No Expenses. Travel Nurse s/o. Economic Headwinds. Am I a Clown to Buy?

[Spencer Cuvelier]

Hello all, 

I'm looking for some Real Estate advice and was hoping you'd be willing to share your feedback/opinion!

To give you the cliff notes, I:

- just graduated college in December- started a full-time job working for a third party REV company
- work completely remote
- have no student debt, no car payment, no rent (see below), no serious monthly expense
- absolutely love real estate & am anxious to begin investing

For context:

My woman is a travel nurse - we’ll be living from state to state for 13 weeks at a time over the next 2-3 years starting this upcoming weekend (she receives a stipend for housing so there is no monthly pmt). For her second contract, we’re traveling back home. During this time, I’d like to buy a house I’d live in for 13 weeks (to make repairs, etc.) and then rent out after that, in turn becoming my first rental property. Any advice on how you’d approach a scenario like this would be greatly appreciated! I understand the economic headwinds in the real estate world right now and am "in-tune" with what's going on. I'd love to hear your advice - if you'd wait for better financing options or if you think I'm rushing into a market whereas maybe I should hold my water. If it makes any difference, I make roughly $55K/year and have about $40K in my savings.

Thank you for your time - have a wonderful week!

Best,

Spencer

[Nathan Gesner]

Quote from @Spencer Cuvelier:

David Greene addresses this in a recent podcast: https://www.biggerpockets.com/...

First, you have to acknowledge that a lot of people have been successful in real estate primarily through luck. It's referred to as "falling up the mountain" because the last 10 years have been so easy to invest and succeed. Rates were low, property prices were cheap, rent rates and demand for rentals kept going up, etc. You could buy just about anything and it would work.

Those days are over, at least for now. Prices are high, interest rates are high, and competition is high. You still have people in expensive markets that stumbled across equity in their primary home, watched a few YouTube videos about investing, cashed out some equity, and now they're paying cash for properties in the mid-west. It's hard to compete when all you have is $40k in the bank.

David's suggestion - and I agree - is to look for a large house in the nicest area and house hack. You can live in one bedroom, rent out the others, and probably cashflow or at least break even. Rinse and repeat. 

Unfortunately, you can't do this every 13 weeks. In fact, it will probably take you the full 13 weeks to buy your first rental, move in, and find some roommates. You may still be looking for roommates when her contract is up and it's time to move to the next place. It's going to be hard. Then you need to save money for the next purchase, which could take some time since your first property may not be cashflowing and you may not qualify for a loan that quickly. That means you travel to the next location and rent. And repeat. And repeat.

This could be a slow slog, but if you stick with it you can make it. I would start with the single family, then really spend your time learning how to find deals off-market and how to negotiate creative financing through the owner or even partnering with others. I'll end my post with a recent video that shows how possible this is. This kid Cody is killing it in Washington by approaching investors directly, learning about them and what they are trying to achieve, and then negotiating deals that are extremely favorable. One of his last purchases was a $1.1 million property with $50k down and 3% interest. That would have been an amazing deal five years ago and it seems like a miracle in today's market! 

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