Building Duplexes to Single Family

[Aaron Claybourn]

Good evening Biggerpockets Forums, I just wanted to get on here to finally make myself, write my first post. I listen to the podcast daily upon many other real estate and self help podcasts. I guess you can say I've been stuck in analysis paralysis for the past year. Like many others I would love to scale into commercial real estate and apartment syndication but have to start somewhere. 

Like many have said to do, I started telling people what I wanted to do and where i wanted to be in 5 years and shortly after I've found my partner.  A very close friend of mine is a builder and he is getting to the age where he is tired of building everyone else these lavish homes and needs to get his retirement going. I would love your input on our first jump into real estate. 

He has a perfect piece of property on the edge of our small town to essentially start another block of town. We can build our fourplex and single family homes close to cost (besides digging and running the septic and electric). Its a small town but no rental property stays on the market for long. So there is definitely a demand for more. We are an hour west of Fort Worth, TX and everyone is pushing west. I plan on bringing the down payment, underwriting and tenant duties on my end (Plus sweat equity in the building process). At the beginning we talked about building 4 1100 square foot homes and scaling from there. But now I believe we will start with a fourplex, so I can live in one of them to get an FHA loan. The way the land is shaped we can build fourplexes in the back corner to build up some equity. Then build some nice single family home on a different, gated entrance. I have talked with my lender and plan on meeting with her in the next week or two. By myself I am pre-approved to build whatever as long as I come with the down payment. And we are hoping to get these properties started vertical at the first of the year. We have some infrastructure to put in first.

I would love some feedback from you everyone on the pro and the cons you see in our plan. I'm a newbie, trying to get started and any guidance would be greatly appreciated and I can't wait to get a dialogue going with everyone. I hope you guys have a great weekend and keep pushing forward! As a wise man once said "You can either drive through the fog or pull over and let everyone pass you by" lol

Thank Guys and Gals!