Hi BP,

It's always nice when you get to click "Real Estate Success Stories" as your Forum Category:)

I would just like to share with the community that I am now an owner of 2 properties, because I just closed my 2nd deal yesterday! This process was about 100 times more stressful/difficult than my first purchase. I purchased my first property about 20 months ago right off the MLS. I bought it for exactly what it was worth and closed in 30 days.. there was no fancy negotiation or value add play. I was simply buying it as a house hack and it worked out well for me, better than I could have anticipated. The property is in Auburn AL, and I was very fortunate because the value on that property has risen by about $45,000 in the last 20 months due to the market getting crazy hot here.

Though I did not have any control over the value add with my property, I did understand how powerful it was and how it gives me a lot more options as far as: selling/HELOC/cash out refi/etc.

So this time around I decided to do value add on purpose rather than hoping to get lucky again.

The property I have just purchased is in the south part of Montgomery AL near Vaughn Meadows. It was a foreclosure that looked like a train wreck in a lot of ways- which turned out to be because it was vandalized. To include to copper wires being stolen from basically everywhere imaginable, the entire ceiling in one of the bedrooms was caved in, and to top it off it looked like there could be foundation issues.

The property was on the market for about 6 months and I imagine its appearance scared off all other would be investors. But I decided to take a closer look.... After a few inspections, a lot of headache with my realtor, and a lot of headache with my lender, and a lottt of headache finding a contractor- I ended up going through with the deal. Maybe on a future post if anyone cares I will elaborate on my realtor/lender/contractor headache because it would be a lottttttttttt of typing haha.

SPECIFICS:

-list price: $75,000

-purchase price: $70,500

-loan type: conventional renovation loan - 5% down payment/have to live the property for a year

-Reno cost: $12,700

-Total price: $83,200

-Cash invested: $9760

Structural engineer inspection $450- Home inspection $350- Earnest money $2,000- down payment $4160 (5% of $83,200) closing costs $2800.

- Appraised value: $124,000!

When I started investing about 20 months ago the only RE knowledge I had was from BiggerPockets. And that is 99% the case today. Anyone reading this that is just starting out and wondering if this site is legit and if you can actually benefit from REI I'm here to tell you it is/ and you can. If you think you need to buy into some "investing course" or pay a coach or mentor you don't. The books, podcasts, and forums on here are GOLD and they cost you next to nothing.

When I started investing I had about 25K to my name saved up from the 4 years I was in the military(lower enlisted). 20 months later I have over $100,000 in equity between my 2 properties and one of them is cash flowing beautifully.

I left a lot out but I'm trying to keep this shorter than my last success post.. so this concludes my success story:)