Hello BP Community 

Very Belated Happy New Year 

I am seeking advice for first-time Real Estate investment, as I am starting out and my goal is to start building my portfolio and want to get my foot wet by doing my first deal. 

Seeking advice from the community about anything I should cosndider. 

Looking for Single-family/duplex home to start with.

@Deb Bandyopadhyay Welcome to the community! Very excited to see you are ready to jump in.

Before you begin, I would recommend you know your why in investing. From there, set your goals to help accomplish your why. Some things to consider include:

Do you want to invest for cash flow, appreciation, or a combination?
Do you need the cash flow now?
What is your appetite for rehab?
What markets have you or are you considering?

Deal analysis is a skill you'll want to start developing now. Practice this skill every day even if you are not ready to buy. This will help you develop and recognize what a good deal is compared to a bad or so-so deal. You'll also be able to develop your own criteria through the deal analysis.

Good luck!

@Deb Bandyopadhyay

Welcome to the BP family! Glad you joined the best real estate investing website!

Check out BP Podcasts: https://www.biggerpockets.com/podcast

Wishing you the best!

@AJ H. Thank you very much for your information and questions, here is my answer to it

Do you want to invest for cash flow, appreciation, or a combination?: I am looking for cash flow over appreciation 
Do you need the cash flow now?: Not fully, but at least break even will be good for me to go on.
What is your appetite for rehab?: I am ok with that until it is very much emergency 
What markets have you or are you considering?: Currently Looking for down south or central or Ohio, for there cash flow power

I am starting my deal analysis power by using the BP calculator and also BP Insights, it might help me to do the deal analysis better and I could develop my skill on this also.

What your thoughts on this, am I in the right direction or not

@Dmitriy Fomichenko Thank you very much for the suggestion of the podcast, yes I have started viewing it from episode 1 and each day I listen to or view all the podcasts available in the BP community. 

Can you all suggest to me the best forums and things which I should use and learn in the BP website and community as first time learner and investor 

Thanks in adavnce. 

@Deb Bandyopadhyay There are investable markets everywhere you go. Ohio is very competitive. We currently own almost a couple dozen doors out there. It's still a decent market to invest, but you will need to jump on deals very quickly.

Good luck!

Hey @Deb Bandyopadhyay ! I am currently in Marlboro, NJ.

I would recommend you start by clearly defining your goals. 

"building a portfolio" is very general, what about I want to own a portfolio that makes me 100K a year.

Then you can start working backwards and make an actual plan all the way down today.

Without a clear goal, you don't have a direction, without a direction, any advice would be useless! I hope that helps!

Originally posted by @Deb Bandyopadhyay :

Hello BP Community 

Very Belated Happy New Year 

I am seeking advice for first-time Real Estate investment, as I am starting out and my goal is to start building my portfolio and want to get my foot wet by doing my first deal. 

Seeking advice from the community about anything I should cosndider. 

Looking for Single-family/duplex home to start with.

 I would recommend starting with a small single family property that is pretty turnkey. Learn how to work with your Realtor, contractors (maybe do a small cheap project to increase the value), lender, and property manager.

I see a lot of out of state clients doing that here in Columbus, Ohio

If you are in a situation to house hack then you should start there if you aren't then looking at SFH would be a good next step. I would decide your goals for real estate first and then go from there. @Deb Bandyopadhyay

Do you own your home currently? I'd recommend an owner occupied 1-4 unit house hack if you can.

@Deb Bandyopadhyay Welcome and congrats on getting started...if I could say one thing it would be to do your homework, but take action...listen to your agent and your gut and pull the trigger on your first one. I don't know how this happens, but a lot of us still own our first investment property and it's the best one on our portfolio, lol. I bought a live-in single family in 2012, did the reno myself, built $100k in equity, leveraged the property and equity to flip properties for over 2 years, pulled equity again to buy several other MF properties, took another line of credit to buy more later...it rents at $1,350/mo with $350 debt service and still has $80k in equity...just a basic single family property...it will be paid off in 5-years. 

Best of luck!

@Deb, 

welcome to BP. You have come to the right place. Tons of information here to learn and tons of awesome people to learn from. Good luck!

@AJ H.  Thank you, I was also thinking to start with Ohio as trying to find out the deals and sorting my financing also.

@Antonio Cucciniello Thank you very much for this, surely it helps a lot as setting a goal is the most important. As I am new and beginning my journey so for now I set a small goal of owning at least 10 Units by 2021 end in Single-family and duplex mixture, don't know it is realistic or not but I have set it. surely I have a financial goal too. I would love to have $100,000 per year from my REI per year but I know it will take some time to reach that. What do you think about it.

@Remington Lyman  Thank you I am really looking to start with turnkey as it will give me experience too as I am out of state investor so other methods will not help right now but surely this one. Can you suggest something? 

@Brandon Goldsmith Thank you for this, but as you can see I am an out of state investor and looking to starting the REI journey, so house hacking might not be an option for me in these markets like Ohio. What do you think

@Marc Rice Thank you very much, no I don't currently hold or own any properties. Just looking to start the journey in a market like Ohio. Surely looking for the owner-occupied only as then the cash flow will be there. 

@Brandon Sturgill Thank you for providing a great example, surely this helps a lot. As I am from the NJ area and the investment property market here is not so good due to high tax. So I am looking to start my REI journey from a market where it is investment friendly. Let me know what do you think about it.

@Kevin Hunter Thank you, surely as more I am exploring BP community I am discovering many things which is and will help me in my REI journey. Any suggestion I should consider.

@Deb Bandyopadhyay That can be a lot to do in your first year but it is doable. It really matters about your access to capital and how quickly you can learn. If you have a mentor that would speed things up, or a capital partner with lots of cash.

@Deb Bandyopadhyay congratulations on getting started. If you don’t own your own home yet, I would suggest house hacking with a duplex, triplex or quadplex. Build equity, save money and keep investing.

join a BP mastermind! 

After joining a couple I found one for me that meets Bi-monthly to discuss our goals and business.

Regards,

David Westenberger

Originally posted by @Deb Bandyopadhyay :

@Remington Lyman Thank you I am really looking to start with turnkey as it will give me experience too as I am out of state investor so other methods will not help right now but surely this one. Can you suggest something? 

I do not know any turnkey providers that operate in Columbus, Ohio

@Deb Bandyopadhyay   - Congrats!  I love that you are focusing on positive cash flow investments / real estate markets.  However, don't forget about the other 4 profit centers in rental property investing.  Many people do not consider home price appreciation, tax savings, principal paydown and inflation-hedging in their decisions for the right real estate market and they run the risk of not earning the best total return on investment.  Look for a market that has lower prices than the national median, higher gross rents than the national median and has above average appreciation since 1991 (over 3.6%.)  If you are buying and holding for full market cycle and especially if you are using conventional financing, investing in a market like that will earn you the best return on investment. 

Prices data you can get from the MLS, rents you can get from the US Census and historical home price appreciation you can get from the Federal Housing Finance Agency at www.fhfa.gov.