Hello,

My name is Anthony Smoke and I live in Charlotte, NC. I am new to real estate investing although I have owned and rented properties in the past, but at the time I didn't see myself as an investor. That recently changed when I learned that I could get more stable returns on my retirement savings and that I could use those savings to do real estate investing.

This year I setup a Solo 401K retirement plan where I am the trustee. From doing research, reading about real-estate, and watching you tube videos, my plan was to invest in real estate single family homes and rent those properties so that I could get a stable return on my savings. Most of my savings originally were in mutual funds that were managed by my financial advisor. However, they usually only did as well as the stock market was doing, so I decided to take control and be responsible for my own money. 

After reading about real estate investing, I found out about the BRRRR method, and I am now reading David Greene's book on this subject. I am also reading Brandon Turner's book managing rental properties. Once I finish these two, I will move on to read Robert Kiyosaki's book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". My goals are to find deals that I can purchase with my 401K savings and then make a better ROI using the BRRRR strategy. I plan on using those returns for my retirement in 3 years.

I am now in the phase to start investing, so I joined BiggerPockets to help me learn more about real estate, to network, and to use the calculators to analyze deals. I have a property manager selected to help with my first deal (when I find it), and a real-estate agent that I have used in the past. 

I am an electrical engineer so I definitely understand math and systems. My wife worked for a company that handled HUD's foreclosures during the housing collapse for 12 years, so she is an expert on mortgages. In fact, every purchase and sales that we have done in the last two years (4 sales and 1 purchase) she has found errors in the mortgage documents that saved us money. :-) She is fantastic at reviewing mortgages.

We are wanting to focus on purchasing single-family and multi-family homes to rent in the Charlotte area, but we are looking to invest in Greenville, SC, Wilmington, NC, as well as some of the surrounding cities around Charlotte. We are wanting to get into doing property management. My wife remodeled our kitchen and bathroom in our primary residence as well as rehabbed my mom's condo so that we could rent it, so she has gained some experience with working with contractors, getting quotes, and making sure the work is completed. I still work full-time for a company as well as doing contracting with my own company. My expertise is in the Power Utility industry specifically in SCADA and Distribution control systems. 

After learning more about the BRRR method, I realized that I could use the equity in my primary residence to invest in properties with after-tax money. I plan to invest in a two-pronged approach: one with 401K savings, and the other using the equity in my home.

I am excited to be here and I look forward to meeting and working with others in real estate investing.

Regards,