young guy wondering how to get started in real estate investing

[Brayan Ocho]

Hello, this is my first time ever posting on a forum. I'm 19 years old almost 20 and It's always been my goal to invest in real estate. From rental homes, to flipping houses, and also new construction. I currently work for a property management company and I do repairs on rental properties or house flips. I do a wide range of different tasks, from drywall, painting, concrete, a bit of plumbing and so on. I know that knowing how to do these repairs will help me. My question is, how do people start the whole investment process? I'm not rich but I make decent money and also have good credit. If anyone could give me any tips on how to get started, who to talk to, or anything that would help me start investing, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

[James Masotti]

@Brayan Ocho - Your best option for getting started is definitely to buy your own fixer-up. They are much easier get financing on and you get first pick of all the good foreclosure deals since they have preference for owner occupants. If you can get a 2-4 family, that's your best option because you learn how to be a landlord while living in one unit and renting out the other. Usually this will cover all or most of your housing expenses, which means you free up more capital to fix up the house you just bought, or have the down payment to close on the next house. Some people will try to do what's called a 1031 exchange where you can sell one asset and replace it with another and defer all of the taxes to the new purchase. This is a very basic definition of 1031, so I'd recommend looking it up for more detailed research and then contacting a 1031 intermediary directly if you plan to go that route. However if you buy a bigger nice 2-4 unit, or leverage that into a 5+ unit building and live in it the whole time than you may not need to do the 1031. Here's a real great article on the BiggerPockets Blog that talks about bigger not always being better when it comes to real estate. Having one 50+ Unit apartment complex can be just as beneficial, if not more so, than owning 50 single family homes. Other people will skip the 1031 entirely and just hold the property and save up their money to be able to make a 20% down payment on their next investment purchase. 

Anyway...this isn't the only way to get started...but it's definitely one of the more simple and straight forward ways. Strongly recommend listening to all 200+ BiggerPockets podcasts, as well as reading all of the books available in the BiggerPockets Book Store. If you do this you'll already be an expert investor compared to most who never put the time into educating themselves. There's a balance there though...learn enough so that you fell comfortable, understanding the fact that people who have been doing this 20 years still don't know everything.

All the best luck to you sir!