Newbie investor looking for direction

[Joseph K.]

Hi everyone,

I discovered BP about 6 months and have been reading the site ever since. It’s a great community and I’m looking forward to learning a lot from all of the valuable resources that are here.

A little background first. I am looking to transition out of my current job by the end of this year and would like to position myself for a future in real estate investing. I work abroad, so I am limited with respect to the amount of on-the-ground research that I can do for the time being.

I am in the fortunate position in that I have been able to save quite a bit over the last 5 years, so I don’t intend on getting a full time job after I leave my current position. I plan on joining a real estate mentoring club once I return to my hometown, and continue to prepare myself as much as possible over the coming months.

Some general questions that I have:

1) What are some things I could do to prepare myself in order to hit the ground running?
2) What type of real estate would you recommend for a first time investor?
3) What piece of advice do you wish you had before you closed your first deal?

Any and all help would be much appreciated!

Thanks.

[Ann Bellamy]

Originally posted by Joseph K.:

1) What are some things I could do to prepare myself in order to hit the ground running?
2) What type of real estate would you recommend for a first time investor?
3) What piece of advice do you wish you had before you closed your first deal?

Any and all help would be much appreciated!

Thanks.

Answer to 1. Read, read, read, read and read some more. Start with all of BP, get as many books as you can and read them, sometimes several times, and then read some more BP. Understand though, that most of us "trip, stumble and fall" and then get up again, when we try to "hit the ground running". There is no teacher as good as experience.

Answer to 2. Start small so your mistakes are small. If you are interested in buying multi's, make your first one a 2-4 unit, or a single family rental, don't listen to the gurus who tell you that you can start with a 200 unit complex. If you are interested in rehabbing and flipping, offer your services for free to an experienced flipper and learn as much as you can.

Answer to 3. No matter how good it looks, you don't know what you don't know. (This means there are a zillion things that you don't even know exist, so you don't know to ask about them.) So be sure you have a cash reserve or a contingency fund built into your budget.

You probably haven't gotten many answers yet because this question has probably been asked and answered a million times on BP. Kudo's to you for putting yourself out there and asking, but now go read some more old posts on BP