Hello BP! My name is Matthew and I am a web developer / entrepreneur at heart. I am 33 and currently reside in Long Beach, CA. I have owned a vape shop for the past four years. At this point, I have a solid team running the day to day operations and I have a lot of free time on my hands and am looking to star my next journey, REI!

Since graduating high school (15 years ago, yikes!) I have primarily been self employed; either as a freelance web developer, starting e-commerce websites, or owning brick and mortar stores (what I'm currently doing). I've worked as a W2 employee in between starting businesses as a web development for a battery company. During that time, I realized the 9-5 repetitive grind is not for me.

I chose real estate investing as my new venture for several reasons: Sustainability & life style.

My current business risks being shut down at any point (most likely in 2022) when regulation comes into affect (which I will not have the financial resources to comply with). With that said I need something that is sustainable and can carry me through retirement. I also want to ensure, to some extent, that I have the freedom I am used to. I love working from home, taking road trips on a whim, and traveling from time to time. I fee REI will allow this lifestyle and is the perfect match.

Enough about me, lets talk about my plan and goals in REI.

My fiancé and I are both interested in moving out of state, primarily due to the housing cost in So Cal. We recently visited Oregon and fell in love with Salem. I still have plenty of research to do on the Salem market but our hopes are to find a 3-4 unit MFP to house hack in the area, with a move in date sometime around Q4 2018. I like the idea of house hacking for at least on year to see if we like living out of CA. Thus, I am open to using an FHA loan or conventional loan and have the means to put 20% down on a property of up to $350,000.

While out of state I will still manage the back office of my current business and my business partner will stay local, beings the feet on the ground when needed.

With all that said, my goal is to start my REI journey, focusing on Buy & Hold MFP rental properties. Starting with a house hack in Salem, my 10 year goal is to have approx $5,000/month in cashflow coming from REI.

Right now I want to amass as much knowledge as possible. I've purchased (and read) several books, I'm listening to the backlog of BP podcast and starting to keep an eye on the forms & blog post here at BP.

Within the next three months, I plan to finalize a marketing plan and start my initial search for my first great deal!

I would love to hear from anyone in the Salem, OR area who could help me gain knowledge on the market.

Alright, my intro post is complete... I feel like this journey has officially started now :) . I look forward to being a part of the community and getting to know those of you on the forums... thanks for reading!