Greeting from New Orleans, LA
Hello Bigger Pockets! We were introduced to this site about a year ago by another real estate investor. Since then, we’d visit and read a lot of the posting and they would come in very handy. After a while, the decision was made to join the group and be more involved in questions, answers or anything else that comes up when dealing with real estate.
Since Hurricane Katrina, our lives changed. Pre-Katrina, we planned on starting our real estate investment company and worked out a time line on acquiring several rental properties. Post Katrina, we’re glad we didn’t start at that time. Yet, given the current state of the Louisiana/Mississippi coastal area, we decided to take real estate investment head on.
Although we’re in New Orleans, we’re not limited to one area. We’ve started negotiating deal in Utah, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi Pennsylvania and Florida. If the numbers make sense for us, then we submit offers. Currently, we’re starting our company’s foundation through wholesale buying and selling. We chose to start off as wholesalers, because we’ve found it to be the fastest route to building capital.
In addition to wholesaling, we also consider lease options, short sales, rehabbing, probate, mobile homes tax liens and notes. Our future looks extremely bright and growing. We hope to be able to utilize Bigger Pockets as a means to learn, share information, network and grow as a company. We look forward to many interactions.
Brandy & Marc,
:welcome: to BP.
Will we be able to tell who is talking? Is one person more likely to post or will both of you be using the account?
John Corey
Hello there Brandy & Marc-
Welcome to the club and I hope you find everything you need in one of the many forums and threads here on BP! I hope things are looking up after Katrina and I hope the market is not too bad. Thanks for becoming member and please enjoy your welcome train!
John:
We signed up as our entity so that we both can be able to review all of our questions, answers and so on. I’m sure it may get a bit confusing as to who’s who, so we’ll place our name at the end of a post. This way, you’ll be able to tell us apart.
Calixto:
Thanks for your words. We’ve been reading many forums. There are many questions and answers. I’m sure it can be difficult to not double post, but we’ll try our best.
From our point of view, the possibilities are endless after Katrina. There are so many options; we just have to pick the one with least resistance. As for BP, we’re looking forward to our interactions with others.
From every disaster comes new life.
James:
I posted a brief statement about us in the "To our new members, what got you interested in REI? > Subject: FREEDOM is a REASON"
My partner and I initially thought of real estate investment as a way to make a lot of money and travel.
Since residing in a Post-Katrina New Orleans, our WHY was revisited.
Brandy's background is in education and ended up working through a grant program that focused on preparing middle and high school students for higher education. Through her dealing with the education system, she came to the realization that building her own school with a system that is focused on helping students of poor background to receive quality education. After her research, she realized funding would be a great concern. Real Estate Investing is a route that can be taken to fund her project.
Marc's background is in government logistics and he ended up working for a “The Man” He also worked with various non profit organizations that sponsored cultural education (mainly Haitian culture). Due to the lack of available fuel used to cook, Haitian in general rely on trees as a method of fuel. By cutting trees to cook (as well as other purposes), the lack of trees become problematic when a hurricane hits the island. Marcs wants to work with a non-profit organization that will focus on the reforestation of Haiti. In any big project, there is always a need for funding. Real estate would create a steady stream of funds to assist with this and various other future projects.
We have so many other projects we plan on working on, but for now, the above are on the top of the list.
Katrina was a disaster. What we do after can be a bigger one if we’re not forward thinkers.
Marc
Thanks for the feed-back and here is to your success!
Welcome Neighbor,
Looking forward to chattin with you in the forum. Seems like you both would want individual accounts though, so as to know who's getting credit for postings.
Dick,
Thanks for the welcome neighbor. Brandy and I have visited Houston quite a bit. And I’m sure New Orleans has been a topic of discussion since the past two years. ;) As for having two accounts, we currently don’t see a reason. We’re in a joint venture, so credit can be given to either and the egos will still be grounded. Thanks for the suggestion.
James,
Thanks for your support. We find that when we have a reason to succeed that is bigger than ourselves; it is more likely that our goals will be accomplished. Since the profits are the means to an end, we’re not concerned about the monetary goal. As you mentioned, they will at least double.
Marc