All Forum Posts by: Michael Olesky

I'm a novice and I'm not familiar with your location so take my comments as such, I'm leaning towards plan A with the caveat of what @ElizabethS. mentioned about your current house repair needs.

My first thought is that it sounds like your current house is maybe worth more/more desirable/bigger/etc. than the house that you would buy as a rental. So in the long run, i think the higher valued asset would be better to have around because it would appreciate higher than the property in a less desirable area. You didn't provide any numbers (what you owe/what you could sell for) on your current house so this opinion is dependent on how underwater you are.

If it were me, I'd rent out the current house and find somewhere to rent for only $1000! Don't touch the 500 the house flows and keep that in an emergency account for that house. Save the 500 from the cheaper rent religiously and you'll have a solid down payment for a better 2nd property in a good neighborhood/etc in a reasonable time.

This approach also gives you time to set some goals for where you want to take your real estate investing as @ElizabethS. mentioned as well as giving you immediate experience in being a landlord. You might hate it and decide that isn't the direction to take your investing.

Keep us posted either way!

Mike

Quote of the day "Bandit signs, cocaine, and robbing liquor stores. I guess bandits are the new gateway drug?" @SamCraven

I gave bandit signs a try once, I think our ordinances prohibit it or at least limit it to just the weekend, it's been awhile. Although i saw other investor's signs, company signs and garage sale signs, I still felt like i had to sneak around to put them out to avoid being hassled in the least or real trouble at the worst.

One night, I did a uturn in a neighborhood and had a home owner that saw me get in his truck and wild man chase me down for about five miles until I hit a red light. His house had been broken into the night before and he thought they had come back, he got out of his car at an intersection and came to my window yelling so I had an industrial 16" long stapler in my right hand as i cracked my window to hear what he had to say. I pointed at the bandit signs in my front seat with the large stapler in my hand and the guy apologized and explained why he followed me. But he was ready to do something if i was who he thought i was so he probably had a gun. I know this is an extreme story but a legitimate business doesn't find itself in this situation so to me there has to be something wrong with it.

On a side note - i did get a lot of calls from the ones i put out before that encounter, but no good ones!

Welcome @Kevin Corn! Rich dad poor dad was the book that opened my eyes to the different possibilities as well. Thanks for your service and the best of luck in your investing career!

Thanks for all of the welcomes!

@ChristopherSchmidt - Sounds like you are doing well investing long distance. I've been coming to Melbourne since I started surfing when I was 10, my parents moved here when I was in college and I moved here as well. I moved back from HI basically to be closer to my parents again, only seeing them once a year was wearing on me, now I see them at least once a week for lunch, am learning to invest from my dad and hopefully do some deals with him in the near future. I live in Indialantic and even with the growth over the last 27 years, i still pass the same diner we used to eat breakfast at after surfing when I was a kid and most of the same surf shops are still here, it's still the sleepy little surf town I've always known. Believe it or not there is actually a fair amount of tech work here also so finding a job wasn't a problem. It's also so cheap to live here that i can afford to do more traveling from here.

@MadonnaMachado - I was on Oahu for 6 years and traveled around to the different Islands but mainly traveled to Kauai for surf. Only made it to da Big Island a few times and didn't get to see the whole place, it was bigger than I expected! So are you looking buying vacation rentals in Orlando like you did in HI? I have a friend here beachside that is considering buying condos for beach rentals so I'd be interested to hear your experiences. Aloha nui loa!

Thanks Will, just read one of your threads the other night about a huge rehab! Reading about the large numbers you are working with has definitely expanded my comfort level. I love San Diego, I've spent some time from Baja up to encinetas with a friend that lives out there and have gotten to San Fran as well. I'm not one for cities but San Fran was great! Cali is a magical place from the coast to the mountains.

Hi Mike - I knew I'd meet a lot of Florida investors but didn't expect Melbourne out of the gate! I'd like to catch up for a beer or lunch, let me know the best way to contact you. I won't be able to make the 21st but let me know about future gatherings.

Hi,

My name is Mike Olesky and I currently live in Melbourne, Florida. I was born and raised on the west coast of Florida in the Seminole/Largo area and have lived in North Carolina and Hawaii as well as moving around Florida.

I'm a GeoSpatial Engineer by trade, if you've used Google maps you've used geospatial data. I work with everything from the backend servers, databases and data to writing code for web applications to serve the data to our customers.

I've surfed all my life and require ocean water to remain sane! I also enjoy traveling both for surf and just to see new places and have had the opportunity to travel to some great locations like Japan and Bolivia. In the last few years I've fallen in love with sailing and am currently rebuilding a small 20ft sailboat that I have sailed locally as well as a week long 200 km sail around the keys. The end goal for buying real estate is to not only provide a comfortable living for my family but to be able to have a 30-40ft sailboat and the money and time to put a lot of miles under her keel.

My father has been using his retirement to buy and hold houses over the last five years and has done well. He has really tuned in to our local market and made some good purchases just off of the MLS. So I asked him to show me what he was doing and had a plan to save up money for a down payment. I saved up and my father surprised me with a nice size gift that allowed me to buy now instead of next year.

The house I purchased is a 2003 1700 sqft SFH in Palm Bay,FL. With purchase and repairs I'm in for about $116k, the comps have already started listing for $135 in my neighborhood and I think the comps will hit $150k in the next year. This is an area that saw a lot of new development during the last bubble and has consequently had a lot of foreclosures of newly built houses. After looking at dozens of houses and putting in about 15 aggressive offers, I finally landed a house in a good neighborhood which was in good shape for a decent price. Two weeks of painting and cleaning after work and on the weekend and the house looks almost new!

The prices have already started moving upward so I am renting it for the next year and depending on where the market sits next year, I would like to sell it. I hope to have already purchased another house by then, but if I haven't, I'll be in a good position to find a distressed home and rehab and rent it.

While I am interested in wholesaling and flipping and will pursue these avenues, my near to mid term goal is to buy and hold rehabbed houses that have a solid cash flow.

Thanks for stopping by, I look forward to getting to know the other investors here and appreciate the stories of success and failure and the knowledge shared by all the pros!

Cheers,

Mike