Michael Cohen

Building systems around managing my time, energy, and recent purchases are the current works in progress. I'm at a crossroads trying to focus more effort working on the business then in the business. I've had a little success over the past year partnering with investors to purchase a 5 unit, duplex, 6 unit, and a single family home for me and my family. Utilizing Airbnb for the duplex we were living in has allowed us to make the transition from tight apartment living to the suburbs. Who knew space was such a wonderful thing while raising 3 little ones, a dog, and keeping your sanity. Now about us... My wife and I live in South Burlington, Vermont with our 3 kids and beloved dog. My wife works full time and I recently made the switch to part time employment to focus more on real estate as our portfolio grows. Managing family life, full time job, and building a real estate portfolio was becoming too inefficient and to be honest, driving me crazy. My background is in mechanical engineering and lean manufacturing so watching my time, energy, and money inefficiently float away was a challenge. I look forward to optimizing our current portfolio so that my focus can be better spent progressing in real estate. We purchased our first duplex in Burlington in 2015 and completed our live in flip after about 3 years. During the time we learned about the highs and lows of Burlington real estate including the permitting process, wildly subjective appraisals, and fun (intrusive/controlling) neighbors. Since then we purchased an "opportunity" in Morrisville, VT where we got close to developing a duplex into a 15 unit mixed use building. What a wild ride that ended up in us selling the property for basically what we had into it from a money perspective. The time and energy on the other hand ended up being a fair trade for the knowledge and experience that was gained from the process. In the past year+ the focus has been on finding deals off market in Burlington and partnerships. After a slow start to a very manual mailing operation, we built an automated handwritten mailer system. This process allowed me to spend my time running numbers and making offers which ended up landing us two off market properties. At this point in my career as a real estate investor, I'm looking to meet more people in the business and implement creative ways to build my portfolio quickly and sustainably. The last 5 years felt like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. I know I have plenty more to learn but it feels like the training wheels are off and it is time to see just how far I can go. Initially I was hesitant to make real moves and was completely overanalyzing just about everything. At this point I am confident in what i'm doing and understand how to minimize risk while continually learning along the way. My biggest challenge right now is time and money. Now that I'm part time, my immediate focus is to optimize our current portfolio and limit my personal involvement (time/energy). Next will be partnering with others to build a portfolio that is sustainable, cash flowing, & efficient. If you've read this far, maybe you would be willing to chat and talk real estate. Let me know and we can grab a beer/coffee some time or if you just want to connect. Thanks, Mike