All Forum Posts by: Carmen Sognonvi

Thanks for the warm welcome, everyone! And LOL at @Darren Sager re: spitting out the Kool Aid. :) 

Appreciate all the great resources you've shared here. I'll definitely be taking a look at all of those!

Hey BP community!

My husband and I have been listening to the podcast for a month or so now, and finally decided to get active on the site.

We live in Brooklyn, NY, have two young kids, and own a successful small business. In a few more years, we're looking to purchase our first home, and after that we'd be interested in getting into some real estate investing. Or we may make our first home a 2-family unit so we can get our feet wet as landlords - we're not sure yet.

We've drunk the Dave Ramsay kool-aid so we'd like to do this as un-leveraged as possible - either paying all cash, or using a mortgage but paying it off as quickly as possible before we purchase the next property.

We want to spend the next couple years learning as much as we can about real estate, so that we can make some good decisions. Right now we're evaluating these possible scenarios:

1) Buy a renovated, move-in ready brownstone and live in the owner's duplex while renting out a garden 2BR apartment. Work on paying off the mortgage in full before moving on to buying pure investment property. Pros: less construction work, rental income to help cover the mortgage. Cons: have to deal with a tenant, would pay a premium for a renovated property, wouldn't have the whole home to ourselves.

2) Buy a unrenovated brownstone and do the work to make it into our "dream home" and just live in the whole thing. Work on paying off the mortgage in full before moving on to buying pure investment property. Pros: we'd spend less on the property as it would be unrenovated, we could live in the whole thing. Cons: we'd need to do construction and have no experience in this area - makes me nervous, no rental income.

For our primary residence, we'd be interested in buying in Bed Stuy, where we currently live. For future investment properties, I was thinking of 2-family homes in East New York or Canarsie.

Would love to know what you all think - especially fellow New Yorkers!

Thanks,

Carmen