Want to buy my first property and get started with REI

[Eugene Cho]

Hi BiggerPockets community, My wife and I recently moved to the Seattle area and need help strategizing on how to get started. We would ideally like to purchase our first home and do a full house hack and continue to purchase SFH using the brrrr method but can't seem to get past how to go about purchasing our first home. The properties in Seattle and near where I work, Redmond, are all around 500K-750k and too expensive to do a full cash buy or even a 50% hard money 50% cash deal. I have some savings but I don't want it to get tied into the house since our desire is to buy a second property using the brrrr method in 6 months. If we want to buy our first house we would have to do a 3.5% FHA loan for the property and rehab. But then where do we go from there? Since we did an FHA we wouldn't be able to do a cash out refinance like the brrrr method suggests. I am finding that the brrrr method works if you already have a house, AND have cash to buy your second property. But what if you don't have a house yet? What is the best way to get started so that I can be setup to buy my second property in 6 months? Thanks for the advice!

[Jonathan Escobar]

@Eugene Cho there are some cities where it is really expensive to invest in real estate and cash flow on a rental property. You should look into reading David Greene's Book on long distance investing. I still have to read the book, but there are a lot of principles that Brandon Turner talks about that David wrote in his book. I live in an expensive area as well and the cash flow is really hard to find, in my area I’m just looking for a property that will reduce the rent that I have to pay, And then sell the house after two or three years to invest somewhere else like Phoenix or another area that has cheaper housing that cash flows more.

So if you live in Seattle, it might be really hard to find a property that will cash flow and that is affordable. You might just look into finding a property that you can house hack and decrease your living expenses by renting out to somebody else but looking elsewhere to invest in more valuable properties. Brandon Turner invested in Aberdeen WA which is about an hour out of Seattle. So you might look into Investing in the suburban area outside of Seattle While you look for a property for a house hack near your work.