Newbie eager to learn & find a mentor!

[Kyia Raiford]

Hi all! I'm at the very beginning of my REI journey and I would love some guidance on how I can best optimize my planning, research and saving phase (which I'm dedicating 2025 to). I'd like to start off by house hacking a multi-family unit.

A little about me for context: I live in a very expensive market in Rye,NY. I’m in my 20s, 3 yrs into my Finance B.S. and I live at home so my current expenses are very little. My plan for this year is improve my credit, get my real estate license (to increase my income on top of my W-2), possibly career transition into the property management space (to learn more), and save as much as possible and learn as much as I can.

I’d love to house hack close to home but my area is so expensive it seems like it’d be close to impossible. 

I love New England and I’m from the Cary/raleigh area of NC so those are my top locations. I think I want to prioritize cash flow over equity for my first property. I want to become really good at analyzing deals, and determine the markets I should focus on.

Are there any resources aside from this forum (books, journals, news publications, podcasts) that you recommend I use to learn more? I'm not planning on buying until 2026 so where do you go for real estate news and market trends? I'd also love market suggestions and ideas regarding how to connect with others in the REI space outside of the events that BP holds. I'm looking for a local mentor that I can learn from and provide value to so any suggestions on how to find one and pitch myself would be great as well! Thank you for reading :)

[Jonathan Greene]

When you say you want to prioritize cash flow over equity, you want to watch out for people honing in on that and selling you "good cash flow" deals which will be in D neighborhoods and will come with high capital expenditures and harder tenancies. There are towns that are not too far where there could be some options for you, but I would start going to real estate investor meetups and pair that with books and podcasts. You have to earn a mentor by showing up a lot and then your mentor will appear. If you ask for one too soon, people will just try to sell you on stuff that looks good and isn't.