All Forum Posts by: Ankith Chandra

Welcome to BP @Shelly Herkner. That is great goal. Good luck! 

@Brie Schmidt: Thank you for the suggestion. To become a private lender once must have a good chunk of cash available for lending, correct? 

@James Wise: Thats good advice. Thank you. So along with distressed properties, MLS also features rent ready homes?

Greetings BP members!

I am keen to begin investing in real estate. The podcasts, blogs, and forum discussions that I have been reading on the BP website have been extremely useful so far in helping me understand various the aspects of real estate investing

I am looking to buy and hold rental properties and am saving towards a downpayment. I was hoping to get some advice about my options.

I do not have US permanent residency yet and due to the limitations of my current visa I cannot actively work in any field apart from my current job. That means I cannot flip or manage my own properties and can only be a passive investor. My options at this point, based on my understanding are REITs, investing in Turnkey properties with a property manager.

So apart from REITs and Turnkey, are there any other ways of being a passive investor?

Thanks!

@Chad Hotovec: Congratulation on your first property. 

If you don't mind,could you please explain HYBRID turnkey? 

Congratulation @Joshua Dorkin on this great milestone. 

@Luis Rodriguez: There is a podcast on out of state investing featuring @Mehran kamari 

https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/06/0...

As @John Van Uytven mentioned you would need a person with boots on the ground in the target location. I hope this helps. 

@Michael Powell and @Russell Naylor: That's the plan. I know my assets will help me buy a nicer car someday.

@Brandon Hicks: I had a Mustang GT 5.0

@Dmitriy Fomichenko: Thank you Sir. Very true statement. I can clearly see the difference lifestyle change has brought to our lives and the best part is we no longer miss the previous lifestyle. 

@Lacee Beitler: Thanks for mentioning the book and I will certainly buy it after I finish reading the 4 hour work week and when the time is right I will get definitely buy @Brandon Turner's book on managing rental properties. 

@Steve Vaughan: Great quote and thank you!

@Brandon Turner: Thank you! You and @Joshua Dorkin do an awesome job of hosting the podcasts. It is a part of my daily commute and I have learnt so much from them. 

Once again, thank you all for the feedback. 

@David Krulac: Great use of the corvette! 

@Alex Franks: I miss my car too but sometime you have to let go of things to move forward. 

@Jake Thomas: Planning to follow the same strategy and hence we make sure to save every month.

@Frank Trigoso : Good idea. Not sure if my home in the suburbs will attract renters for a bedroom but I would have followed this approach if I had a townhouse close to downtown. 

@Rajesh Arikodi and @Jose R. Thank you.

Hello BP members,

My success story isn’t about flips, wholesaling or purchasing a buy & hold rental property but it deals with the change in mindset and purchasing my primary residence.

As of Nov 2015 I had no intentions of buying any real estate property. I had a steady job, bought a brand new sports car(I know, but I love cars) and was happy with the way life was.

Things changed last year. I started reading a lot of personal development books which helped me realize that I was spending way too much time and money on my car. With a heavy heart, I made a decision to sell the car and started cutting down on my lifestyle expenses. Realized when you stop being like other people, other people stop liking you!

It was Q4-2015, my wife and I decided to upgrade to a 2 bed apartment. We finalized an apartment for $1600/month. A voice in my head said this isn’t the right thing to do. This is when I began spending a lot of my time reading on BP. Now, I was inclined towards buying my first property.

We wanted to buy a 2b/b condo that could be rented out later. The condos we liked were over $250K with over $300 per month in HOA dues! Listening to podcasts I now knew that HOA dues can be a killer so this was definitely not an option.

It was during christmas when we decided to bite the bullet and buy our home in the suburbs. From this moment onwards everything happened at a very fast pace. We met a realtor and he showed us a few properties that met our criteria. We wanted a 1 story house under 2500 SFT in an A class neighborhood. We saw 3 older properties that met our price range and looked at 1 new construction which was well over our budget. Our budget was $250K. The old homes were in the range of $250K - $270K. The new property was listed at $330K.

The new home was being built for another owner but he backed out due to a family emergency and the builder was left with this home in their inventory. They wanted to sell soon. With this as an advantage we were able to negotiate the purchase price to $275K. Signed the contract on January 3rd and we were home owners in less than 4 weeks. Phew!

This definitely doesn’t bring in any cash flow but it feels good to know that I am not spending $1600 for a 1200SFT apartment. Yes, we had to make sacrifices and downgrade our lifestyles to get to where we are but it was certainly worth it.
Changing our lifestyles has helped us build back our rainy day fund and we are trying to get to a position where we may be able to buy a rental property towards the end of the year.

I would like to sincerely thank BP community for all the content and all the guests on the podcasts who continue to inspire me on a daily basis to move forward in my investing journey.

PS: I recently listened to podcast #100 which was very inspiring and made me realize I must post my success story.

Critiques/comments greatly appreciated.

Have a great day!

Hello Anson Lau . Welcome to the forum. Along with the podcasts there is a lot of content on the forums. Make sure to check it out. I see you're from sugar land. I recently moved here. Beautiful place!