Hi all, my name is Travis Wilkins and I am a noob from Pittsburgh, PA looking to get involved in real estate investing! I found an interest in real estate several months ago and decided to visit the site after stumbling upon the Bigger Pockets Podcast. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked. I don’t have any experience in real estate, but I have a degree in economics and can see that investing in real estate would be a great path towards financial independence.

I’ve been doing all of the research that I can in order to put together a plan to truly get started in the next 24 months. As of now, my primary interest is in buy and hold properties, but I hope to learn as much as I can about the other areas as well over time.

I'm currently looking to join a good meetup or an REI club in the area. If anyone has any suggestions please feel free to send me a message. Thanks for having me!

Welcome @Travis Wilkins ! What kind of RE investing do you see yourself doing? Did you search the events area of BP for meetups near you?

@Travis Wilkins Hi and welcome to BiggerPockets Travis. When you are ready to put your knowledge of investing into action, feel free to reach out to me. Pittsburgh is thriving with great opportunities for Investors and will continue to grow as various neighborhoods gain momentum in their revitalization. 

@Grant Rothenburger Right now I am planning to get started with buy & hold SFR, although if I can find a great opportunity to house hack a multi, I would definitely start there. I can see myself branching out at some point in the future, but I want to focus on buy & hold for now. And no, I have not checked the events area. I will do that now. Thanks!

@Gary Swank Thanks Gary, will do! 

@Travis Wilkins Welcome to BP! Once you have the money and willpower to do it getting started is the most important part. Plenty to learn, but you'll never learn everything!

Pittsburgh REIA is fantastic and @Josh Caldwell has it so that your first meeting is free. The group has a lot of subgroups for specific types of investing and areas of the city. @Alex Deacon has workshops for new investors and I think one is coming up on February 10th. I can send you the invite so that you can put it on your calendar if you'd like. Just PM me where to send it to and I'll do that. 

ACRE is good as well and they have a lot of events that you can register for if you check them out online. 

If you look around there are plenty of smaller groups that are great to meet people. 

So lots of resources. 

@Travis Wilkins welcome aboard  There is a lot that you can learn here on BP. If you want to network with other local investors like me and @Anthony Angotti then you should come to a Pittsburgh REIA event. We have a lot of them. There is the main meeting on the 3rd Tuesday of the month but we also have 13 sub groups that meet during the month on every topic from creative finance, to asset protection, wholesaling, and flipping We try to provide as broad an education platform as possible. Feel free to attend any event as my guest.

To your success

Josh 

PS, you want to make sure that you can make it to our meeting on the 20th, we have the legendary Lou Brown coming in to teach us about how to use trusts for asset protection. Most PA lawyers have no idea how to do that. 

@Travis Wilkins You definitely don't want to miss Lou Brown's Land Trust presentation or any of his presentations for that matter! Lou is the best of the best IMO! I've followed several several different Gurus over the years and have invested 100's of thousands of dollars in training! Then about six years ago I attended one of Lou's courses and it all made sense! Lou is definitely a legend and as nice of a guy you could meet!

Best of luck,

Jim

@Anthony Angotti @Josh Caldwell @Jim Stallings

Thank you all for the responses. I will definitely plan to attend on the 20th. I have also touched base with Alex and plan to attend the next one as well. Looking forward to gaining some knowledge!