I would like to introduce myself, Gary, and my wife Susan to the community.I am a practicing professional structural engineer and my wife is currently working for a home rental management firm that specializes in single family residences.

We ran across the site a couple of weeks ago while researching investment ideas.We have read many of the blogs, listened to podcast, and watched videos.It quickly became apparent that there is a lot of valuable information and extremely bright people to learn from.

My first home purchase was a three bedroom two bath single family residence. I lived in for about a year and then decided to rent it out.I was fortunate to have very good tenants who took excellent care of the house.After about a year, I sold the house and was able to use the profit to pay for a fantastic three week honeymoon and invest in our first home together. After buying the house we decided to take on the task of adding on an addition. The project consisted of a new kitchen, dining room, and office.We put a lot of sweat equity into the project including designing, permitting, hiring the subcontractors and of course a lot of our own labor. Using the profits from the sale of the home, the experience gained from managing the remodel, and my structural engineering experience we designed and built a custom home.We managed the design, financing, and construction of the home including a lot of our own labor.

We are not professional real estate investors, but based on our life experiences with buying, renovating, and building our own homes, we hope to offer advice to the first time home owner and investor as well as investing ourselves.

For us, our experience ranging from renting to design and building our homes has been rewarding and fun.My advice to anyone thinking about purchasing their first home would be to do your research and definitely do not overpay.Learn from others and know your market. As stated over and over again on the site, it is important to have a mentor or two.It is not that difficult to find others that are willing help you out.

For our next adventure in real estate our short term goal is to purchase a SFR to either update for resell or rent with a positive cash flow.This would be a cash purchase.We are looking for a 3 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage single family residence in an established neighborhood that could use some updating.