First, let me start off by saying my spelling and grammar are terrible I repeated English 101 twice in college so don't judge me on that. A little over two years ago my wife and I decided that we wanted to purchase an investment property. I had been in real estate for a little while helping other people and thought that because I knew the market a little better now was the right time to make the leap. Because I worry that I'll be blamed when sh#t hits the fan and because my wife is all about knowing all the angles before we jump into something we spoke with a buddy of mine who happened to be close to our age and was fairly close to 35-40 units. After speaking with him and his wife we left there feeling extremely confident......if only we knew what was in store.

After blowing to 2-3 grand on due diligence on SFH's that we didn't end up purchasing due to terrible inspections, hidden deferred maintenance or unpermitted work, my wife was starting to doubt if we would ever find a property. I could feel the stress setting in when it finally happened a property that was under contract fell through and we jumped on it. It was a 4 bed 2 bath (it was a beautiful pig, a good enough remodel to rent but issues still remained we were blind to it at the time). The advice that we received set us up for success, we had written into the contract that we could show the property before we closed which allowed us to find a tenant before we even owned the property. We also got the advice to shoot for the moon on rent.

The very basic numbers $165,000 for the house, $33,000 down. PITI $880, rent $1,600. We paid water and trash at $75 a month, cash flow was just above $600 a month which was great for any first-time investor. This is probably the part where you ask yourself well what did they have in store what went wrong? I had used a great program to vet the tenants and run the background checks (a program we still use today) the problem is I was so excited about all the winning we were having that I overlooked the red flags on the background report that I received. Needless to say 4 months into their tenancy we had to do cash for keys (thanks biggerpockets for the idea.) Because of this site we were on top of the process we got the tenants out, they agreed to turn over their deposit for unpaid rent and we had new wonderful tenants in there before we saw any loss of rent. Whats the reason for this story you ask, well the reasons are plentiful.

I want new investors to just jump in, you can't know everything and yes bad things will happen but if you prepare, have the right people surrounding you and handle it with thoughtful resilience you will make it through these hurdles. You also have to realize that you don't know what you don't know. Buying your first rental property is like having your first kid (I know from experience) no matter how much you prepare you'll never be truly ready until you have one and even then they are always surprising you.

The second reason I wanted to share my story is because our first property was a gateway property. We learned how to inspect better, screen better, negotiate better, etc. All things that we couldn't have learned unless we took the first step. We have since then in the past two years gone on to do everything. When I say everything I truly mean it, we now own 29 units, have completed one 1031 and are working on our second 1031, we've purchased owner carries, we are finishing up our first flip and we have moved from single families into small multi-family properties. We don't consider ourselves a success story but we do think we are on the right path to getting where we want to be eventually. There are a ton of layers to the story but maybe I'll save that for a book. I hope that people just starting out take that calculated risk and jump in with both feet. Please feel free to send me a message or reach out if you have questions like everyone else on here I'm definitely not an expert at everything but I'm more than willing to help any way I can.

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