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Updated almost 7 years ago,
New member from Riverton, Utah
Hi everyone - I am excited to begin my real estate journey here on bigger pockets. I have lived my entire life in various parts of the Salt Lake Valley. My husband and I currently live in Riverton with our three young boys. We dabbled in rentals when we were first married since we both owned our own homes prior to getting married and it was not a sellers market. We chose to rent the house we were not living in for a few years until the market picked up and we opted to sell. It wasn't a bad experience, but since neither of us were ready or wanting to go down that path at that time we did not continue with it. Growing up my parents had a few rentals so I had some background, but my involvement mostly consisted of helping to clean, paint, repair, etc. to get the house ready for a new tenant. We are both at a point that we would like to start actively doing real estate investing. We have already increased our knowledge through all the great information available here on Bigger Pockets and look forward to continuing our education.
Currently I work as a CPA doing audit and attest work. I know tax work would probably be more advantageous to real estate investing, but it just wasn't for me. I also teach math and some accounting and personal finance as an adjunct professor at Salt Lake Community College. Teaching is my passion and where I started out. I graduated with my bachelors in math education and taught Jr. High math for 4 years. I absolutely loved the kids and my fellow coworkers, but the teaching environment was changing and I felt it was time for me to change as well. I opted to follow in my father's footsteps and get a masters in accounting and become a CPA. It was a great decision, but I missed teaching so not long after getting my CPA license I applied to be an adjunct professor. I teach early morning, evenings, or weekend classes and work as a CPA during the day. It has been about 8 years since all of that has transpired and it is time once again to do something new.
Just a little background on my husband. He started out as a highway patrol officer, but after our second child was born we both decided it was best for him to quit and be the stay at home parent and for me to keep working. He did that for a few years and once our last child was about 2 he decided he wanted to go back to work. We both thought having alternating schedules would be best so that one of us would always be around. He started working the closing shift at a new gun range as their night manager about 2 years ago. It has been pretty good, but we would like to see each other more often and now that two of the three kids will be in school all day we figured it was time for a change. Real estate investing seems like a good fit for us. My husband is in the process of getting his real estate license.
We have read the beginners guide and it confirms the areas we are most interested in at this time are buy and hold (mostly multifamily, although we are not opposed to single family), possibly some fix and flips, and wholesaling. Our thoughts on this is that we like the long term investment of buy and hold to hopefully allow me to retire early from my current job and eventually provide a good, stable income. Wholesaling and fix and flips could be a means to get a little more up front cash flow than what buy and hold initially offers. Also, we think having a mix of buy and hold and fix and flips offers more than one exit strategy depending on what happens in the market. We know it is important to focus on one or two things rather than trying to do everything so we would be interested to know other members experiences with our initial plan.
Did you start out with a similar idea and where did it lead you?
What were the ups and downs for you?
Any recommendations?
Thanks
Monica and Bryan Gardner