First investment at age 18?

[Jake Shambre]

I am searching for some advice on a investment opportunity I have. First I will give you some background information about myself.

I am 18 years old and looking to start my real estate investment journey. I have been interested in real estate investing for a couple years now. Listening to bigger pockets podcast, reading a couple of real estate investing books and, talking to real estate investors, I personally know. I also run my own landscaping business. I would say I have a decent business mind for an 18 year old still in high school. I understand how easy is it to make mistakes costing you time and money. Investing in real estate is nothing like small landscape projects. In my landscape business, the cost of making a mistake could only cost a couple thousand dollars or a small amount of time.

As I was wondering around Zillow, I became aware of an apartment building for sale nearby by home. The apartment is a 4 door unit with garage spaces available for all tenants. They are asking 125k and its only been on Zillow for four days (9/25/17). I feel 125K is a very reasonable asking price for four door unit. I would only consider the opportunity if I could get it at a lesser price. I did not realize how realistic this opportunity was until I was talking to a small scale investor I personally know about the property. He made me aware that if there was a will there was a way given my current position financially. With that bit of re-assurance my brain begin spinning this idea to make my first real estate investment move a couple years earlier than I thought I would be able to.

Here are some of my ideas. Given the property is a four door unit I feel very good about being able to make the payment having 3 other tenants to rely on. Given I am so young with little to no credit I would definitely have to have a Co signer on a bank loan if I was to finance it that way. I will also include that I will occupy one of the units. So if I where to finance through a bank loan it would be an owner occupied loan. I know of some possibility to have private financing also from a couple different sources.

With all that being said I would love to hear some of your advice. Every piece of input is appreciated. Something I've learned from landscaping is a little education can save yourself a lot of time, money, and heart ache. That is why I am reaching out to you all here at bigger pockets. Thank you so much for any input you may have 

[Caleb Heimsoth]

Well the first thing I'd do is figure out what market rents are. Is it rented currently or empty? If it's rented you'll need to see leases. Also run comps to see what it's worth. It may not be worth 125k,
No way to know with what toy works said.

Next I'd educate yourself on bank financing. You'd probably want to go with an FHA loan, which is 3.5 percent down plus closing costs, which would be around 5k, maybe slightly more. So you'd need at least 10k to buy it.