All Forum Posts by: Justin B.

Once you go over 4 units, it's no longer a residential loan, it's a commercial loan. It's just a whole different ballgame. I'd start with an SFR or a Duplex where you live in one side and rent the other out. But before you do any of that, make sure you increase your financial education and understand everything as best you can before jumping in. Jumping in without some inking of what you're doing could turn you off to real estate.

So I read another post about whether or not your boss (at your day job) knew what you did on the side.  Someone pointed out how Google makes it hard to keep anything a secret so just by posting in this thread he/she might find out.  It got me thinking that I hadn't Googled my own name in a while so I did so.  I wasn't able to find anything about myself.  I was just wondering if Google had caused anyone any problems or potentially how people keep their private life private when they want to.

Fortunately for me, my first and last name independently are pretty common names.  So when I Google myself, no results or pictures of me come up in the first few pages.  There is a lot celebrities with the same first name or the same last name that pop up.  Also, my name even combined is decently common so there is a person with my same name who committed murder, one who is a pretty famous author/writer in his field, another who is a professor, etc.  So there are plenty of people with my name who have a reason to be found easier than me.  On top of that I also do the following things:

-- My Facebook only has just enough information public for people that know me to go yea, I'm pretty sure that's him so they can send a friend request.

-- I try not to use my full name on public sites (like Bigger Pockets).  I don't try and hide it on a personal level (like in messages, etc) so if you've ever interacted with me, you probably know my full name.

-- I use an e-mail address that doesn't have my name in it for public sites that I check just as regularly as the one my family and friends have.

-- I don't use my full name on my blog.

So I do lots of things to try and protect myself, but nothing is foolproof of course.  At some point, when I'm doing real estate full time, I'll probably put my name out there and have a more public presence for business reasons, but until then I'm pretty happy that I don't pop up on the first few pages or in the images when just my name is Googled.

I am fortunate.  I make my own schedule so if I need to take off for real estate activities it's pretty easy for me as long as I get my work done.  If I ever take off more than an hour or so, I usually use vacation.  My boss is fully aware of what I do and supports it.  He even asks me about it from time to time as he's interested.  He owns 1 rental himself.

FYI, I meant $500/month PER property btw for a total of $2K/month. I own around $600k of SFR properties and they cash flow over $2k/month so I'm being conservative with that number.

The short answer is, use the cash flow from the ones you purchased to fund future houses.  If you purchased these 4 investment properties and you are breaking even or not cash flowing, I'd question if it was the right move, but even then, you may have to rely on appreciation and re-financing down the road to pull money out.  Based on the money you spent, I'd expect a cash flow of around $500/month.

A mixture. I'm in SFR right now and averaging 40% COC return with everything I've purchased so far, but I am able to put less down than most folks. Keep in mind though that cash flow and COC return aren't the same thing. I could put more cash down to get a higher cash flow but my purchasing power would be hampered.

I'll rephrase.  When I said $1 million worth of property I meant as much property as $1 million would by me.  If that's $5 million worth of property, fine, just wanted to clarify that. :)

Easy.  I could buy $1 million worth of property and turn that into $20k/month (maybe upwards of $30k).  I'm pretty sure for 99% of the folks here, that's not only enough money to live on but enough money to continue to build your real estate empire from there.  It just depends on your goals.

So far I've got a total of 6 people interested.  Is there anyone else?  I'm putting this together monthly starting in January (so everyone can get through the holidays).  I've got enough to justify setting something up.  I've got e-mails for everyone interested so I'll keep everyone up to date.

I'm thinking about putting a monthly (or at least quarterly) meeting together in the Gaithersburg, MD area.  If you're interested, send me a message with your e-mail and preference of monthly vs quarterly.  Once I get 5 or so people interested, we'll set something up.