Your Help Needed: Analyze My 'Getting Started' Plan

[Nick Hedberg]

Hello everyone! First I wanted to say thank you to everyone for reading my first post and all of your years of amazing contributions on BP. I have already learned a tremendous amount from you and this is only my first post!

My goal of getting into REI is to generate passive income to allow me to semi-retire in 10 years and live a more flexible lifestyle. I also want to diversify my investments. I look at the below chart and think, hmmmm what could possibly happen next to the stock market?

I currently have a rental property in Virginia and have made most of the beginner mistakes by treating it like a hobby and not a business. I’m the property manager, do my own taxes and also renovated it when I first bought it. This has been a learning experience and so far my key takeaways are:

• I don’t want a second job as a property manager
• I don’t want to be a general contractor
• I'm a bad CPA
• I love it when other people do work for me.

I currently reside in Santa Monica and would like to own in this area, but I'm heavily leaning towards outside markets for higher long term cash flow. I recently talked to a RE Agent in Hawaii and he said 1/3 of his calls are from CA investors because CA has gotten too hot. I'm primarily looking for long term buy and hold residential properties. I would like to buy multifamily, but if I'm investing remotely I would prefer to start small on a SFH so my initial mistakes are less expensive.

I would greatly appreciate your thoughts on my below 'Getting Started' plan:

1. Learn, learn, learn. So far I’ve read:

• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• The Weekend Millionaires Real Estate Investing Program
• The Compound Effect
• The Richest Man in Babylon
• Rich Dad Poor Dad ABCs of Real Estate Investing
• Bigger Pockets: Investing with No (and Low) Money Down
• Rich Dad’s Cashflow Quadrant
• Many BP Threads

2. Pick an area to invest: I would prefer Santa Monica/LA area, but I think it will be difficult to get the 10-15% COC returns I'm looking for.

3. Setup Business Structure and begin establishing business credit. Long Term Goal: Have a completely self contained business entity that doesn’t require my person credit or savings to build wealth.

4. Setup team:

• Accountant
• Lawyer
• Bank/Financing relationship
• Local Agent
• Local Broker
• Local Property Manager
• Mentor

5. Start spitting out offers!! I love analyzing deals. I’m really excited for this part!

Sorry for the length and I would appreciate your input.