick with it until you hate it or master it. If you decide that you hate it, then pick something else and pivot to that. When you master it, it will take less time to continue doing it. Then you can jump into a second strategy while keeping the first one going. This is how really successful people have multiple business pillars and income streams.
I’m currently focused on buy and hold. In last week’s blog, I shared that I completed my deal analysis spreadsheet and analyze deals daily. This week I talked to over 15 lender’s and found the right ones. These are rungs on the ladder to mastery. Before the end of the year I will have buy and hold mastered and start focusing on rehabbing properties.
WHAT’S NEXT
I have a lot of work on the 8-unit property. I will be contacting a couple more lenders and lock one in, schedule an inspection, bring a GC in to bid on the full rehab of one of the units, get the P&S to the title/escrow company, and talk to some property managers.
I’ll attend one meetup this week and meet with a local rehabber.
My daughter doesn’t have school this Friday so we’re going on a spontaneous Daddy-Daughter trip to Seattle this weekend.