Darrell Bratton

I am a newbie after starting investing 20 years ago. I bought my first home in 1997 in Middlebury Vermont the condo for somewhere around 60K. In May of 2000, I sold it for 62K and bought a 3 bd 1ba house in Vergennes VT for 94K in June of 2000. I started house hacking by finishing a basement room (which I lived in) and renting out the three bedroom house. This covered my mortgage for the two years that I owned that house. I sold it in June of 2002 for 114.2K and bought a duplex for 129K in June or July of 2002. Again, I house hacked by living in one side and renting the other side to a retired electrician. The duplex needed a roof and full electrical rewiring among other things. I let the renter stay for free for the first year and he and I rehabbed the duplex. I did all this while working on my associates degree and working a full time job. In 2004, I moved to Florida for work and kept the duplex in Vermont. This is where I started making every landlording mistake mentioned in the first 100 podcasts on Bigger Pockets. I bought a condo in Florida that rose in price during the 1.5 years that I lived there. The market had started to decline in Florida and I barely got out of there with a 40k profit (which was good, but I had no clue). Another job move brought me to DC. I bought a condo in Maryland just before the bubble burst in 2007-2008. I paid 179K and it has never recovered (sold for 100K cash in December 2020) Ouch!!. From 2002 to 2017, I took a break from investment properties to focus on college and get a Ph.D. I was listening to Dave Ramsey podcasts and then stumbled across the Bigger Pockets podcast after a friend told me about Bigger Pockets in early 2018. I started with show number 1 and by show 5, I was hooked. I have listened to 100 shows between early 2018 and mid 2018. I take breaks from listening to the podcasts to listen to the books that the guests mentioned. I started looking for properties in March of 2018 and in May I bought another duplex. This time in Alabama. I closed on it in June of 2018 which brought me to five doors. In 2019, I bought a 4 unit in Alabama. In late 2020, I sold the Maryland condo and in the first half 2021, I sold the Vermont duplex. I moved to Alabama in early 2021. Within the first six months of being in Alabama, I bought 15 doors. In February 2022, I bought another 5 doors. I am now at 26 doors and in June 2022, I bought my last three doors to make 29 doors. In November 2022, I refinanced two portfolios into one loan and was able to pull out two properties free and clear because of the equity in the portfolio. I will use the two properties as down payments on future deals. I also have an SDIRA that I am currently using to invest in flips and a syndication. In 2022 I am doing a Roth conversion to an SD Roth IRA, and I will still invest in flips and a syndication. Finally, I teach in college which provides me income to invest.