Updated almost 8 years ago on . Most recent reply
Newbie right now, but hoping to get good at real estate investing
Hi!
I am a full time software developer living in Fremont, CA. I got my feet wet with real estate investing last year when I bought my first investment property in Charlotte, NC. Now that I have had a taste of it, I want more.
My pursuit of getting more educated in this domain, before getting more heavily involved, led me to the bigger pockets podcasts, which has now brought me here. I am really excited to unleash the potential of the bigger pockets community to help me succeed through building mutually beneficial relationships in real estate.
In the near future, I want to build relationships that will allow me to invest responsibly out of state and within the state if there are opportunities for good cash flow. I am hoping to network with realtors, wholesalers, property managers, and contractors that can work with me remotely. In return, I am hoping to bring them recurring business from not only me, but multiple friends and family members that are eager to invest in real estate as well.
I am not only looking forward to learning from all of you, but also hoping that in due time I am knowledgable enough to give something back to this community!
Most Popular Reply
Sure thing @Josh Stack, @Keith Weigand
About couple of years ago, I figured out that I wanted to get my feet wet with real estate investing. The only question was WHERE? I wasn't too interested in the local bay area market because the prices were quite high. At the time it felt like it was the peak and I didn't want to risk making a large down payment on a single property and having all my eggs in one basket. In hindsight, it wasn't the peak and investing in the bay area two years ago would have been great. But so it goes...
Instead I googled several big university towns out of state to see what the markets there looked like using Zillow. I didn't come across any slam dunks. Around that time, a family friend of mine told me about his success with Charlotte. The numbers he talked about really intrigued me. This lead me to research Charlotte heavily and real estate investing in general. I quickly learned about the one percent rule and evaluated many cities with that rule in mind. Based on my research, Charlotte seemed the best bet in terms of house price to rent ratio, the age of the house ( i didn't want to invest in older houses in fear of more repair costs and such), and finally potential appreciation (though after listening to bigger pockets, I see that investors mostly care about the cash flow and buying just for appreciation can be a gamble).
Once I had Charlotte narrowed down as my location of interest, I contacted an agent via Zillow. Minus the cursory google search, I didn't really look into who the agent was beforehand. Luckily for me, she turned out to be great. The agent set me up with an MLS search and I frequented it daily looking for deals. I soon realized that the good deals (aka the 1% deals) did come, but they would vanish within a couple of days. So one weekend, I called up my agent and told her to be ready to make offers. That weekend I picked three houses that I was interested in and tried making offers on all three. My agent told me that it was necessary to make an offer on only one of them right away and the rest could wait. So I made an offer on the one, it got accepted, and I booked a flight to Charlotte to have a look at that property in person, as well as the other two properties that I was interested in. I liked the property I made an offer on but I just wanted to make sure that my rental comps were accurate and that the property could be rented at the right price to make the math work. While, I was in Charlotte, I also had a couple of appointments with property managers that I had looked up beforehand set up. I either met or spoke with them about the property I was interested in and they assured me that it could be rented at the price I wanted. I then called up my agent and let her know that I was going to go through with the purchase. Long story, long, that was my first and only rental property purchase.
The numbers on the property:
It is a 3 bedroom 2 bath, single story property. It was listed at $97500, I offered $102,000. The property is currently rented at $1050. It got rented in about 2 weeks.