Dave J.

I am a married father of 3 from the Tri-State area: I was born in New York, grew up in Connecticut and have lived in Northern New Jersey for the past 10 years. In 2000, when I was around 27 years old, I was playing pickup hoops with a friend who said “you need to buy a 2-family, live in one side and live rent free.” At that time, I had only rented. After being taken by the hand and shown multifamily properties for around 3 months by the nicest, most nurturing yet knowledgeable realtor EVER (If you need a realtor in West Hartford CT, let me know), we found a 3-family with one open unit. I used a loan from my corporate job 401k to buy the property and do some minor cosmetic upgrades. So from that early foray into landlording and paying only $200/mo out of pocket towards a mortgage, by 2004, we owned 3 multi's and one single-family house. We did a 1031 exchange into the last house located in Bergen County, NJ where values are about twice what they were in CT. Since then, I've spent the past 8 years raising a family and working full-time in the commercial real estate industry both on the property management side and the ownership/asset management side. With bits of knowledge that I've picked up, I am looking to pick up where I left off on personal real estate investing.