All Forum Posts by: Shaun Sullivan

Thanks for all the welcome replies.  Definitely looking forward to getting to know some people, learning a lot, and getting the ball rolling.

Thanks @Jeff Wallenius.  That homework & buying right stuff is what I'm worried about.  Of course with enough equity created, or with enough positive monthly cash flow, along with enough capital, I could afford to deal with delays in finding buyers & tenants, and still be profitable.  As a new investor though, I don't think I could be as confident unless I find a ridiculous deal.  I'm confident in my ability to do comps, when decent comps exist.  That gets questionable when there are only a few homes that have sold in the area in the past year, and the sizes, styles, conditions, and prices are all over the place.

Regarding the area, even though Frederick is relatively close to DC & Baltimore, many people around here consider Frederick County & Washington County (Hagerstown) to be fairly rural... even considering the cities to be more like towns, at least compared to the the immediate DC/Baltimore suburbs.  Not sure how it compares to your area, but it can't be much less dense than what's considered rural for Oregon... so your point might well apply perfectly here.

I've been browsing the MLS listings all around the areas of Frederick & Hagerstown, including places west like Boonsboro, Brunswick, Harper's Ferry, etc... and I started to wonder whether I should just ignore places that aren't fairly close to the population centers. For buy & hold, it seems finding renters would be easier closer to the cities, and for flipping I would expect generally quicker sales closer to the cities, just because there's constantly a supply of people looking to rent & buy in the denser areas. Although there'd be less competition (other homes for sale or rent) in the less dense areas, it'd just be how lucky one could get that someone is looking to buy or rent there at the right time.

Is this a good way of approaching it for a newbie? There are certainly areas I'd want to avoid even within and near the cities, but should I restrict my search to the population centers? I've seen a few rural properties that look like they could be acquired for less than 70% ARV, but is the risk too high that holding costs would get out of hand before I could find a buyer willing to pay what it's worth? or if trying to rent, the risk of it sitting empty for months?

Maybe this should be obvious to me or is well-known in this area or in REI in general, but any input would be appreciated.

Hi, I'm an actuarial analyst from Washington county, MD, working in Frederick.  It's 3am, so I guess I'm supposed to be getting pumped by watching a late-night real estate guru infomercial... but no, here I am joining BP.

My first real estate experience was buying a townhouse in Frederick in 2010, which we refinanced in 2013. Then in spring 2016 we sold the townhouse and bought a SFH in Keedysville. I did a lot of research during all 4 transactions, especially with regard to doing my own detailed comps and crunching the loan numbers like crazy to get break-even points and IRR for various down payments, MI & interest rates, etc.

Recently I've been learning more about the investment-specific side of real estate... listening to some podcasts, reading lots of blog posts & articles, just finished reading the BP ultimate beginner's guide, and now listening to The E-Myth.

I've had the desire for many years to eventually use real estate to produce a long-term passive income stream... mainly with the goal of being able to retire early and increase my retirement funds.

At least while I still have a full time job and young children, I think my primary path would be buy & hold... as long as I have the funds (or access to funds) to make the investments. If it's possible to find profitable properties for flipping or wholesaling without putting in lots of research & marketing hours (ie, just through MLS, word of mouth, etc), and then actually do the flip/sale as a side gig, then I'd be interested in doing that to increase my funds to invest. Of course I'd first need to get the right group of people together to make it happen.

I'd like to take action and start making investments in the first half of 2017.

Right now I'm just trying to learn and start developing relationships with people I can work with on financing, legal/taxes, renovations/repairs contracting, and just finding and analyzing properties.