Am I a future real estate mogul? This seems too easy...

[Kris R.]

Hello,

My name is Kristopher. I’m 22 and live in Miami beach, FL with my parents and girlfriend. I am a college student studying Finance, and I also have a part time job at Bank of America. My parents have owned their own business for 25 years and have become successful. My dad is aprocaching the age of retirement now, and has about 1million in savings. He also profits about $15,000 a week from his business. He plans to either sell his business soon or rent out the property that its on, which he also owns. It is a 2 acre industrial land.

About a year ago, I began speaking to my father about investing in real estate. Rather than just buying and selling for a quick profit, I wanted to get into rental income properites in order to create an income for us. I had always read about these millionaire land lords that started off young and are now extremely successful, all from rental properties, and this business always intrigued me. With the amount of cash my Dad had put away, I knew we would be able to get very good deals in certain areas of Miami that are known for high rental rates. Plus, there are always tons of foreclosures and REO's on the market in Miami. After heavily researching a particular up & coming area that I really liked, we purchased our first property in January of this year. I was very patient and made sure I only pulled the trigger on too-good-to-be-true deals, and I have found them. Today, we own 3 properties in total and plan to keep buying. All properties are within 2 miles of eachother. I've placed each property under an LLC that I formed with my father. We both own 50% of it. I have managed to find tenants for each property quicker than I thought. All 3 properties have been bank owned REO's. Here is a summary of each propery:

Property 1

2 story Duplex

Price - $160,000

Purchased: February 2013

Monthly rental income - $2600 ($1,300 per unit)

Property 2

1 story triplex

Purchased: March 2013

Price $155,000. (115k purchase price with $40,000 in renovations)

Monthly rental income $3000 ($1100 each for 2 units, and $800 for 3rd unit)

Property 3 (incredible deal)

2 story triplex

Purchased May 2013

Price $172,000

Monthly rental income: $3450. ($1250 each for 2 larger units and $950 for smaller unit)

To sum everything up, we have invested $487,000 and we are making $9,050/month in rental income. That is $108,600/year, creating a 22.2% annual return on investment. We bought all the properties cash, and each one took less than 3 weeks to find tenants for. These homes are in a very up & coming area, and are currently worth about 25% more than what we paid for them (there are smaller properties in the same neighborhood selling for much more than what we paid). We were able to get these deals because we paid all cash and because they were bank owned properties. In total I will be paying about $10,000 a year in property taxes.

My father is not really involved in the business (except for paying for everything lol) but I am the one who finds the properties, closes the deals, communicates with listing agents, manages properties, finds tenants, hires contractors for renovation/repairs, etc.

Are numbers like this typical in the real estate market? To be honest, this seems too easy. I plan to purchase a property once a year for as long as I can, and just sit on them and rent them out. I wrote this to get some feedback and maybe some tips on how to stay successful in this business and what I can do to maximize profits. Even though I am only 22, I already own 3 properties and I consider myself very skilled at finding a good deal and knowing when to pull the trigger on something.

Thanks

-Kris