Best way to get experience when first starting out?

Question

Hi, I'm new to the BP community and wanted to get your guys' take on getting more experience when just starting out. I'm currently a home owner and landlord of my property in South Texas. I do a mix of Airbnb and traditional renting. I've been bitten by the real estate bug and want to go deeper into the industry, possibly get licensed down the line and ultimately build a rental and investing portfolio. Before then, I've been thinking about how I can best leverage my current career to learn as much as possible to set me up for future investing. I'm an 11+ year branding, marketing and communications consultant with an MBA and experience in project management, administrative and other skills. I've been toying around with the idea of becoming an assistant to a real estate professional or investor so I can get a hands-on, day-to-day experience of investing and managing, while offering my skills and expertise. I'm extremely interested in fix/flip investing, single family/multi-family buy-and-hold properties and master subleasing. So my question is three-fold: 1) What do you think is the best way to get experience when first starting out? 2) Is this something that you think they (real estate professionals/investors) would find valuable? 3) What would be the best way to find this kind of person?

Thanks a ton in advance!

Ned Carey · Answer

@Tiffany Pasillas well you can certainly get a job in the industry. What I wold suggest is just take action. Action doesn't necessarily mean buy property of make offers; but do go to investment clubs, network, hang out with the kind of people who are doing what you want to do. And go look at a lot of deals and learn to evaluate them. The better you know your market the more comfortable you will be when you are ready to buy.Brandon Turner wrote a Blog about the most important step in real estate. The answer is - The Next Step. Keep taking the next step until you get to where you want to go.

Samuel Turner · Answer

Yup, SXSW and ACL draw a lot of people every year. The music/food/film scenes in general draw people constantly. Plus, UT is a major institution. The city is a very forward-thinking community, for Texas at least. Master subleasing seems like an interesting idea. I see it as a potential part of a diversified real estate portfolio, especially here in south Texas. We get a lot of winter Texans during our "cold" months who may desire someone that can take over their vacant property or landlord/leasing obligations while they are away. Are you looking into it because of the apparent ease of entry? Looks like you wouldn't need a lot of start-up capital for this strategy. I saw in your profile that you were looking to raise money for deal(s). Have you looked into Brandon's book on buying property with no and low money down? Podcast: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2014/10/1...Book link: http://get.biggerpockets.com/nomoneydown/Personally I like the idea of owning the real estate. With the master subleasing, you seem to be tying one hand behind your back on your path to wealth. Without ownership in the property, you miss out on the tax advantages, the appreciation, the ability to borrow against your equity, etc. I think master subleasing could be a piece of the puzzle, but I personally wouldn't make it my focus. To each his or her own, though. If you plan on moving around a lot, it could be a great way to keep yourself liquid and cashflowing as you hop from city to city. Or maybe it's a way to start accruing cash for those deal(s) you're looking for. If it gets you some cash and experience, I say go for it @Tiffany Pasillas

Tiffany Pasillas · Answer

With your girlfriends help you shouldn't have any problem managing those properties @Samuel Turner. I've worked with a lot of tech startups and a crap ton of them moved to Austin. That with the SXSW festival really put Austin on the map. In terms of rentals, it's definitely a place to make a killing with the right placement. House values are increasing quickly so it's a good time to get in before they get too high. Yes, I'm doing all the managing myself but am going to hire a house cleaner and handyman to help burden the load.For master subleasing, I found this guide online: http://masterleaseoptionmethod.com/MLOMReport.pdf and this one from BP: https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2013/06/18/case-study-master-lease/. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on it. I'm going to check out that article you sent too.

Samuel Turner · Answer

@Tiffany Pasillas I'll be renting it out traditionally and managing myself. I have a pretty demanding 9 to 5 (more like 7:30 to 5:30), but I think I can handle it for now. I'm hoping to bring my girlfriend on board to help manage and show some of the rental properties when I can't get away from my desk job. The plan is to add a couple more houses this year. One house-hack via a traditional loan. The other I will purchase from my dad using seller-financing, though that one is still a bit up in the air. I haven't really looked into any management companies here in town since I only have to worry about the one rental property at the moment. If all goes to plan, I think I can manage the two or three on my own (with the help of my girlfriend). Hopefully, we'll be a good enough team to self-manage for quite a while. Are you managing yourself? I share your interest in Austin. My mom lives there for about 6 months out of the year, so I may look to buy her out of her house in the coming years. Check out Brandon's article on the BRRRR strategy, specifically the sub-section titled "How to make $100k Per Year with BRRRR" (after step 5). https://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/2015/04/2... It could be a pretty profitable option for the Austin market "before prices get too up there." Austin is definitely a popular place!I'm not too familiar with master subleasing. Do you have any articles you can link to? I love learning about new stuff!

Tiffany Pasillas · Answer

@Samuel Turner Open to central and south texas right now - basically where I can manage easily. We started in Calallen with airbnb house hacking and now are renting the whole place out, while in the process of purchasing second home in Edinburg where we'll also house hack one of the rooms. The Edinburg house will eventually be rented out entirely when we're ready to buy next one. We would love to branch out to some central areas like Austin before prices get too up there and do some fix/flips. I've been exploring master subleasing to see if that's something we can do in the interim. I'm curious, are you renting your house out traditionally or doing airbnb? Are you managing it or have you hired someone to help you?

Samuel Turner · Answer

@Tiffany Pasillas Mine is in the Bay Area...Pope Park area to be more precise. It took some patience, but I finally found a great deal. So many hours on Zillow and BP, but it was definitely worth it. I haven't been to any of the REIA meetups, but I may be interested. Are you interested in investing in town? Or are you partial to Calallen?

Tiffany Pasillas · Answer

Thanks @Jerry Padilla! No, not enough equity yet and not touching retirement for now.Congrats @Samuel Turner! My husband and I are in the process of the same thing with our Corpus place. I didn't realize it had an acronym until just now! What area is yours in? Ours in Calallen. Have you been to any of the Corpus REIA meetings on Meetup?Thanks for the feedback @Melissa Gittens! Curious, have you ever personally used any third party for your marketing, branding or communications needs?

Melissa Gittens · Answer

Hello and welcome to Biggerpockets I think that real estate professionals would be very interested in your marketing and branding background. I would suggest begin networking with people on Biggerpockets and see if you can connect with people who are in your area.

Samuel Turner · Answer

@Tiffany Pasillas Welcome to BP! Nice to see another Corpus local on here. I'm just starting out too...wrapping up my first BRRRR. I've been sort of stumbling through the process on my own (with the help of BP, of course). I don't have any real estate mentor to speak of, so I've mainly tried to pick up as much knowledge as possible from my real estate agent, my contractor, and the BP community in general. I'll be following your thread, as I am also interested in a local real estate mentor, long term buy/hold SFR and multi-family units, as well as fix and flips. Good luck and happy (deal) hunting!

Jerry Padilla · Answer

@Tiffany PasillasThere are a lot of other investors on here from Corpus Christi that can help answer your questions as well. Do you have equity in your properties or retirement funds? These are two ways that investors who have little money down try to get into investing.