Need Advice: 23, $35k Saved, 0 debt, Want to Build a Career in Real Estate
New to Real Estate · Member since 2026 · 2 posts · 4 votes
Need Advice: 23, $35k Saved, 0 debt, Want to Build a Career in Real Estate
Most Popular Reply
Arman AhmedPro Member
Real Estate Agent · Columbus Cleveland Dayton, OH · Member since 2024 · 2k+ posts · 955 votesQuote from @Mohamed Al-Ali:
Hey everyone!
New member here. I graduated from university last year and have been pursuing a career in finance, with the long-term goal of building a career in real estate full-time. I recently moved from California to New Jersey and am currently between jobs.
I’m 23 years old, have about $35k saved, no debt, and a good credit score, but I honestly feel a bit "lost" and overwhelmed trying to figure out the best path forward. I know $35k alone doesn’t go very far in the industry, so I’m trying to be strategic about how I use it.
In college, I did some wholesaling, and I’ve considered getting back into that. Or maybe even mobile homes, since I'm assuming they don't require a large amount of capital to get started (might be completely wrong). Ideally, though, I’d love to partner with or learn from an experienced investor in the Philly and NJ area to understand the business better.
Would appreciate any advice on what you’d do in my position, or any recommendations on the best way to break into the industry with my current situation.
Thanks!
You’re actually in a stronger position than you think at 23 with no debt, savings, wholesaling experience, and the willingness to learn. Most people get stuck because they wait for the “perfect” time instead of getting reps in. I’d focus less on finding the perfect strategy and more on building skills that transfer everywhere, like underwriting deals, talking to sellers, networking, and understanding financing. Mobile homes can absolutely work, especially for affordability plays, but I’d avoid jumping into anything just because it seems “cheap.” A lot of newer investors also start looking at Midwest markets, because $35k can stretch a lot further there than in NJ or California, especially for duplexes, small multifamily, or value-add deals. The biggest thing right now is getting around active investors and learning how real deals actually get done instead of only consuming content online.
8 Replies
- Rock Star Extraordinaire · Northeast, TN · Member since 2015 · 10k+ posts · 16k+ votes4mo
First off nice job - I know a lot of people a lot older than you that don't have 5 cents saved.
If you're between jobs and just moved to NJ (where? I'm from NJ) I would hold tight while you get yourself situated. You need a good handle on your living situation and income and expenses before you start swinging for the fences on investments. However much money you bring in and what it costs you to live, and the nature of your work will dictate to some extent what you can/should/can't do.
Skyline Properties- New to Real Estate · Member since 2026 · 2 posts · 4 votes4mo
Quote from @JD Martin:
First off nice job - I know a lot of people a lot older than you that don't have 5 cents saved.
If you're between jobs and just moved to NJ (where? I'm from NJ) I would hold tight while you get yourself situated. You need a good handle on your living situation and income and expenses before you start swinging for the fences on investments. However much money you bring in and what it costs you to live, and the nature of your work will dictate to some extent what you can/should/can't do.
Thank you for your response. I am in South Jersey, Burlington County, to be exact. I definitely agree with you. I should find a stable job before jumping into investing.
- 4moBryce JamisonPro MemberRental Property Investor · Mebane, NC · Member since 2015 · 494 posts · 439 votes
I'd spend the next few years saving as much money as possible and getting whatever job history a lender would need for me to buy a primary residence. I'd then rent out spare rooms, or house hack. From there I'd acquire a new property every year or so using the sneaky rental technique. I bought the house and rented rooms at your age, but I wish I would have bought a new primary every few years.
If you buy a new house every 2 years for the next 10 years you'll own over a million dollars in real estate, have 10s, if not 100s, of thousands of dollars in equity, and have hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars of cash flow a month.
More money will allow you speed up this timeline, or explore other investment strategies.
- 4moArman AhmedPro MemberReal Estate Agent · Columbus Cleveland Dayton, OH · Member since 2024 · 2k+ posts · 955 votes
Quote from @Mohamed Al-Ali:
Hey everyone!
New member here. I graduated from university last year and have been pursuing a career in finance, with the long-term goal of building a career in real estate full-time. I recently moved from California to New Jersey and am currently between jobs.
I’m 23 years old, have about $35k saved, no debt, and a good credit score, but I honestly feel a bit "lost" and overwhelmed trying to figure out the best path forward. I know $35k alone doesn’t go very far in the industry, so I’m trying to be strategic about how I use it.
In college, I did some wholesaling, and I’ve considered getting back into that. Or maybe even mobile homes, since I'm assuming they don't require a large amount of capital to get started (might be completely wrong). Ideally, though, I’d love to partner with or learn from an experienced investor in the Philly and NJ area to understand the business better.
Would appreciate any advice on what you’d do in my position, or any recommendations on the best way to break into the industry with my current situation.
Thanks!
You’re actually in a stronger position than you think at 23 with no debt, savings, wholesaling experience, and the willingness to learn. Most people get stuck because they wait for the “perfect” time instead of getting reps in. I’d focus less on finding the perfect strategy and more on building skills that transfer everywhere, like underwriting deals, talking to sellers, networking, and understanding financing. Mobile homes can absolutely work, especially for affordability plays, but I’d avoid jumping into anything just because it seems “cheap.” A lot of newer investors also start looking at Midwest markets, because $35k can stretch a lot further there than in NJ or California, especially for duplexes, small multifamily, or value-add deals. The biggest thing right now is getting around active investors and learning how real deals actually get done instead of only consuming content online.Mohamed,
I'm going to give you advice that has remarkably little to do with what you can accomplish with $35,000.
At 23, I wouldn't spend much energy hunting for the cleverest possible deployment of thirty-five grand into real estate. That's a rounding error dressed up as a strategy session. I'd be far more concerned with figuring out how you get yourself to The Table — the actual table, with actual people who've already done what you're merely intending to do.
And then I'd spend considerable time learning what makes somebody worthy of remaining there once they've arrived, because getting invited and staying invited are two entirely different achievements.
You said you'd like to partner with, or learn from, an experienced investor in Philly or New Jersey. That's precisely what I'd pursue. But I'd approach it rather differently than most people do, because most people approach it badly.
Don't walk into somebody's office and say "tell me about your business." That's not humility — that's an insult wearing humility's clothing. You're essentially announcing, "I haven't bothered to learn anything about what you built before asking you to narrate it for me on request."
Walk in and tell them about their business instead. Know what they're buying. Know where they're buying it. Know the market the way they know it. Know their previous deals if you can find the public trail of them. Understand their strategy, their thesis, what they're actually trying to accomplish beneath the transactions. Then ask intelligent questions — the kind that could only come from someone who did the homework nobody assigned them.
That tells a person something real. It tells them you cared enough to spend your own time and effort studying something they spent years building. That, and virtually nothing else, is how you earn somebody's attention in a world absolutely saturated with people asking to be taught.
And here's where I want to tell you a story.
I've spent time around five Texas oil tycoons — men who, by any conventional measurement, had already won the entire game. Enormous businesses. Enormous resources. The sort of men who could place a single phone call and move more capital before lunch than most people will see across an entire lifetime.
Five of them, sitting around one table, for three hours.
Do you know how much of that time was spent discussing business?
Not a solitary word. Three hours. Five Texas oil tycoons. Not one conversation about a deal. Not production numbers. Not acquisitions. Not oil prices. Not margins. Not strategy.
They talked about life.
Understand — these men were dead serious about business. This is the business. We've simply substituted actual relationships with something we've rebranded as "networking," and we ought to be thoroughly embarrassed for adopting a "leave your personal life at the door" policy in the professional world, as though a human being can be neatly bisected at the office threshold like some sort of corporate customs checkpoint.
I can't be separated from my profession. I can't professionally be separated from my personal... person.
These men loved their wives. They knew their families, and they knew each other's. They showed up. Friday night wasn't automatically sacrificed to a conference call simply because a conference call asked nicely. They attended their kids' high school football games — and not merely the games. Most of the practices too. They weren't the fathers who materialized at kickoff in the appropriately branded polo shirt, congratulating themselves for having "made time." They were actually there, in the unglamorous, unphotographed hours nobody applauds.
That's how a Texas tycoon decides whether he's willing to hand you a check for $7 billion and a fifty-year lease. It has almost nothing to do with your model.
Because they understood something a remarkable number of ambitious people don't figure out until they've spent twenty years becoming extraordinarily successful at something they eventually discover they never actually wanted.
Is excellence a one-way street? A lopsided arrangement? No — it isn't. Destruction and disrespect are the one-way streets. Excellence isn't found in lopsided lives, however impressive the balance sheet looks from the outside.
That's an important lesson at 23, arguably the most important one on offer.
Because there will be no shortage of people telling you that if you genuinely want to make it in real estate, you must eat, sleep, and breathe real estate. Maybe. For a season, perhaps. But if your personal definition of excellence requires the demolition of your marriage, absence from your children's actual lives, neglect of your health, abandonment of your integrity, and quiet estrangement from everyone who loved you before you became "successful" — I'm not entirely convinced you've achieved excellence. You've achieved scale. Those words get used interchangeably. They are not remotely the same thing.
The five men at that table understood the difference. And here's the part I think is especially relevant to you: I don't believe they became those men at fifty. I suspect they understood some version of this principle at 23 — that business was a part of life, never a replacement for it.
That's also why I wouldn't have you become obsessed with converting your $35,000 into your first real estate fortune.
Your money is useful. Your youth is more useful. Your absence of debt is useful. Your finance education is useful. Your mobility is useful. But your single greatest asset right now is your capacity to walk into someone else's world and genuinely learn from it — an asset that depreciates the moment you decide you already know enough.
Find the developer. Find the investor. Find the acquisition guy who actually assembles transactions rather than merely discussing them. Find the broker who knows how deals really get put together, not just how they get advertised. Find the person who owns two hundred doors and can still tell you, unprompted, which properties he refused to buy and why. Find the person whose judgment you'd trust with something that actually mattered.
Then study them.
Don't ask them to mentor you. Become useful enough that mentoring you becomes something they enjoy rather than something they tolerate. Underwrite their deals. Research their markets. Learn their financing structures. Run the numbers nobody asked you to run. Do the tedious work nobody else particularly wants. And watch.
Watch what they buy. More importantly, watch what they refuse to buy — that list teaches you more than the acquisitions ever will. Watch how they treat people when a transaction goes sideways. Watch how they treat the contractor when something breaks at the worst possible hour. Watch how they treat their spouse when nobody important is in the room to witness it. Watch whether they keep their word when keeping it actively costs them money.
Because you're not merely searching for someone to teach you how to make money. You're searching for someone worth becoming. That's a considerably larger decision than which market to invest in.
Wholesaling? Fine, if it teaches you something. Mobile homes? Maybe. Your first property? Eventually, when it's actually the right vehicle. But don't confuse the vehicle with the destination.
You're not trying to become a 23-year-old who owns a piece of real estate. You're trying to become the kind of man who, twenty or thirty years from now, can sit at a table with four other extraordinarily successful people for three hours and have absolutely nothing left to prove.
That's a career. That's a life. And that's precisely where I'd start.
-DC Dobbs
Gulf Coast Emerald, LLC
- 4moAaron ZimmermanBusiness MemberAccountant · Chicago, IL · Member since 2018 · 2k+ posts · 1k+ votesGood start and something to be proud of. I would consider house hacking if I was in your shoes.
Brick House CPAs53 Reviews I’d look into house hacking as a first move and recommend connecting with an investor-friendly agent in your market—ideally someone who invests themselves. That can make a huge difference in finding the right opportunities and avoiding early mistakes.
On top of that, start going to local real estate meetups around Philly and NJ. Meet as many people as you can, have conversations, and learn from those actively doing deals. That’s often where you’ll find mentors, partners, and real opportunities.
- Rental Property Investor · South Jersey, Cherry Hill and nearby areas · Member since 2015 · 932 posts · 67 votes4mo
Hi Mohamed,
SJREIA (South Jersey Real Estate Investors Association) has about 10 meetings a month mostly in the South Jersey area. We provide education and networking in all areas of real estate investing. Your first meeting is free with promo code SJREIA -- Check us out at www.sjreia.org
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