New to the forum Tampa, FL

[Cole Haynes]

Hey everyone!

I have been meaning to post an introduction here but I kept putting it off! My name is Cole Haynes and I just turned 24 on January 7th. I was born and raised in Tampa, FL.

I have been lurking around on this site now for about two months and I have learned ALOT from the articles and blogs. I have been investing in real estate for about 4 years now. I started very young and the market was still going crazy in my area at that time so I didn't know how to break in and get started.

Then I got a hold of some information on investing in mobile homes on land and in parks. This was very interesting to me because at the time I had $1200 to my name. It was a very inexpensive way to start investing and getting my feet wet, I thought.

Thinking I was going to set the world on fire with one trailer after another I dove straight in... I bought a piece of vacant land, bought a repo trailer, pulled permits, impact fees, sub contractors, etc.

It was ROUGH and I had never experienced so many let downs and trying times in my life! haha, short life.

That lasted for about one FULL year. Because, once I got the package complete I was unable to sell it. So that lead to my first experience as a landlord. I made EVERY mistake in the book when it came to landlording! eventually after about 18 months I was able to sell the house and break even.

I was totally and completely beaten down! You see, when I first started this deal I was SO confident that I would quickly become the next Donald Trump of the trailer world I dropped out of college. Between my scholarships and my (then) employers scholarship I was getting paid to go to school!

After that long and depressing deal was over I still had no education or career to fall back on....

So, I stuck with it and learned EVERYTHING I could about financing. I started buying land/home mobile home deals that were ALREADY together. I did one, then two at a time, then three, and so on.

Then, about a year ago I became very interested in no money down type deals (Sub2 and Lease/options). After taking some time to educate myself I started finding good deals. Now I am finding great deals! Between wholesaling, buy and hold, and lease/options I will easily do 20+ deals in 2010.

That is how I would summarize my investing career so far! Oh, looking back I wouldn't have changed leaving school for the world. Not having that to fall back on FORCED me to push on until I was able to do profitable deals!

I have some huge goals for myself this year, Personal and professional. I am getting married this year on November 20th to an AMAZING person. I am very excited about that! Some other goals include raising my passive income. I want to take a writing class this year, soon actually. I have never been good at putting my thoughts on paper.

I hope to meet some like-minded people and learn a lot from this site!

Thanks for reading,

Cole Haynes