Newbie from Richmond, VA

[Randy Frederick]

Hello BP community!

Long time listener, first time poster. I work full time as an Emergency Physician and am a husband and father of two. As you might imagine, my job is pretty stressful and the burnout is real. About a year ago, it became clear to me that a 20-30 year career seemed infeasible, so I began to search for another course to financial freedom. Enter real estate investing. Since that realization, I have been reading all the books I can get my hands on, devouring hours and hours of BP podcasts...and ultimately did the requisite work to obtain my real estate license (passed the exam yesterday!).

My goal is to focus on buy and hold multi-family units in the Central Virginia market. I want to purchase my first rental property by the end of this year, and then do 1-2 deals a year for the next several years until I am at a place that I can begin to scale up. Perhaps some commercial investing is in the future, but that will be decided at a later date.

I am eager to get started, but also quickly overwhelmed when I think about all that I have still yet to learn. I think I have a relatively good grasp on how to analyze a deal and how to interpret the numbers. What is not clear to me, is how to "learn the market." How does one go about finding the "good" neighborhoods to invest in? How do you know if your market is heating up or cooling down? How can you tell if the local economy and demographics are changing for the better or worse? There seems to be a lot of new construction popping up everywhere, how do you know when the supply of housing outstrips demand? Please forgive me for the rambling list of macroeconomic inquiries. 

Also, somewhat unrelated, now that I passed the real estate exam, I have to find a broker in order to activate my license. Are there brokers out there for investors who aren't looking to do retail real estate? How do you find them?

Thanks! I am looking forward to a bright future as a real estate investor!

Randy