10K in hand, how would you use it?

[Bj Ayoleke]

I have about 10K in hand to invest and I want to start investing in real estate. My goal right now is to use it as a down payment on a house, getting a hard money lender to finance the rest plus rehab and take it from there. I wanted to know, if you were starting out with 10K, what strategy would you use to invest in real estate. I think hearing other opinions on how they would use this money would be very beneficial to understanding different ways to go about this. Also, I already have a house in my name using a FHA loan, so from what I understand, using a FHA loan won't be possible and neither would conventional loan since DTI will be considered. Please correct me if I am wrong. Thank you for your assistance. Is 10K even enough?

[Will Barnard]

This question is so broad and with everybody being different, almost impossible to answer. That said, the goal is to get more money right? So the question is, how to safely grow that $10k into $20k and that $20k into $40k in a short timeframe. If you learn the business of rehabbing (know how to evaluate rehab budgets and ARV's correctly and accurately), and youblearn your market and find a niche within it, then you are now empowered with a skill set to increase that nest egg safely.

Identify some target properties, make offers and getbthe, under contract. Use your $10k for the EMD (earnest money deposit) and then sell that contract to another buyer for a fee. If you are locking up deals that have ARVs of $200-$500k then your $10k EMD is plenty sufficient and your fee to flip the contract can easily be $5k or more. Do 2 deals like that and double your $10k in a few months. Now this sounds real easy as I type it but know that it is not easy. If it were, everybody would and could do it. The difficulty is putting forth the effort to learn the above and locate these good deals.

You could also do the same and loactebthe deals and partner with an experienced rehabber. Perhaps bring the deal, invest your $10k into it and get paid a good portion of the profits at exit making even higher profits.