Real Estate Agent Looking to Start Investing

[Jodie Cordell]

Hey everyone! I'm Jodie, and I've been a real estate agent since 2018. I learned about Bigger Pockets as a new agent but never really did much to engage with the BP community. Honestly, as a RE agent, I worked mainly with military PCSers and didn't have a lot of opportunities to work with or build a portfolio of investors. But over the past year, I've moved from the Florida Panhandle to central Florida, and I'm not actively working with clients anymore. I've been writing full-time for an online publication since 2022 and building my faculty book instead. I'm now a certified CE instructor for Florida Realtors. But I'm ready to shift gears and start investing in my own real estate portfolio! My goal is to start with a quadplex, move into one unit and fix up the other three. Depending on where it is, I might work with Section 8 housing in my town (Winter Haven) or set up STRs in the other 3. After we live in it for at least a year, we will move out of the 4th unit and buy another multi-family and do the same thing. From there, who knows? Maybe take out some equity and buy another one! Anyway, I'm excited to be here and to get to know some of you! Thanks for welcoming me to the community!  

[Amber Stout]

Hi Jodie! Congrats on starting to invest in your own real estate portfolio. I started out in real estate the exact same way! We used an FHA owner-occupied loan, put down 3.5%, lived in one unit, and fixed up the other. We never took out the equity from the property; however, if I were to do it again, I would likely have done a cash-out refinance or a HELOC so you can pull out the equity and roll it into the next deal. It'll start to snowball from there, which is exciting. If you want to connect further, I'd love to talk about investing. I am also a lender and happy to help if you need an investor-friendly lender.