Just starting, 17 year old

[Demitri DeRice]

I’m 17 years old. I want to get into real estate. What’s the first steps I should take?

[Karen F.]

Read a lot on Bigger Pockets. Get a job working for a handyman, carpenter, whatever in order to learn about the trades. Take shop classes in high school. If you have any interest in it, consider apprenticing yourself to an electrician or a plumber instead of going to college. You will earn about as much in those trades as you would in almost any other kind of employment. Earn as much as you possibly can, and bank every cent of it. Do not tell anyone (especially your family members) about your savings, because if they run into hard times, they will come to you for help. If you're a minor, they can take it without your consent. Look into living in an area where you can buy a foreclosed multifamily as an owner occupant with an FHA loan, only 3% down, as your first building. You could do this every year or two, moving as owner occupant, and build up a portfolio of multifamilies this way while you are very young, all with low mortgages. Eventually, consider exchanging it into a commercial building or larger apartment complex, if that is what interests you.

The big money would be in developing, and for that you'd need more education, I think.  Community colleges and state colleges offer construction management degrees, but I think you'd learn more apprenticing yourself to someone older who is in the middle of his career doing this.