All Forum Posts by: Griffin Malcolm

 this is actually massive. great news!

I would google "investor friendly real estate agent near me" and see what pops up. Could also ask your parents if they or their friends know of anyone. If they're facebook warriors like mine are I bet they, or someone they know, knows a good agent. 

Whoever you find, ask them some questions to get a sense of how they can help you. The following are some criteria I used when finding my latest agent. It all came from the BRRRR book:

• - Must be an investor themselves

• - Set me up with recurring MLS listings that match my buying criteria

• - Network of contractors and lenders

• - Insight into smart renovations

• - Ability to find off-market properties

• - Ask where the path of progress is
• - Where are your other clients buying?

• - Ability to analyze deals

is this for first-time buyers only? if it's still around in May when i'm elligible for my next house hack i'll look into it

Thank you both. @Andrew Postell I'll look into wholesalers as well. That seems like a great source for leads. Hadn't considered it before since a lot of the books seem to take the approach of becoming a wholesaler yourself as opposed to just using one to get deals. 

Thanks for the replies everyone. I'm definitely committed to the long game of at the very least getting a house hack once per year. My first home took me 6 months and probably 20 tours to find, so I am willing to be patient. 

My agent said she has a seller she thinks is willing to sell soon so that might be a good opportunity. I guess I need to double down on the networking / going to events in the meantime. I will look into Sub-to as well. Haven't done any research into that strategy yet

Trying to do my first BRRRR. I have an LLC to get the hard money loan, am reading the Book on Estimating Rehab Costs, have read the BRRRR book, am in talks with some contractors, and have an agent who has me set up with automatic listings form the MLS. I'm starting to feel like this isn't enough though. Nothing new has shown up in my MLS account in over a week, and I just listened to the podcast where Henry and David essentially said BRRRRs will only work with off-market, well-under-asking-price deals.

Is this true? And as a new investor (I bought a SFH as my first property May of this year as a house-hack), how am I supposed to compete / find these off-market deals. Furthermore, should I even be trying to BRRRR right now? I intend on getting a house hack each year which has better margins than BRRRRs, so that should be easier to find, but then my velocity is only 1 property a year. Obviously that's nothing to scoff at, but we all come here to accelerate wealth, and ideally I am able to do more than 1 a year.

Anyone have any ideas?

Great points. I fully abide by the dollar-cost-average approach for investing, so it only makes sense to follow the same approach here. The sheer dollar amounts for real estate compared to small periodic investments in stocks probably cause this hesitation, and I'm no different, but this makes sense. Don't buy the dip or highs, just buy the average

Hey Ryan,

1) I did my first house-hack this may in upstate NY. Real estate and the stock market are the two most common paths to wealth, so I knew I had to dive in at some point. Ultimately, I want financial freedom, so being able to pay $0 for rent each month sounded too good to pass up

2) I wanted a multi-family, but I kept getting outbid, finding deals but in poor locations, or the house needed a lot of work. For my first property I did not want any major renovations since I hadn't so much as hung a mirror or held a drill until a few months ago. Ultimately, I went with a 5 bed / 2 bath single-family.

3) My friend from college acted as my lender. I shopped around quite a bit beforehand, and this ended up having the best terms, plus I got to work with a close friend, so that was pretty cool. There were no challenges in this process.

4) I have 3 friends living with me now, all of which are from college. It's working well now, with everyone's rent set on auto-pay via apartments.com and we're all pretty respectful of the space and each other. This isn't scalable though, so I intend to proceed with a property manager for my next house which will hopefully be in the coming months via BRRRR. But for now, this has been a good segway into landlording for me.

5) Sleeping easy at night comes from confidence in your deal analysis and the numbers. I knew exactly what my PITI was going to be before buying and that it would equal the rent I'm receiving from my friends.

6) If you're buying an older house (mine is 1927), then there will be repairs. I told myself I didn't want to deal with big repairs, but I ended up having to replace the roof, re-wire the second floor of the house, and replace the water and sewer main. All of this involved finding contractors, negotiating a lower price with the sellers, and securing a home equity loan directly after purchase, but in the end I was able to get these repairs done and have 17k equity in the property immediately afterwards. I've realized the money comes from adding value, so that's why I've been going hard on the BRRRR research lately with a goal to complete my first BRRRR in Q1 of next year.

Hope this helps and good luck!

I can't speak to the Maryland market as a NY-native, but for my first house I found it on realtor before my agent haha

This is what I'm doing as well; first house-hack this May and will do it again in May 2024. Looking to BRRRR in the meantime too. I would second Alejandro's advice above though. If it allows, can you live with family for a few months post-college? That will really kickstart your savings. The independence from being on your own is nice, but if your ultimate goal is wealth and saving on rent then living with your folks for a bit really helps.