All Forum Posts by: Eric Merhar

@Khaled Helmi you are definitely not wrong.  She wasn't budging on price, so that was why I let the deal go.  

It's been quite a while since I've last posted!  To skip to the punchline, I haven't landed a deal yet, but not for lack of effort.

I've offered on three different sets of properties, and all have fallen through for one reason or another. One SFH that looked great had a person squatting in it - apparently he was the grandson, and was upset that his cousin was trying to sell the house. He even used bolt cutters on the padlock to continue squatting! The cousin was unwilling to have her cousin arrested for trespassing, so it was a buy as is deal. So, yeah, nope.

I'm still working with my agent on getting deals funneled to me. My wife, who was working very part time for pretty low pay has decided to quit and focus that time on REI, so I'm pumped about that. We refinanced our house to increase cash flow, and that will close on July 2nd. With her focused on the almost limitless upside of REI, I'm positive that we'll get a couple of deals knocked out this year.

Most likely we'll be flying out to Greensboro again for a few days so she can meet the team and we can scout properties.  With any luck, by that time we'll have a property or two under our belts.  

Cheers,

Eric

Mr Money Mustache blog.

Day 2 - Well, I'm beat.  I spent the morning touring the various neighborhoods around Greensboro.  It's amazing how neighborhoods here change from street to street - going from 70k-100k properties to 150-200k then the next street up are 800k-1.1m properties.  

I met with three realtors today, all with completely different styles and takes on the market.  I have my work cut out for me in making a decision around exclusivity.  My preference is to have one point of contact for leads, which I believe can help incentivize them to bring me deals.  We'll see if this strategy yields dividends.  

There was an trade show at a local hotel this evening that I was able to make some good contacts for property management.  I'll be researching their listings and spending some time on their site to make sure that they fit my needs.

I have a lunch meeting with another investor tomorrow that I'm really excited about.  I met her at the trade show (on recommendation from another BP member), and she's a straight shooter that will be a wealth of information and contacts for me.  Should be a great sounding board and way to keep me on point.  

Alright, thanks for reading.  Time for me to go watch an episode of Fastest Car on Netflix and crash.  

-Eric

@Grant Fosheim I should have qualfied my statement - at my price point. Deals are everywhere if you are willing to work for it. Thanks for reading!

Wow, that's fantastic! Small world. I almost didn't mention the ChooseFI group because it wasn't really relevant. I'll be setting up the next meeting soon, hope you can make it!

My name is Eric, and I'm an aspiring out of state investor.  I've listened to @David Greene's podcast and bought the book - and now here I am, sitting in a Greensboro, NC coffee shop documenting my journey so far.  Now, I'm not the best writer but I hope that you find my story interesting and will follow along.

I'm based out of Everett, WA which is about 30 minutes north of Seattle.  I've been searching locally for a property for the past two years, and I gotta say that if your goal is to cash flow, you better look elsewhere.  It's an expensive market with real upside for appreciation.  If you are a buy and hold investor like me, it's just not going to work for you.

I decided to expand my search to the rest of Washington state and even parts of Idaho, but nothing fit my criteria.  Defeated, I gave up.  I just couldn't find a deal that made sense. 

After listening to David's podcast on long distance real state investing, I took a look at the other businesses that the company I work for owns.  Low and behold, there were a couple in the South where the numbers make a whole heck of a lot of sense for me.  I settled on Greensboro, as there appeared to be properties that fit my criteria.  

This was back a few months ago, and my wife was tired of me waffling.  'Just buy a plane ticket and GO, Eric!', she would say.  Yeah, yeah I'll get to it.  I continued to research and plug numbers into spreadsheets, but was unable to do it.  I decided that the only way I was going to do it was to announce it publicly.  I'm an admin of our area's local ChooseFI meetup group (a podcast focused on financial independence), and during our meeting in January I announced our plans to the group.  Folks where very interested to hear about it, and cheered me on.  Now that I'd committed publicly, it was time to get off the pot so to speak.

I booked my tickets to Greensboro, and reached out on the beginner forum to announce my intent and see if anyone was willing to meet.  Leveraging the connections made there and additional cold calls, here I am meeting with investors and realtors to hatch my plan and get after it.

I'll keep posting daily through this week as I learn new things and begin my journey.  Hop along for the ride!

Cheers,
Eric 

Some of my favorites are Richest Man in Babylon and Simple Path to Wealth. Millionaire Next Door is great too. Recently, I finished Never Split the Difference on recommendation of the Bigger Pockets podcast with Chris Voss - loved it.

@Chris Newsome Thank you for that amazing tip!  I just registered to attend.

@Dedric Polite I plan on using cash.  If you would, please add me to your wholesale funnel.  Thanks!