New member from Illinois!
I am a 33 new member from Illinois. My husband and myself are relatively new to investing. After getting married in 2014, we turned the home I had a mortgage on into a rental. We did not really have a plan other than charging enough rent to cover expenses. More or less get renters to pay the cost of the house while we get the benefits of equity. We both were working full time, my husband being self employed, and it was a quick solution for us.
Move forward to early 2015, hubs business started to struggle, and on a whim we found a HUD home that was foreclosed on. After a struggle with figuring out how to buy a HUD foreclosed home, we closed the deal and the house was paid for in full. We ended up shutting down my husband's business and he focused on remodeling our new acquisition. April of 2016, we were able to get it rented and all is going well. However, based on the cash flow off this property, it sparked an interest in me. I want to retire early, hate working the 9 to 5 job. Would rather invest in real estate and make my money grow. So I started googling real estate investing and came across this site. I have yet to post, however have been reading extensively on the site.
We currently do most of the remodeling ourselves and all of the property management. This saves us a decent amount. I manage expenses and income in excel. I am a bit of a nerd, so I enjoy the numbers game to this whole thing.
Now we have saved up again and are working on acquiring our first duplex. We will finance after putting 25% down. We expect this deal to close in the next month or so. Still working out some details, but overall I will get good cash flow off the property.
Long term, we want to acquire a storage unit facility that we self manage. I have started reading up on how to do it and what to look out for. Commercial loans and setting up an llc to run the business is a whole new beast.