New Investor in Atlanta

[Neel Patel]

My name is Neel, just wanted to introduce myself, I am new to real estate investing. I’ve been working as a physician for 11 years now and eager to dip into real estate to hopefully transition out of medicine. I’d like to get my feet wet, learn the ropes to start with. I am looking for a single family property or two between $200k to $350K, in the suburbs or exurbs of Atlanta, preferably class B property, cash flow focused. My goals is to expand this to multifamily in the next few years and eventually commercial to eventually supplant my w2 income. I’ve been doing some real estate reading, listening to podcasts on biggerpockets to learn a new language of sorts. I’m eager to learn, am looking for any suggestions on how to get started analyzing deals, getting connected to the right people to network and build a team(lenders, agents, property managers, etc). I'm open to partner with or learn from someone on my first deal potentially. Any advice for a newbie, one on one discussion would be appreciated. I also was wondering if there are any Atlanta focused real estate meetings or meetups to join for networking particularly someone new like me?

[Kerlous Tadres]

@Neel Patel, I’d pick 2–3 target suburbs and run every deal through the same simple test: real rent minus mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs, vacancy, and property management, and only buy if it still cash flows. For networking, I’d start showing up to investor meetups and ask for referrals to a strong property manager and investor-friendly lender first, because they’ll quickly tell you what rents well and what to avoid.