After 2 years of Education, I finally took ACTION!
ACTION ALERT! I'm happy to report; I have closed on my 1st and 2nd investment properties (Buy and Hold SFHs) within 2 months of each other after 2 years of reading books, going on BP, watching Youtube videos, attending Webinars, listening to Podcasts, and attending Meetups/Conferences. I was at the point where I felt I was suffering from Analysis Paralysis. I spent months toiling over Market Research and thought I would never pull the trigger. I was constantly weighing the pros and cons of different markets and neighborhoods, afraid of making the wrong decision. I felt like I was wasting my time acquiring all this knowledge and never using it. I was constantly sharing my REI knowledge with friends, but when the question arose of "Have you bought anything yet?" I'd always have to answer in the negative. When they asked why, I never had a good answer. Why hadn't I pulled the trigger? I felt I knew everything I needed to know, minus the education that comes along with actually doing it. I knew I didn't want to end up as part of the 90% of people that never take action. I decided to take the 90 Day Challenge and put my money where my mouth was. I was determined to buy my first property, but first, I had to hop the first hurdle. Where was I going to invest? I live in a HCOL area (Los Angeles), so that was out of my budget. I had spent months analyzing different metrics for 40 different cities that I had read were great cities for investments. I knew I had to get this list down from 40 to 1. I cancelled out a bunch that didn't match my criteria. After that, I enlisted the help of my fiancee to help narrow my list down to 3.
I was getting closer, and it all started to seem possible. I eventually picked the market that made the most sense for what I was looking for, found an excellent Agent, and began analyzing deals. Since it is a hot market, we had to go through a few offers before getting one accepted that made sense. It took a little more than 90 days to close the first deal, but at the end of the day, that doesn't matter. What matters is I took action and can now call myself a Real Estate Investor. What I learned from the 1st deal is that it isn't as hard and as scary as you think it will be. Once I closed on the first deal, I remember feeling a boost of self-confidence. If I could get 1, why can't I can get 100? As long as the numbers make sense, the rest of the process has become so much easier now that I've gone through it. Now, I've caught the bug. Immediately after closing the first deal, we were on the hunt for the 2nd one. We just closed this week on the 2nd property and are hoping to secure the 3rd by the end of the year. Hopefully, we can build up enough equity in these properties to help fund more in the future. I'm sure there will be hurdles along the way, but I'm excited about the future. I genuinely feel there is no limit to what I can achieve now, because I set a goal, took action, and reached my goal. So now, I'm only like 48 houses away from appearing on a BP Podcast. Fingers crossed.