New member from Richmond, VA/Dc/Dahlgren, VA
Hi everyone, my name is Prenn. So my real estate journey began with an older coworker asked me if I had any plans for the future or what kind of investments I was involved in. Back then, over a year ago, I had nearly all my extra money in stocks. He said that was a good start but told me to read Rich Dad Poor Dad. Like many others, this book has completely changed how I handle my income and spending.
This leads me to BiggerPockets and learning about low and no money down and the BRRRR technique. I’ve listened to the podcasts everyday as my commute is 1.5 hours one way and I still continue to listen and repeat episodes. I actually got so caught up into it that I was starving to get my first deal. I found a realtor in Richmond and got my first property under contract at $195,000. I actually had this under contract before learning about the calculators and realized that my cash flow was going to be horrible!! Luckily, the parking spot was “leased” and they didn’t inform me so that was my way out of the contract.
My next property I put under contract was a duplex. It was still expensive at $275,000. It needed some decent work but I figured i could owner occupy this and fix slowly. After inspections, they found termite damage on the second floor... which led me to back out of this deal.
Third property under contract was another duplex in a nicer area. The more I got denied, the more I wanted a property! This duplex was a whopping $475,000. I pretty much fudged with the calculator numbers to convince myself that the deal was worth it when in reality, I just wanted to live in the nice part of town while owning a duplex. Luckily, I was able to get out of this one as well...
I finally took a step back and decided I’ll just get a smaller SFH and look for an owner occupant another time. I landed a $60,000 2b/1ba and bought it sight unseen but went through the inspection and had the realtor give me advice. I was able to close on it but the cash flow isn’t as great and I was caught in the real estate bug. I knew I wanted to get better cash flow on my next unit.
Which leaves me to my next and latest purchase of a duplex near work. I bought it using an fha as owner occupant. At the time, the previous owner was renting out one side of the duplex at $550 a month and the other was empty. It also had a huge unfinished basement that spans nearly 70% of the whole building. To this day, I am able to rent each room out at $500 each totaling $2050 currently, and once the other tenants have left, I’ll be able to rent out the additional rooms and still have a room for myself to live in, totaling $2500 in rent.
And lastly, I’m trying to figure out what to do with the basement, which I have started another thread on. What’s unique is that the basement only has an exterior entrance so if I added rooms to the basement, they would essentially need to walk outside to have access to kitchen/bath/laundry. I still need to reach out to the county and see what’s allowed, but either install interior stairs, or build a kitchen in the basement. The basement already has some windows as it is half above ground.
Anyways, sorry for the long post, I’ve just been excited about this journey and can’t wait for more! I thank the BiggerPockets podcast and hosts for keeping me motivated and interested. My #1 advice to new members is, don’t let the urge to close your first deal get in the way of the numbers.