All Forum Posts by: James Bruce

Hi David,  Thanks for sharing your experience.  I'm just trying to get started in real estate investing and I'm also in the Albuquerque area.  I've decided that my long term strategy is going to be buy and hold properties and I've been thinking I would start trying to wholesale to generate capital for the purchase of hopefully inexpensive/high equity rental properties.  My overall goal is to get enough passive cash flow coming in that I can be financially independent and get out of the rat race.

How have you found wholesaling in Albuquerque? I currently have one property, my old home, that I rent out. It cash flows about $200/mo. I bought it off the MLS for what I thought was a deal at the time. $87,000 across the street from the zoo. I put $25,000 into it and did all the work myself. I didn't do much reading about REI before I bought that house though, it was just going to be my house. I have since learned that I overpaid for that house because even though it cash flows now, if I refi to get some capital out of it, it'll stop and become a liability.

I just have a few questions for you about my strategy.  I've heard wholesaling is not something the inexperienced should do because it's difficult to spot the good deals from the bad.  What are the rules you have set in place to make sure that you don't overpay for a property?  What kind of marketing do you use to get your results? What software do you use to do you books and how would you recommend setting it up?  What resources do you use to comp properties to decide if you should buy or not?   How much do you typically make on a wholesale deal?  It looks like your typical profit from a fix and flip is about 15k, do you think it's worth it or is it easier to just wholesale? 

Finally do you have any other advice that may help me succeed? 

Wow that's a long list of questions, I'll feel very fortunate if you answer just a few of them.  Thank you for posting and best of luck with your future real estate deals.

Hello Everyone,

I found BP, like all of you, while researching ways to meet my REI goals. I've read quite a few blog posts here and have been listening/catching up on the BP podcast for the past month. I'm on episode 26 right now.

It seems like this is the place to be to get all of my questions answered for now and perhaps in the future I'll feel enough like an authority on a topic to chime in with some advice to other people's questions.

My interest in Real estate stems partially from my mother who owns 7 rental properties but primarily from a RE Investor that I met in Nicaragua 5 years ago.  He had built a real estate business that required very little time from him to manage.  He was from Canada, in his early thirties and proposed to his girlfriend while they were on vacation in Nicaragua.  He alternated working for 3 months and traveling for 3 months. He had a number of rental properties but he also had a property management company and a house flipping company.

At the time I thought "this is awesome, that's exactly the lifestyle I'd like to have." For many different reasons I didn't feel like I was in a reasonable position in life to start REI but fast foreward 5 years and I feel ready and Excited!

My main goal is to reach financial independence in 10 years or less and I primarily plan on doing that through buy and hold REI though I'm not opposed to buying and flipping or wholesaling to help get me to my goal sooner. The reason buy and hold seems so appealing to me it that it is the closest to completely passive income that I've found. I don't mind hard work, in fact I enjoy it but I would rather reap the rewards of my hard work over a longer period of time.

This "short" introduction seems to have gotten too long.  Thanks for reading and I'll see you guys around the forums.