All Forum Posts by: Blaine Alger

It all starts with education. Start reading all of the BP books, listening to podcast and participating in the forums. By doing this you will slowly begin to develop more knowledge about the industry.

I would also try to connect with a local investor in your area and see what type of value you can bring them (looking for deals, cleaning out units, handyman work). If you can not find an investor go out and find a contractor who you can work with. Learning the trades would be so beneficial in this business and would provide a great foundation for investing.

Biggest mistake that investors make is sitting on the sideline and not taking action. Put yourself out there and try to implement what you learn. There is no doubt you will fail but every failure is one step closer to success. 

This can be a difficult obstacle to get around but I may have a few ideas.

#1-

Once you get a contract on a duplex, you can try to negotiate with one of the tenants to see if they would be willing to move out before closing so you could move into the property. You might have to offer some cash to incentivize them. 

I assume you are trying to get an FHA owner occupied loan and that is why you need a vacant unit. I would go and talk to your lender and see if they would lend on the property as long as the tenant was out of the unit by closing.

#2-

Look for properties that are have multi family zoning and you can either convert the basement into an apartment or add an ADU in the back yard. This would allow you to live in the added space while renting out the main house.

I think this may be easier option to get get financing on. 

I think your first step should be to go talk to every lender/bank/credit union in your market and see what type of loan you can get. If you have had a consistent job over the last couple of years and decent credit, then you should be able to find someone who would be willing to lend to you. 

Once you know you will be able to get financing, start looking for properties in your area (MLS, driving for dollars, etc).

Try to find a duplex or other small multifamily that would allow you to get into a house hack. So you will continue to live for free or close to it and you can get into a property with a small down payment for a owner occupied property (3.5-5%).

You are off to a great start, house hacking is a great strategy and is an amazing wealth building tool. 

The only thing I could see being a problem for you is financing because of your age. Most banks won't be that eager to lend to an 18 year old but if you have had a consistent job in high school and continue to work throughout college, then it is not impossible.

You could also have a parent, older sibling, etc co-sign on the mortgage and that would allow you to get around the financing issue.

My suggestion to you would be to keep things simple starting out and don't get caught up in subscribing to all of these different platforms and running up your overhead that you don't have the volume to support.

Here are the tools I use:

1.

There are a lot of different skip tracing platforms out there but when I first got started I used white pages and it worked fine. They have changed up their service a bit and now you do not get un limited searches which sucks but if you are not working a ton of volume it could be good for a good start. 

Today I use turbo skip to run my lists through and will use true people search to track down owners of LLC's (because turbo does not trace LLC's)

2.

A combination of google sheets and the basic CRM within MOJO dialer. It allows be to schedule follow up calls in the calendar and classify leads once i talk to them. I will eventually transition to something else but for now there is no need to complicate things.

3.

Landglide. It has its problems but it is cheap and simple ($10-12/month). It allows me to tag properties while I am out and about and then export into a CSV format which allows me to run through my skip tracer.

4.

Don't try to stick your hands in too many pots starting out. Find one marketing tactic you are comfortable with and then only work on that until you have it mastered. Once you have it down, then you can start adding to your tool belt. I like cold calling because you get a direct response and can gauge the conversation and adapt your approach.

My operation:

-use Propstream to pull data

-run data thru Turbo Skip

-upload skip traced lists into mojo dialer

-manage leads and follow ups thru google sheets and Mojo dialer

If you got any other questions feel free to message me.

-BA

I think the only way you could work this out is through an owner finance. Seems like they are emotional attached to the property and are too locked in on a price.

Tell them you would be willing to do the 250k if they would give you the terms you wanted. Then you could structure deal that would allow you to meet your requirements. I am not sure how off the price is from retail but this could at least be a starting place for you.

I can't provide any feedback in terms of the constitution but I do have an idea to possibly get around the legality of it.

You could always just fix it up and then rent it as a "rustic campsite" or something of the sorts. I am not sure if that would be able to work but it's something to think about.

I would also check out hip camp as well. They are like the airbnb of camping and offer a bunch of unique properties on their sight that are not necessarily up to airbnb standards.

You could also post some ghost add on Craigslist and see if you get any bites.

You can also call up some LLC's in the area and see if they are looking to buy in the area.

I may need some clarification. 

Seems like what your are proposing is that you will go out to a bank and get a mortgage but instead of bringing a down payment to the table, you will just put the seller in a 2nd position with  their 20% equity.

I have no knowledge with how a lender would respond to this. I would suggest go out and talk to you local banks as they will have  a more direct answer to the question compared to the speculation you might find here.  

I have heard of these types of deals being executed before, so it is not impossible. Just be ready to answer the sellers objections to being placed in a 2nd position any other concerns they might have about not getting completely cashed out up front. 

Love the thought process, this is something that comes up a lot on the forum and you will see many different perspectives. This is something I have gone through myself, and I continually will change my opinion on the subject.

I will go ahead and give you my current outlook on the topic:

Get a degree.

It doesn't have to be engineering but find something that you somewhat enjoy and will have relevance to you future RE investing career. I think RE property management is a good idea, but I would also encourage you to look into something more broad like  accounting, marketing or finance. And here is why, you can always go get a real estate job with a finance (or other degree) but you can't necessarily get a finance job with a RE degree. This just gives you more options and a better back up plan if RE happens to be not for you. This will also give you access to a solid W-2 that will make it easier for you to go out and get funding for investments. 

 In conclusion, finish out with a degree and in the mean time read, listen and watch any and all material you find on Biggerpockets or elsewhere regarding real estate investing. I have learned more about RE from the free content on BP than I have in the 3.5 years I have spent at my 40k/year university.