All Forum Posts by: Brandon Turner

Welcome Andres Piedra! It's a great question - and something a lot of people are facing today (after the market drop.) I'm with Jon Klaus - can you sell it?

Also, do you have a primary residence? You can get by with just 3.5% down payment on a primary - and that works for duplexes, triplexes, or 4-plexes. You can also use hard money (or private money) to buy a property and fix it up - then refinance it into a long-term mortgage. I;ve done that a few times and its a good way to go without any of your own money.

Good luck and keep in touch!

Welcome Raymond Scott! I may be on the other side of the country from you, but welcome nonetheless! I hope BiggerPockets will be as beneficial to you as it has been to me over the years. Good luck on that offer as well! Be sure to keep us updated on how it goes and ask questions anytime you run into them!

Welcome to the club, Tiger Mynarcik ! I love to see experienced pros jump into the forums to share all the great knowledge you've got! I continue to learn and grow every day from these Bigger Pockets forums and I hope you find the same. Keep in touch and feel free to bounce ideas off us anytime! That's the point of all this! :)

A great way to find local mentors is to simply find out who is doing the type of deals you want to get into. For example, if "Buy 'n Hold" is your goal - then find out who the big "Buy 'n Hold" guys are in your area. Same goes with flippers, wholesalers, etc.

A great way to find them is through real estate agents. Agents love to connect people, so try that route.

When you meet those people, ask a lot of questions. Ask to see their properties and let them talk about themselves a lot. People like to talk about their stuff. Don't approach it like "I need you to teach me" but more like "I love what you do, how do you do that!"

Wayne Terry Hey I agree 100% with Billy Rogers about reading those two books, building your skill set, and buying a small multifamily property. Excellent advice! I'll just add that finding a local investor you want to emulate would be a great way to get to know the business first hand while getting your life in order, in preparation for the big jump into full time.

It definitely can be done. I started with no money, and really do at least 90% of everything without using my own money. The trick is that I have skills that are worth more than money (deal making, construction, etc) so if you can develop those- great!

Good luck Wayne!

Thanks @Siddharth Majumdar! I would start with finding out your lending possibilities and deciding how you are going to finance your first property - so probably visiting a few mortgage lenders.

Once you have a strategy for how you are going to buy the property - then come up with exactly the type of property you want (type, price, area, etc) Then find a Realtor and begin looking. You'll may want to consider a property that needs just a little bit of updating (like paint, carpet ,etc) and possibly use a 203K remodel loan which allows you to wrap the repair costs into the loan. It's a little complicated and can take a while - but its so worth it.

A couple friends of mine just bought a triplex for $60,000.00 through a 203k loan (they borrowed an extra $5000 for repairs). Their entire mortgage will be less than $500 per month and they'll get $1700 per month in rent, or almost $1200 and live for free. It's a sweet deal and going to be a great springboard for them.

That's just one way to get started, but its worked great for a lot of people over the years.

Good luck and let us know how you move forward and if you have any questions!

Hey Chris Tom - this is my bread and butter. I love small multifamily properties for this very reason. My first "buy 'n hold" investment was a duplex and I still own and love this property today.

Yes, you can have multiple mortgages at one time - if you income qualifies. I'm guessing you already have a mortgage on your own home (?) so you'd have to make enough to get a bank to give you a loan.

"On contract" means there is no bank involved - just the seller who is willing to "be the bank." You would pay them each month. Typically, if a seller is willing to do this - it's because it's in their best interest to do so and not necessarily yours. It's often a way to take advantage of people.

As for $5000 down - typical down payments on investment properties are 20% - so $5000 wouldn't get you very far. However, if you decided to move to that duplex you could get an FHA 3.5% down loan, meaning you could buy a property for more than $100,000 and still be ok. (This is only for your primary residence, though.)

The important thing with duplexes is to make sure the math works. It MUST cashflow real well. If you buy right, you can often times make a lot of extra money each month. However, expenses and vacancies can eat into your profit - so be sure to use that in your calculations.

Good luck Chris and keep in touch. BP is a great place to learn all about this stuff!

P.S. Check out the story of my first duplex here:

http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2012/07/15/bought-kurt-cobains-former-homes-investing/

Hey Brandon Reiter - I haven't used this but it seems like a pretty great tool. The only hesitation I have is that most of my tenants are not computer savvy. Perhaps that's a good way to screen out the bad ones, but I'd worry about losing some of the good ones. Also, to do the background check through them with a FICO it would be $25- which isn't terrible but a little more than I currently pay ($15 for just Criminal, eviction, and judgments through the Washington State Landlord Association).

Anyways, anyone else use this service?

I jumped in and quit my job - but if I went back I wouldn't do it again. My wife kept her job, which kept us afloat (barely) but we went in a lot of debt because of it. I would have been a lot better off that first year just volunteering as an intern for another investor before fully quitting.

I always suggest people find whatever job makes them the happiest and do that, investing on the side until you make more from the investment than your job. Then the choice is yours whether you want to quit or not. That's true financial freedom.

Great to meet you Siddharth! Welcome to BiggerPockets. You'll find so much great information around here and great people too. You are very smart to be thinking about the "buy 'n hold" strategy.

Have you purchased your own home, a primary residence, yet? Often times you can make your first home also your first investment by looking for a duplex, triplex, or 4-plex and still get in on the 3.5% down payment the FHA allows. When you move out, then, you get the benefit of keeping that low interest rate, fixed, for the next 30 years. It's a great way to get your feet wet without risking a lot of money.

Anyways, keep in touch and again - Welcome!