Is REI right for my situation?

[Chris Farrell]

Hi, my wife and I are considering investing into residential real estate. Over the past few months, I have been listening to BP podcast, read Josh and Brandon’s book How to Invest In Real Estate, watched hundreds of real estate investing videos on YouTube, driving neighborhoods to get familiar with comparing properties and searching many real estate apps to familiarize myself with the listings. I have created an excel spreadsheet similar to the BP calculator so I can get familiar with analyzing deals.

We are running into a challenge determining what to do in our current situation. I don’t feel comfortable getting into it to much detail but we have a fair amount of unsecured debt that will take me somewhat of 15-20 years to pay off at this rate. I have a decent amount of savings but not enough to make a dent in the debt and not enough for a 20% down payment for average retail in my area. We purchased our current home in 2007 and have about 100k in equity. We modified the loan in 2011 for a fixed 30 year at 3.0%. We do not plan on selling, renting or moving from this home. Our credit is very good.

My wife and I have created a budget a few years ago after listening to Dave Ramsey and have committed to getting out of bad debt. Since then, we have eliminated all credit card debt and are down to a few large balances like student loans and things. If the experts suggest we do invest into real estate, we are unsure what our niche is going to be for starting out.

We are looking to start networking and meet with experience and maybe some less experienced investors that would be willing to take a little time from their busy schedule to review our situation which will help us decide if investing in real estate is right for us at this time. We live in Southern California but am open to networking with anyone willing to offer guidance or suggestions.

Thank you all very much for your time.