Newbie Investor (Long island, New Jersey)

[Thant Thurane]

Hi all

My name is Thurane and I am very new to biggerpockets. Ive decided to start my real estate journey this year! and Ive been doing extensive research on a good strategy for my first investment.

I have been doing extensive research on a lot of materials here and blogs & articles to be well knowledgeable about real estate investing and strategies before purchasing my first property later this year. 

I am considering either doing BRRR strategy (or) turnkey (or) flipping as my first investment strategy. So here is my back story and my current situation:

I am actually residing in New York, living in Great Neck Long Island. I own a business back in my country Myanmar (Asia), but I have been a green card holder for about 10 years now as my parents reside here in NYC.

My credit score is actually below average and quite bad since I havent been working here in NY. So my plan is I have a friend who is working here in New Jersey and has a great credit score of 750+. (He is working here on a OPT visa)

So we decided to partnered up and go 50/50 for our real estate investing career/business.

Basically, for financing, he will be using his credit score to get a loan approval from our mortagage broker whilst I will be bringing about a cash investment about $80,000-$100,000 to start things off.

We were first intially thinking of doing BRRR but a real estate mentor of his discouraged us by noting that our initial capital amount is far too low to start this investing business.

For our first real estate property, we are looking in the New Jersey Area as my friend lives there. So he can manage the property closely and also New york area is far too expensive for our budget, which is $500,000.

So we either invest in one property of $350,000 - $500,000 (OR) two properties of $250,000 each. Still deciding.

So far we have both contacted a mortgage broker in long island and have an appointment with him to see how much loan we can be pre-approved for our investment. And we are really picking our brains to see whether BRRRR, flipping (or) turnkeys are best to start off with.

I was hoping first if the biggerpockets community could shed some light on our situation. Perhaps point us in the most feasible direction for our situation. Again we have no experience whatsoever but we do have contacts with veteran investors who has been in the real estate investing business for about 10+ years.