My name is Ezra Hodgson, and I recently obtained my real estate license in New Hampshire. Currently I am a dual career agent as I find my way in real estate, trying to ease my way into it as best I can. Fingers crossed, but my first deal should be closing this November.
I have family members who have been able to successfully leverage real estate to achieve financial freedom and seeing how they are able to live gives me something to work towards. Also, my wife and I are expecting our first child this coming March and being able to build passive income is a goal of mine to help give me more time with the people who matter most.
Being new to real estate investment and real estate in general, I want to learn as much as I can before diving head first into my first deal. Living in a highly competitive part of NH, I don't want to bite off more than I can chew.
As a first time investor what do you think I should most look for in my first investment property?
Real Estate Broker · Manchester, NH · Member since 2014 · 630 posts · 420 votes
7y
Welcome to BiggerPockets @Ezra Hodgson and congratulations on obtaining your real estate license here in New Hampshire! Getting started with investments is always the scariest and sometimes most challenging first step. Ultimately what you start with depends on where you want to end up and what you're able to do. If you are renting right now and looking for a way to decrease your living expenses, you might want to consider owner-occupying a small multifamily and putting low money down (3.5% minimum typically). If you have a fairly solid job and good savings, you might want to consider investing in a small multifamily that you don't live in and getting the basics of investing down through that. If you want to take on a more active role in your investing and have some skills or some good money, you could consider flipping (which is becoming more and more difficult in NH with the shortage of inventory).
What are your goals with your first deal? That defines what direction to start and what type of properties to be looking at.
Best of luck, and feel free to reach out if you have questions along the way!
Rental Property Investor · Rochester, NH · Member since 2017 · 31 posts · 6 votes
7y
Hi Ezra,
Congrats on making the leap into the industry! I live in Rochester, have a two year old daughter and just got my license last year. I have two rental properties down in MA and two rentals in NH, totaling 9 doors.
I’m on the same journey your starting and my goal is to reach 20 doors over the next 2 years. It’s been a challenge, as I also work a full time corporate job (50-60hrs/week). I guess to answer your question, my best advice would be to house hack a multi family (if you are currently renting). This will allow you to save cash faster and build equity. Properties in Strafford county are very high priced and strong cash flow is a bit of a challenge. But deals do exist, but you have to be patient! Less work, typically means less cash flow. If you can find value add properties, they seem to provide the most cash flow potential. I’d also recommend networking with other investors in your brokerage and pick their brains on what’s working for them. The properties that do pop up on the market that are turn key and offer cash flow go fast, so you will need to be ready! (Last multifamily property that I viewed, I viewed on the first day it was on the market and there were already three offers!)
Anyways, I wish you the best of luck and I’d love to hear of any successes you achieve.
Real Estate Broker · Manchester, NH · Member since 2014 · 630 posts · 420 votes
7y
Welcome to BiggerPockets @Ezra Hodgson and congratulations on obtaining your real estate license here in New Hampshire! Getting started with investments is always the scariest and sometimes most challenging first step. Ultimately what you start with depends on where you want to end up and what you're able to do. If you are renting right now and looking for a way to decrease your living expenses, you might want to consider owner-occupying a small multifamily and putting low money down (3.5% minimum typically). If you have a fairly solid job and good savings, you might want to consider investing in a small multifamily that you don't live in and getting the basics of investing down through that. If you want to take on a more active role in your investing and have some skills or some good money, you could consider flipping (which is becoming more and more difficult in NH with the shortage of inventory).
What are your goals with your first deal? That defines what direction to start and what type of properties to be looking at.
Best of luck, and feel free to reach out if you have questions along the way!
Hollis, NH · Member since 2018 · 60 posts · 43 votes
7y
I’m from the Nashua area. Also looking for my first property. I’ve been at this for about 4 months (from the initial thought to putting in offers). So filter my comments with that in mind.
What you should look for is very individual depending on your finances, connections, goals and risk tolerance. I think in general you should look for something where the math works well, thereby mitigating as much risk a possible. Look for locations where people are likely to continue to live and work and figure out your areas of interest.
If you're looking for passive income then you should focus on cash flow. How passive is passive? If you're looking to scale and don't have access a ton of capital then I would try to BRRRR but now you need to add value and that's less passive. Maybe a performing note and now you're looking at very passive cash flow but you don't own a property you own the debt service.
For me, If I could go back in time, before I had kids and settled, knowing what I have learned, I would have looked for 3-4 unit multi family in need of rehab and done an FHA loan with a 203k loan. For 3.5% down, I could have used the best parts of house hacking and BRRRR. I would have had to manage a rehab and live with my tenants but given how much I could have saved and the equity I could have generated, I think it would have been well worth putting off the picket fence for a few years.
Maybe I’m saying that because at the time I was renting on the border of gentrification in East Harlem and 10 blocks north NYC was giving away brownstones that are now selling for millions. But even if I had done it when I moved to Southern NH I think the technique would have served me well.
Thank you all for the advice and encouragement! My wife and I bought our first home about a year ago, before I ever thought to house hack. Otherwise that would have been a really great way to break into owning my first multifamily.
Based off of the podcasts I have listened to and the experiences of my family members I want my first deal to be be a small multifamily. That way I can establish some cash flow and get a taste for being a landlord.
What are good cash flow goals though? Especially in such a competitive market. I don't want to set an unrealistic bar for myself right out of the gate.
Rental Property Investor · Greater Boston Area · Member since 2018 · 258 posts · 105 votes
7y
Hi everyone, I wanted to join in on this conversation as I am a young real estate investor also from New Hampshire. I was born and raised in Nashua, NH (lived there for 21 years) before I started my journey into real estate investing. I bought a condo in Massachusetts with the plan to house hack (before I knew it was called "house hacking" I planned to fix it up a little bit, then rent it out, or sell it - I hadn't really thought that far in advance).
I hadn't started listening to the BP podcast, or any other RE investing podcasts, but I knew I wanted to get started in real estate. So, I inquired about a condo that I was interested in. It was in my price range, but needed a little bit of work. I thought I could fix it up a bit myself and flip it for a small profit or at least rent it out. While I was going through the buying process it came to my attention that the condo association was going to be placing a special assessment on the properties (increasing the HOA fees to cover repairs/renovations). It didn't seem like it was going to be a major deal, so I continued with the purchase.
Fast forward three months, I've been living in the unit, finishing up the renovations/changes I wanted, and I get a noticed from the property management company. Turns out, the renovation project wasn't so small after all. The condo association was undergoing a ~$7 million renovation to improve all of the units and the condo community as a whole. Every unit got a brand new roof, all new windows (including skylights), all new doors, all new walkways, new community pool, new paving throughout and additional parking. About ~$5 million (about $35,000 per unit) was coming from the savings of the community over the past 20 years and the other ~$2 million (about $15,000 per unit) would be funded by an increase in the HOA fee. Since I had only been living there three months, I had paid essentially nothing into the HOA savings fund, yet I was receiving the benefit of $35,000. Long story short, the value of my unit went up significantly and I was able to sell for a profit after owning it for about 7 months.
Again, before I had really started educating myself on RE investing (or listening to BP podcast), I rolled the profits from my first deal into half of a condex in New Hampshire where I am currently house hacking. I wanted to buy a condex property where I could buy both sides, but I needed to please my significant other and we were in a bit of a hurry to move. I refused to buy anything overpriced, so we ultimately got a good deal on half of a condex that I am currently making small changes to while we live in it. I plan to rent this property out when we move into our next house hack.
I'd love to continue to chat with everyone in this thread to learn more about your approaches, strategies, insight, experience, etc in our local New Hampshire area.
Rental Property Investor · Rochester, NH · Member since 2017 · 31 posts · 6 votes
7y
@Ezra Hodgson in my experience cash flow goals will be based on how much “landlording” you want to do. The properties that require more time/management tend to offer more cash flow. So if you want to grind it out to build cash quickly, you could go with a lower end rental.
I typically look for around $600-800 monthly cash flow, but I self manage, which saves me approx. $300/month per property.
Rental Property Investor · Dover, NH · Member since 2018 · 13 posts · 7 votes
7y
Hey all I’m a new investor from Dover and would be happy to meet up. I have been attending the Seacoast REIA meetings at Chapel and Main regularly and encourage you attend, they have some great speakers!
Also @Raymond McGill I just set up Wave for my accounting system and could give you a few tips.
Best,
Nick
Rental Property Investor · Rochester, NH · Member since 2016 · 116 posts · 27 votes
7y
@Nick
I am thinking that Wave isn't going to work because it can't subcategorize, i.e. I can' seperate receipts among different properties. Love the scan feature, but I bet others can do as well.
Investor · Boston, MA · Member since 2016 · 245 posts · 436 votes
7y
Hey @Ezra Hodgson , congrats on getting your license - working part-time as an agent when I got started certainly helped me learn the real estate business, my market, and helped me get comfortable with the real estate "process" by the time I was ready to do my first deal. What part of NH are you in? I'm pretty active in southern NH and the seacoast area, on both the flipping and buy and hold side. As most people suggest, I would look into a house hack using an FHA (or a conventional, low money down loan.. many lenders off these programs that aren't FHA but still allow you to only put 5%-10% down). It doesn't have to be a multi with a low pricepoint either, you can certainly house hack a nicer duplex/small multi and experience the benefits of investing without sacrificing your quality of life. Let me know if I can help at any point!