A Rock Climber Living Out of His Van - REI Newbie

[Tomer O.]

Hi BP!

So Excited to have found this place, so much information, quite overwhelming, in a good way. The podcast, the forums, the youtube channel, so much to absorb!

So I'm 28 years old, and I live quite a different life style then most, I live out of my camper-van and I go rock climbing every morning with my friends. I feel so lucky to have found an activity that I'm so passionate about. I spend my year in a few climbing areas. the forests of Eastern Kentucky, the Western Slope of Colorado. and the desert of Western Texas. Just following the weather and changing locations by the season.

(Shout out to @Dave Meyer that confessed for being a rock climber in the making, it was on one of the podcasts, did you stick with it?!)

So let's talk REI.

This life style immediately puts me in an out of state investor position as far as I can understand, my home is wherever I park my van, but that makes it much harder to specialize and delve into one market.

I work very little throughout the year, but I spend even less then what I make.

So I would potentially be able to save enough for a 20% down for a buy-hold Rental property, but with my income I would not qualify for any type of conventional lending.

So it was time to get creative! Luckily I didn't have to go too far, my parents see (some) of the advantages in owning RE, they already own 2 townhouses in MD (outside of DC), that they bought in a cash purchases (that's why I say they only see only some of the advantages in REI).

So after talking to them they were willing to allocate a one time $100K amount to help me with this purchase and structure some of it as a gift and some of it as a low interest loan. 

I'm so grateful and thankful for that opportunity to start my RE journey with a capital like that.

..and because of that I think I'm about to get stuck in analysis paralysis, because I really don't want to mess it up...

I'm pretty sure my route is going to be with a turnkey property, I've listened to every podcast and article that had any information about it and I think I understand most of the pros and cons with that method.

Was reading a bit about potential exit plans for turnkey, or just next steps to increase portfolio, and it seems like taping into the equity, Cash-Out-ReFi is an option, but might not work for me because of my almost non existent income.

My short term goal for the next few years is to be able to get close to $1K in monthly cashflow (which will more then cover my current life style expenses). I would love some help formulating some sort of a plan to get there before pulling the trigger on my first property through a turnkey investment like Memphis Invest or Marshall Reddick.

Thanks so much for reading through my rambling..

Tomer  

[Cody L.]

As others have said, finding ~$100k homes that rent for $1,000 isn't hard.  That used to be my metric.  But $1,000/month rent isn't $1,000 of cash flow after expenses.  I'd find a way to leverage that $100k (seller financing? Wraps? traditional?).

If you bought 5x homes at $100k each with 20% down, you'd have a ~$400 payment on each (a bit less actually on a 30 year, and way less if you did an ARM). That's $600 of income before expenses. Even if you cut that in half to cover your costs. Or hell, by 2/3's, you're at $200-$300/month of cash flow per property.

Times 5 properties = $1000-$1500/month.   If you assume those properties even go up 2% a year, you're talking about another 10% return on your $ just from appreciation.  Plus tax advantages.  Plus debt pay off.

Man, even typing this makes me excited to be in this business :)