Got the Ball Rolling!!

[Evan Bell]

Just wanted to share a little bit.  My wife and I flipped a house in Phoenix with my dad about 5 years ago - pretty much did almost everything wrong, but still ended up making about a $25k profit when all was said and done.  My wife, my dad and I all wanted to continue flipping properties, but my mom was opposed to it, so that pretty much ended our real estate investing dreams.  Until now....

I found Bigger Pockets by mistake while I was searching for self improvement podcasts. The description sounded very interesting and it got my REI juices flowing once again. I've listened to countless podcasts as well as read a lot of posts on the forums. My wife and I just had our first child a year and a half ago, and she is our motivation for breaking back into investing. We want to be able to spend time with her on our terms, not on an employer's terms.

A couple days ago I started writing out our business plan while using The Ultimate Beginner's Guide as a roadmap. Just today I went to my bank and talked with my loan officer about opening a HELOC on our primary residence. Unfortunately we filed a BK three years ago, and we have to wait one more year before they will give us a HELOC - sad clown, right? KInda, but not really. We can use that time to improve our credit scores even more (they are both sitting right at about 680 for each of us), pay down our existing mortgage even more and search for financing via alternate sources.

The business plan, once completed, will be sent out to a few friends and family members as an attempt to start some private funding and/or equity partnerships.  I feel that with the proper motivation and time being put into this business plan, the recipients of it will be inclined to make money with us over the next couple of years.

I am very excited and motivated to finish the business plan and get it into inboxes as soon as I can.  This forum has been a huge help over the past few months to say the least.  I also just recently paid for the PRO membership here and have started catching up on old webinar episodes.

Looking forward to posting more progress as it happens and also to networking with all the helpful  and knowledgable members here on the site.

I will be looking to build our team shortly - looking for agent(s), CPA, contractors and all the other integral pieces of the puzzle.