Educational Resources for Beginning REI

[Bethany Fannin]

I'm quite new here, and I am at the very beginning of my REI journey. A little about my situation: I am a 33-year-old single mom who has finally gotten her finances in order after getting my Bachelor's degree in 2022 which allowed me to get a high-paying job with great benefits (401K + matching).

So, now that I have my 401K going and an Emergency Savings fund good for 6 months of expenses, I wanted to begin investing and have decided I'd like to pursue REI primarily. I plan to focus on short-term rentals in a property that I'm house-hacking, and hopefully move on to multifamily properties from there.

I purchased Brandon Turner’s books Rental Property Investing and Investing in Real Estate with No Money Down. (Although I don’t plan to invest with no money down, I wanted to get ideas for creative financing since I don’t have much saved yet.) So far they have been incredibly inspiring and informative (if not at times a little depressing, due to the example prices being so ridiculously low compared to the actual prices in my area! 😅)

I feel overwhelmed by all that there is to know when it comes to real estate investing and want to ensure I am as knowledgeable as possible before I purchase my first property. It reminds me of when I was first learning to program - any answers I found only led to more questions. My plan is to spend the next year saving up for a down payment and educating myself.

My question is this (thanks for staying with me this long!) : What are the ways that you learned the RE business? Was it simply experience, or were there particular resources that were helpful to you? 

In The Book on Rental Property Investing, Turner suggests analyzing 2 deals a day. I’m definitely going to start doing this, for starters, even though I’m not in a place to make an offer. Any other little exercises like this would be awesome!

[Bethany Fannin]

@James Carlson and @Shawn McCormick

Thank you for this great advice. I definitely have a tendency to suffer from "paralysis by analysis" and will keep an eye on that. I'm planning on using an FHA loan so I might as well go ahead and talk to a few lenders to start getting pre-approvals.

I also looked into local clubs in the area and there's a couple - the REIA, as you mentioned, and then a pretty active club comprised of female investors.

Going to the first REIA meeting on Sunday night! Then on Wednesday I'll be attending the weekly lunch-and-learn held by the women's group.

Thank you both for taking your time to respond!
@James Carlson